Are you interested in discovering how and where to play mahjong for free?

As you've probably found, if you try typing 'free mahjong games' into your search engine you'll get all sorts of weird and wonderful mahjong variations - plus the usual load of useless spammy sites. If you can be bothered to plough through it all you'll hopefully stumble upon a free game of the type you had in mind. But we all know what a hit and miss process that can be. So let's quickly summarise what there is out there.

If you're looking for free mahjong games, you have in fact got 3 basic options.

Firstly, you could go to a multi-player site and take advantage of their 'freeplay' games. This means you can play a game of 'proper' mahjong, against other people. These sites are getting increasingly popular, especially since US online gamgbling legislation reduced the gaming options for a lot of players. Once you've played free for a while, you've always got the choice of opting into to the pay-to-play games, where you can start winning prizes!

Alternatively, you could go to one of the multitude of 'Free Games' sites and choose a mahjong solitaire tiles game. These places have a wide menu of games, and most of them these days include a few mahjong tile-matching games. You can generally choose to download or play online. Usually you'll need to put up with loads of pop-ups and advertising because that's how they make their money. Some prefer to avoid the advertising by offering the option of cash tournament games, where you compete against other players to get the best score. Again, it's up to you to decide if you're ready for that.

Your third option is to go to a site that supplies software for free download. These types of sites are like software supermarkets with all sorts of software packages available for download. Usually you can choose between a free version or one with extra features, such as free upgrades, 'expert' game levels, or better graphics. Of course you'd have to pay for the higher spec version.

So now you know what your options are. It's up to choose you which type suits your preferences. The next step of course is to choose between the sites that fall into each category...but that's another topic!

Fortunately you'll be glad to know that there are places out there that can save you the time and effort of all that research. For an extensive and objective review of the best mahjong games out there (and a whole load of other mahjong resources), check out http://www.the-mahjong-guide.com/