Reach Mahjong » Columns

Teaching Mahjong – Again

Gemma — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:00:31 +0000

It’s been a long time since I taught Mahjong. First time was in Taiwan when I was still a student. Second time was when I was back in the UK. Third time was last year in Frankfurt. I’ve had mixed successes and failures but I think overall people have enjoyed themselves (or at least they still return my calls…).

After hauling my Mahjong table up to the fourth floor where my new apartment is, I thought it was finally time to get playing on it. Not having any mahjong-playing friends close, my only option was to make some.

With promises of fun and takeout, five people came over. Two already had some experience of mahjong so that made it easier and they switched with each other while the three least experienced played all the hands.

This was probably one of my more successful initial teaching sessions. I think when you’re teaching someone how to play, it’s very easy to forget that some of the things one now take’s for granted can appear rather exotic to others.

Below are the steps in Gemma’s lesson one plan:

Step One: Let them play with the tiles and put together a straight of each suit and a triple of each of the dragons and winds.

This helps them grow accustomed to the tiles. Particularly important if they don’t read Japanese or Chinese. (Pro tip: Remember to tell them that the bird is the one of bamboos. I forgot to tell them…)

Step Two: Show them the shape of a standard hand and allow them to build one themselves.

Again, you come against problems you wouldn’t anticipate as someone who has played for many years now. You forget that people may assume a straight could go 8-9-1. Or that perhaps you could have W-E-N as a set.

Step Three: Show them how to build the wall and get them to do it.

Not too many problems here apart from when your players seem more excited by building things than playing, making you wonder if you should have just got some Lego…

Step Four: Go through an open sample game.

For this part I tend to play with everyone having their hands open so we can see what everyone is doing and discuss how to build a hand.

The most difficult part is trying to explain and ensure the new players go in the right direction when counting after the dice roll, when dealing and the order of discards.

This is also where I introduce the calls “pon” and “chi”.

Be careful when explaining “chi” that the new players understand when calling chi, they miss a chance to draw and the play moves to the player on their right once they discard.

Be careful when explaining “pon” to new players and ensure they understand that it may disrupt the order of drawing.

However, I don’t introduce dora or any hand points. I believe too many rules at once will overwhelm them and (a) they’ll get frustrated (b) they won’t remember. The most important thing is to get them playing. It may be that what they’re playing looks ridiculously dumbed down, but it’s all new to them and they’ll probably be enjoying themselves.

Step Five: Go through closed sample games

I repeat this step until everyone is more or less familiar with the flow of play. However, it is important that you move on to introducing new rules before your players get bored and wonder what all the fuss was about.

HP (Yaku) Explanation – Flushes (2)

xKime — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:00:10 +0000

From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/529.htm

In this section we’ll focus on the important points when calling tiles at the time of going for a flush hand (one suit hand/somete).

Flush hands can be pretty confusing because all tiles are concentrated and the shape is complex, so it takes some effort when we have to call tiles. Calling tiles should make it faster for us to win the hand, but with inferior calling skills it will only make it more difficult. I will now introduce the basic principles for calling tiles.

Rule 1: Make sure it gets the hand closer to ready (tenpai)
If a hand two away from ready gets to one away from ready, it has gone one step closer to ready and will make you win the hand faster. Getting closer to ready is the vital point of calling tiles.

Player to our left discards , we don’t need this tile.
We already have , and calling doesn’t move us any step closer to ready, and we also lose a valuable chance to draw a tile. Calling a useless tile is worse than passing on it.
Readers should note, there are times where we should call tiles even if it doesn’t get you closer to ready, but that’s more advanced theory (shape) which doesn’t fall within the scope of this article right now.

Rule 2: After calling, the hand shape doesn’t change

In this hand, we should call any tile except one.
This is, bumping (pon) after someone discards it. The reason is that the remaining is empty (because we’re already using three , there is only one left)
What if the person to our left discards , what should we do? As long as there are no other especial situations (for example if all were already dead), we shouldn’t touch this tile. Because is a good shape, calling this tile doesn’t move us any step closer to ready and it also changes the shape of the hand erasing a good shape.

Another example.

There is no problem aiming for a full flush with this hand, but when the person in front of him discarded , this player bumped it. This, I wouldn’t recommend.
Look carefully at the composition for this hand:
+++
Forming a set with breaks up a complete group (mentsu) and also an incomplete group (taatsu) which could have made another group; the gains do not make up for the losses. The shape is not the same now that is on a set, and we only remain with a lone to use and maybe letter tiles (jihai) as well to finish this hand. All this did was making the hand more painful and difficult to win.

