Can You Call a Tile for a Pair?

No. You can't call a discard just to complete a pair in American Mahjong. Calls are only legal for groups of 3 or more (Pung, Kong, Quint). The one exception: calling for Mahjong. If the tile finishes your winning hand and that hand happens to include the pair, you can call it.

In American Mahjong, pairs only get completed by drawing from the wall, not by calling discards. The one exception is when a discard finishes your entire winning hand. You can only call discards for Pungs, Kongs, Quints, and Sextets (groups of 3 or more tiles), which makes pairs the hardest piece to land when you have no Jokers. The rule adds strategic depth. Planning and protecting your pair tiles matters, and players have to think about which tiles to discard. Pairs often become the bottleneck in finishing a hand, so learning to work with wall draws is part of building winning strategies.