Often, a hand may encounter the basic waits. However, some tile patterns may involve combinations of those basic waits. Some of these additional wait patterns may allow players to have 3 or more waits. Many of these patterns involve a string and combination of the basic wait patterns.
Tile wait quiz in mahjong software.
For simplicity, the examples below involve hands in tenpai. Of course, the patterns are applicable to hands in noten during hand development.
Suji[]
| 1 | 4 | 7 |
| 2 | 5 | 8 |
| 3 | 6 | 9 |
Many common 3-sided wait patterns involve the "octaves", or suji. The simplest of these patterns use a group of consecutive 5-tiles in one suit, which involve waits of any of the suji.
The above example tenpai hand is looking for any of the 1-4-7 tiles: 
, 
, or 
.
Multiple pair waits[]
While the pair wait commonly involves a wait for single tile, it is possible to even have multiple pair waits. These may also involve the suji.
To complete the above tenpai hand, the winning tile is either a 
or 
to complete the pair of either of the two. Notice, the two tiles follow the 3-6 suji.
Likewise, the multiple pair wait may be extended to a 3-sided wait, like the following example.
Here, the wait is extended to the full 3-6-9 suji, looking to pair any of the or or 
. Note, this pattern involves a consecutive group of 7-tiles in one suit
Extended shanpon waits[]
These waits consist of two pairs of tiles with a shuntsu joined from one of the pairs.
This waits on three different tiles , , and , although the total number of tiles is only 7, less than a basic two-way wait. These waits may be extended from both pairs.
This hand waits on 
, 
, 
, 
, or 
for a total of 13 tiles maximum.
Ankou-tanki combination waits[]
These waits consist of a kanchan, penchan or ryanmen wait with three of one of the tiles, for example 
. They wait for both the normal out(s) of the base wait, and a duplicate of the single tile - in the example, 47pin and 5pin. Furthermore, they can be extended with shuntsu to create even larger multi-way two-suji waits.
This example tenpai hand is waiting on any one 
, 
, 
, , 
, or 
. Note, it is a combination of the suji: 1-4-7 and 2-5-8. It consists of the 8999 "pentan" wait (waiting on 78) doubly extended with the 567 and 234 shuntsu.
Adding a second closed triple to the end of the wait will make the hand wait on all three suji, such as in the image at the top of the page. The maximum-extended variant of this is the 9-way Chūren Pōtō.
Other Mixed waits[]
Multi-way waits that don't fit into these shapes also exist. For example,
waits on 
.
Special yakuman waits[]
Two yakuman have particular wait patterns: Kokushi Musō and Chūren Pōtō.
Chūren Pōtō[]
For Chūren Pōtō, it is possible for the hand to have a 9-sided wait.
As long as the hand has the 1-1-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-9-9 pattern in the hand, then the wait is 9-sided, where any of the tiles 1-9 is considered as the waiting tile. The three-side suji waits 23456, 45678 and 2345678 can be spotted.
Of course, if the tenpai hand looks like this:
The yakuman is still possible on a . However, the other waits of will render this hand no longer qualify as a yakuman. Instead, it will simply become a chinitsu.
Kokushi Musō[]
This wait is called Junsei Kokushimusou. It applies to Kokushi Musō. With this yakuman, it is possible for the waiting tiles be any of the 13 in the hand. As the yaku dictates, the hand is valid to possess all of the 13 tiles shown below, with a pair of any of the 13. Of course, the hand is otherwise a single tile wait on the missing tile, if there already exists a pair in the hand.
- 13-sided wait
waiting on any of the 13
waiting on any of the 13
- 01-sided wait waiting on the