If this was discarded by the person to our left, there would have been no problem (you may chow/chii this tile).

Rule 3: Pay attention at the way you call tiles.
In flush hands we have many tiles of one single suit in our hands, so when the person to our left discards a tile we normally have more than one way to call it.

Person to our left discarded , what should we do?
The right answer is calling it with , and discard , thus it the remaining shape is with a four sided wait ().
A mistake many beginners make is calling this with and discard too anyway, ending up with , waiting on only .

As far as flush hands concern, we’ll drop this here. In the next article, we’ll discuss pair-based hands (Toi-Toi (all bumps) and Chii Toi Tsu (all pairs)).
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Garthe’s Commentary

Yeah, no kidding on the whole hard to read waits thing. It reminds me of a hand I had in the semifinals of Masters that is just one more classic example of me winning by playing wrong.

I had already won the first 2 games so my spot on the final table was already virtually assured. The real contest was between Ogawa and Imazato for the second spot from our table.

The 3rd hand of the east round, Imazato Reached after I had gotten to ready with this

Dora was ! Just waiting for , I was fretting over what I would do if I had a chance to improve my wait. It’s fun to play with everyone watching but nerve-racking too as I really didn’t want to make a mistake in front of everybody.

What should come but . Throwing seemed like the obvious choice but for some reason, I just couldn’t see what I’d be waiting for besides . Even now I had to get my tiles out, put the hand on my bed and start taking out pairs to finally see that I was also waiting for .

Unable to find the right answer at the time I opted to just stick with the current crappy wait and discard the tile I’d just drawn. That prompted a hapless Ogawa to believe that would be safe and he discarded my winner. 16,000 points plus shock and amazement oohs and ahs from everyone watching as Ogawa’s final table hopes went down the drain.

I’m not saying that my play was necessarily wrong. There are definitely reasons one could argue it is a viable play. I’m just disappointed that I only made the right play by not being able to see all the plays that were available.

Go ahead and separate out your groups to see what you really have like he did in the 3rd example of the column. It will be a dead giveaway that you’re going for a flush but chances are the other players will be on to you anyway. It’s also a little embarrassing to have to do it that way, but what’s a little embarrassment compared to 16,000 points! You still get the last laugh.

Yuki Michi’s blog

xKime — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:00:20 +0000

From: http://ameblo.jp/yukimichi/entry-10977133544.html

Good morning!

Today is the fifth session for the C1 league.

It means that it’s the last session for this season.

The top five people will move to the next league, and I’m number 13 right now. At the moment I have a difference of 100 points with the person on 5th place, so it will be very hard to move up, but I’ll do my best, with all my might!

Writing this right now I suddenly realized that I often use the words “do my best, with all my might.”
Back in junior high, our teacher used to say “‘with all my might’ isn’t an expression you should simply use just for any reason.” She actually said why, but I forgot (even though it was such an important thing ^^;).
But ever since then I’ve used this phrase a lot and I ended up actually doing my best, so these words are “with all my might!” and doing things “with all my might,” so these words impacted my actions.

Even now, whenever I’m about to write “with all my might” in a blog or something, or when I’m about to say it, I stop for a second but since I really mean it when I say it, I doubt my teacher would be mad if I used the expression. I only use it at times when I really feel that way. ^^

I forgot the exact point of what she said, but I think she meant we shouldn’t just use this phrase casually.

Anyway, see you later!

(August 6th, 2011. Yuki Michi)

HP (Yaku) Explanation – Flushes (1)

xKime — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:00:42 +0000

From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/527.htm

In the last articles we discussed the conditions to make a flush hand, these following two articles will try to explain the vital points when making those hands.

Flexibility

After you get your starting hand, you have to consider the possible HP/yaku (mentanpin, half flush (hon itsu), kuitan (open tan yao) with 2 dora (lucky tiles), etc); that’s the habit most adept players must develop. Because if you plan ahead you can reduce your thinking time afterwards, and you can select more easily the best tile to discard.

When they recieve a starting hand with a few tiles in the same suit, beginners think of nothing but half flush, and erradicate completely all other small possibilities, this could influence the hand-winning percentage. Because at the beginning of the hand you only have 14 tiles ahead of you, and you have still 17 draws ahead of you, there’s a good chance things might change.

