EMA Rules
Controversial? Very. This is something that I discussed with Robert in Vienna. He’s a very passionate person on the subject. To be honest, I didn’t think too much about before, but hearing his well-considered arguments, I started to reconsider things…
It’s not the first time I’ve discussed it. Garthe and I spoke about it at Hannover last year. And I can’t even count the number of times Wortex and I have said to each other “If open tanyao was allowed, I’d have won that…” I hadn’t really considered it much further than that though but recently I started to consider how it could have affected my play.
Jumping rule sets has always been an issue for me. That’s why I try not to play too much on ron2 before an EMA tournament. The differences in the rules are slight but enough to drastically change my game strategy.
Having things like open tanyao (open inside hand/all simples) really changes how often I steal and how much I rely on dora tiles. (Those who play me know that I heavily rely on dora tiles to make better hands rather than making real monsters from the hand lists. It’s the reason that I tend to kan (quad) more often than I probably should.) I’ve even made a few chombos due to the lack of an open tanyao.
Is this fair to players who are used to reach mahjong how it’s played in Japan? Isn’t this acting as a severe disadvantage when they come to play in Europe? Many would argue that they do.
The EMA rules are not without Japanese precedent though. There are several versions of reach mahjong being played there, which also have similar restrictions and variations.
What we mustn’t forget is that the EMA rules have done an excellent job of formalizing and unifying reach mahjong in Europe and allowing it to grow. Without the good work of the rule’s creators, mahjong may never have gained the following in Europe that it has now.
However, should things like open tanyao be opened for discussion, now that the players are more established? Should there be a more democratic stance taken on these controversial points? Or perhaps more than one sort of rule set should be allowed but that all rules approved by the EMA will count towards the EMA ranking… That might be a compromise that we could all get behind.
And there are enough players who are passionate about these issues. Which brings us back nicely to the player who started my musing…
Robert is passionate about mahjong and he has some very strong ideas about how the EMA rules can be changed for the better. Last I heard he was doing some statistical research using the Tenhou hands to demonstrate that the EMA rules are not fair. I hope he does complete that because I’d be really interested to see what his final conclusion is.
Robert is a very good player. I got to play him in Vienna and he was excellent, but would he have been even better with one of the rule sets from Japan? Probably!
That’s the risk that is being taken at the moment though. That good players like Robert who prefer to play with a Japanese rule set will be disillusioned by the EMA rule set, which will be a great shame for European mahjong.
Anyway here’s hoping that I can play him again in the future but with his favourite rule set! 😉
