Mahjong Ways

Provider

PG Soft

RTP

96.92%

Volatility

Medium

Layout

5x4, 1,024 ways

Released

2019

Mahjong Ways is the game that established PG Soft's signature style, and it is worth covering separately from its sequel because the two are genuinely different machines behind similar artwork.

The original versus the sequel

	Mahjong Ways	Mahjong Ways 2
Grid	5x4 fixed	4-5-5-5-4
Ways	1,024	2,000
RTP	96.92%	96.95%
Released	2019	2020

The sequel arrived roughly six months later and its main change is the grid. Widening the middle reels takes the ways count from 1,024 to 2,000, which broadens the coverage of every spin without changing the fundamental tumble-and-multiplier design.

If you have played one, the other will feel immediately familiar. The sequel simply has more surface area.

The max-win dispute

As with the sequel, published maximum win figures for this game do not agree.

BigWinBoard, reviewing from actual play, gives 2,893x. Other databases give 25,000x. That is a factor of nearly nine.

We are quoting neither as fact. What we can say with confidence is that a game returning 96.92% with medium-range volatility and a tumble-based design is structurally much more consistent with a low-thousands ceiling than a five-figure one. Games that genuinely reach 25,000x are almost always built on stacking multipliers with far emptier base games than this one has.

Treat 25,000x with suspicion until you see it in a live paytable.

How it plays

Wins form with three or more matching tiles on adjacent reels from the left. Winning symbols cascade away and replacements drop in, chaining wins from a single paid spin.

The mahjong theme is decorative rather than functional — the game does not implement mahjong rules, it just uses the tiles. That is worth saying because the name suggests otherwise and some players arrive expecting a tile-matching game.

Gold-framed symbols landing in a win transform into wilds after the tumble resolves. An escalating multiplier climbs with each successive cascade in a chain.

Free spins

Scatters trigger the bonus, where the multiplier ladder runs at higher values than in the base game and the round can be retriggered.

The bet range is unusually wide

0.10 to 100 per spin, which is a thousand-fold range. That is wider than most of PG Soft's catalogue and considerably wider than the 0.20–50 on the sequel.

Practically: this game accommodates both very small and fairly large stakes, which is part of why it found an audience across quite different markets.

Who it suits

Someone who wants the PG Soft tumble formula in its original, simpler form, at a return of 96.92% that is essentially identical to the sequel's.

There is no strong reason to prefer this over Mahjong Ways 2 unless you specifically prefer the tighter 1,024-way grid. The sequel does the same thing across more ways at the same price.

Also on this site

• Mahjong Ways 2 — the wider-grid successor
• Ways of the Qilin — PG Soft's expanding-ways take on the same idea
• PG Soft — why this studio's published maximum wins need checking

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RTP, grid and feature data from PG Soft's published game information, cross-referenced with BigWinBoard. Maximum win not stated — sources conflict. Reviewed 29 August 2026.

Reviewed by SlotzKilla Editorial · Published 29 August 2026 · Last updated 29 August 2026 · How we source figures