Here’s a concrete explanation of going for half flush:

The lucky tile (dora) is a random honor tile.

This is a real starting hand I have gotten, it was the South Round, therefore East is not a value tile (fan pai).

9 tiles in cracks (manzu), and it includes a 667799 shape. If we keep this hand concealed (menzen) it’s going to be hard to proceed. Therefore, in this hand a Half Flush is within scope.

But is a flush the only possible evolution for this hand? The answer is negative. If we draw or , we have the possibility for a conealed Peace Hand (pinfu).

If we only think about tile efficiency, here we would discard . But in this match I discarded , it’s very subtle, but it leaves the possibility open for Half Flush or Peace Hand at the same time. Beginners tend to rush to discard in this kind of hand, it may be arbitratry, but discarding so early on can make the other players feel uncomfortable and they’d begin being cautious about you, which is not a good thing.

The mahjong tiles don’t know what you want to draw.

“With this hand, I only need to draw a few more cracks and I’ll have a Half Flush!”

You see this kind of thing in many mahjong forums, many people believe this is the basis to go for Half Flush. In fact, speaking in all consciousness, when I say　”With this hand, I only need to draw three more , three more , three more , and I’ll have Big Three Dragons! (Dai San Gen)” it’s not any different.

The big problem in beginners is that they play what Japanese people like to call “e awase maajan” (e awase = “drawing pictures”; maajan = mahjong) — in your heart there is only room for one “ultimate final shape”, and you believe your hand will evolve just the way you want it to, what some people call “ideal shape” is something hard to imagine, it makes the hand lose all its flexibility for change.

In fact, mahjong tiles can’t now what you want to draw, and can’t adapt themselves to your desires. Drawn tiles are just a random occurrence. Even if we had an 80% chance of making a Half Flush, erasing the remaining 20% could be unfortunate.

When playing mahjong, every turn what you should ask yourself is not “what do I want to draw,” it should be “if I drew x, what should I do?”

Remember, you cannot control your future draws. What you must do, is make your strategy based on the tiles you draw afterwards, and not according to your ideal, but according to what is possibly benefitial.

Coming back to the example from a while ago, I discarded and the hand became:

After discarding 1p I had already planned inside of me for the rest possibilities:

a) Draw cracks or East Wind: Possibly discard , because at that point cracks and letter tiles (jihai) already offer enough possibilities for groups (mentsu).

b) Draw or : Discard . Because the possibility for a concealed Peace Hand is high, meaning the opportunity cost for the Half Flush becomes higher.

c) Draw : Discard . No new incomplete group (taatsu), maintaining the balance between Peace Hand and Half Flush.

Many beginners thing they just have to decide and plunge ahead with that plan, when in fact you must practice “formulating a future plan for the tiles you will draw.”

In this game my next draw was , even though Half Flush is only worth two Hand Points (han), in this situation it’s the easiest way to win; discard . As long as I don’t draw afterwards, the possibility for Half Flush is pretty big.

Later on I called pon on and , drew another and added it to form a quad (kan), and ended winning 3200 points.

In short, what I want everyone to remember from this article is:

1. Secondary tiles can be part of your final shape, under most situations there are many of these. It’s pretty important to give flexibility for the hand to develop especially in the first row of discards.

2. You must not blindly charge towards one direction to please your heart’s desire, you must adjust your strategy based on the tiles you will draw.

(to be continued)

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Comments from Garthe

The statement I would like everyone to revisit is the, “…if I only draw a few more cracks, I’ll have a half flush!”

Indeed, but if we only draw a COUPLE more different tiles, we’ll be ready with Peace and probably at least a shot at Double Run. In normal parlor rules, getting to ready fastest with the hand closed is generally a pretty good strategy because of the possibility of getting Ippatsu or Hidden Dora. More often than not, we’re better off going for tile efficiency than big points.

And also, don’t forget that Half Flushes lose value when not concealed. Without Dora or value tiles in this hand, its value is practically the same as a Reach+Peace hand anyway.

