Busy Week!

I’m sure all of you must have seen the commotion going on over at MahjongNews regarding MahjongTime and the EMA’s relationship after a hastily cancelled online tournament.

To be honest, when the first articles went up, I didn’t think RM.com should comment on the subject. But as time progressed it proved itself a meatier issue than I’d anticipated so my hand was forced.

As far as I understand MahjongTime cancelled the German Open set to be held last weekend at short notice and with no warning to its organizers. The reason for the sudden cancellation was simply blamed on “technical issues”. For the 40 plus people who signed up for the tournament, this certainly wasn’t enough of an explanation. There didn’t even seem to be any change on the site itself as the tournament was advertised as still open for registration after the cancellation emails had been sent.

Very murky indeed and my heart goes out to those who may have cancelled plans for their weekend to play in the tournament. Things like that can be very disappointing.

The EMA, quite rightly, had to react and took the action of suspending relations with MahjongTime. The German and Dutch mahjong associations soon followed suit. A few hours later the original MahjongNews article was pulled and a new one posted stating MahjongTime’s stance that they were hoping for reconciliation.

The comments function on MahjongNews had soon been overworked though with a discussion which I have to admit I’m glad happened over there and not on the RM.com forums as that is a debate I would not want to moderate!

Before I continue, I should state the bias RM.com has with regards to this issue. We’ve worked with MahjongTime to hold a satellite for the World Series of Mahjong reach event. They also kindly sponsored a seat for me at the WSoM and I have a drawer bulging with MahjongTime T-shirts. All our communication with MahjongTime has been prompt and professional so I was really surprised to read what had happened between them and the EMA.

MahjongTime seems to illicit some passionate emotions between players; some are loyal devotees, others are passionate haters. The arguments are interesting as each side brings up good and important points.

Those that love the site reference the number of rulesets available to play, the site is in English etc. For its problems they argue that the site is getting better all the time and those will be ironed out as MahjongTime understands their market better.

Those that hate point out some of the site design’s obvious flaws, the high rakes, and argue that a lack of competition means that MahjongTime can be lax on improvement.