About Rulenook
Rulenook publishes plain-English rules for mahjong and the card games played most at American kitchen tables: cribbage, the rummy family, spades and euchre. The goal is simple. When a question comes up in the middle of a hand, you should be able to find the answer, see which rule book it comes from, and get back to the game.
What you'll find here
- Rules pages that name the rule book they follow, such as the American Cribbage Congress rules for cribbage or Bicycle's published rules for spades and euchre.
- Official rule and house rule labels wherever tables commonly differ, so you can agree on a version before the first deal.
- Worked examples on every scoring page, with each hand counted out point by point.
- Scoring tools, such as the cribbage hand calculator and a printable cribbage score sheet.
- Buying guides for sets, tiles, boards and cards that compare listed specifications. We don't rank products and we haven't tested them.
Who writes here
Who writes here. Edwina Larkspur is the pen name our editors use for every rules page on Rulenook. She isn't a real tournament director, and we don't claim club or tournament experience we don't have. Pages are drafted with AI assistance. An editor then checks each rule against the published rule book we cite and reruns every score, count and probability through the scripts on our methodology page. Where tables disagree, we label the official rule and the common house rule separately. Spot an error? Email contact@rulenook.com and we'll fix it and log the change.
We use one pen name instead of individual bylines. There are no real names, photos or biographies on this site, and we don't invent any. More about the pen name is on Edwina Larkspur's page.
What we don't publish
- The National Mah Jongg League's annual card, or any hand from it. The card is copyrighted and sold by the League.
- Betting or gambling strategy.
- Instructions for opening or modifying the electrics of automatic mahjong tables.
- Stories about games we played, or credentials we don't hold.
How Rulenook is funded
Some pages link to products on Amazon. Those links are always marked "(paid link)", and they never decide what a rule says. Details are on our affiliate disclosure.
Independence
Rulenook is an independent site. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by the National Mah Jongg League, the American Cribbage Congress, the United States Playing Card Company (Bicycle) or any game publisher. Their names appear only to identify the rule books we cite.
More about how we work
- Methodology: sources, check scripts, how diagrams are made, and the corrections log
- Editorial policy: what we publish and how we correct it
- Privacy: what this site collects (very little)
- Contact: contact@rulenook.com