Menzen Tsumo

Conditions

• Your hand must be completely closed (no open calls — no chi, pon, or open kan)
• You must win by self-draw (tsumo) — drawing your winning tile from the wall yourself
• Winning by claiming another player’s discard (ron) does not count

Strategy Tips

• Menzen tsumo is one of the easiest yaku to score. Any time you keep your hand closed and draw your winning tile, you get it automatically. This makes it a reliable fallback yaku even when your hand doesn’t have other scoring elements.
• If your hand is closed and tenpai but has no other yaku, you can still win by tsumo since menzen tsumo will give you the 1 han you need. However, you could not win by ron in the same situation (you’d have no yaku), so declaring riichi is often better since it lets you win either way.
• Menzen tsumo stacks nicely with riichi and pinfu. A closed tsumo with riichi and pinfu is a very common combination worth 3 han before dora.