Finally, I’d like to consider one more way to play this hand. He didn’t say at what point he called the 7c but it sounds like it might have still been relatively early. With 4 pairs already in the hand, I would have probably tried to keep it closed and go for Half Flush+7 Pairs or Half Flush+3 Concealed Triples. Both hands will be at least mangan(8000 points) with a good possibility for haneman(12,000). From a tile efficiency standpoint, one could certainly argue against opening the hand here as he now needs 2 of a very specific 6 tiles to complete the hand. Closed, nearly any cracks move us closer to ready and even any letter tiles are potentially useful, especially Dora.

And I have more faith in my opponents clamming up with cracks and letter tiles once I’ve called for something. Even closed, it will still be pretty Pretty obvious I’m aiming for a flush, but many players will assume that I am not ready until I call for something. If I can get to ready and not Reach, I think I have a better chance of winning the hand as opponents will think they still have time to safely get rid of that dangerous tile.

For me, the possibility of those monster hands (or even baiman if I draw a couple Dora) is well worth the risk of losing the hand because I didn’t steal tiles.

A pro’s awareness

xKime — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:00:59 +0000

Starting in August ReachMahjong.com will host a new series of Professional Blogs. These will be translated blog entries from the top pro players in Japan. This column will continue biweekly, being published on Fridays. Thanks to xKime who is translating these entries. If you’d like to see a certain pro’s thoughts don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll do our best to get you one of their blogs. This first entry is from Takeo Kojima, Mr. Mahjong himself as he wrote last year on the Mahjong Fight Blog.
Source: http://mp.i-revo.jp/user.php/kojima-pro/entry/141.html

I don’t play just to win without thinking about anything, and I don’t want to play like that. Why? That’s because I’m a professional player. If you’re an amateur player, then it doesn’t matter how you play. I think it’s okay if you play just to win, or even if you play only to complete hands.

For example, octave waits (moro hikkake) like discarding and winning on , or discarding and winning on or . Pair waits (tanki), gutshot waits (kanchan) or simple winning hands without any other HP (yaku). As a professional player, I feel like this kind of win is a little embarrassing. Even though there are professional players who say “There’s nothing wrong with that kind of win,” I doubt their sense of play. As a professional player, I think I should have at the very least some sense of beauty.

So, does that mean professional players don’t win on edge waits (penchan), gutshot waits or with octave waits? That’s not so. Sometimes we wait with those ready (tenpai) hands. There are many cases where we wait on a pair of dora (lucky dragons/tiles), or other HP like Three Colored Runs (San Shoku) or Full Straight (Ittsuu). We usually don’t just make a Reach (riichi) hand with nothing else.

When everything goes according to plan and your opponent discards your winning tile, if they think or even say “that’s a good wait,” they do not say it but they’re probably thinking “I’m beaten…”. Winning like that is professional.

I say it a lot, but if everyone (non-pro players) thought or said “What’s so special? You play just like we do,” that would be embarrassing.

This is the difference between Mahjong and go or shougi (Japanese chess). In go and shougi you can see everything, so there is no point in making strange moves.

However, in mahjong you’re fighting with draws that aren’t visible, so there are many strategies a player can make.

Therefore, a professional player must put on a professional fight. There is no other option.

I let a chance for good results slip away at the 16th Special Tournament “Regain Cup” (第 16回特別大会 Regain杯) (on Mahjong Fight Club). I participated in the Mahjong Triathlon mode and got a high score by the time I finished the Half Games (tonpuusen) and Full Games (hanchan) sessions, and next in my specialty: 3 Player Mahjong (sanma) I could have assured a good result if I scored high in the last game, but it ended with me and the dealer (oya) both going for a hand in bamboos (souzu) and I ended up giving him a dealer baiman (24000 points).

Nevertheless, in this mahjong triathlon the mode of play changes every game, so you never get tired and it’s very fun. There are chances for all users and I felt like there was a good sense of competition.

For anyone that I didn’t get to play with this time around, be sure to play again next time. -Takeo Kojima (2010-09-06)

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Comments from Jenn:

I am a player that was born and bred on Kojima-sensei’s way of playing. His were the first books I read and his style is what I studied as I grew as a player. The idea is definitely more about shape and HP and less about speed. As a result I have a special place in my game for 3 Colored Runs (sanshoku) and Full Straights (Ittsu).

As far as waits go, we often preach good waits on ReachMahjong.com. However, there are many times when a side wait (penchan) and gut shots (kanchan) are good waits. The idea that an octave-riichi wait (moro hikkake), as sensei explained above, is an older way of thinking and the new generation, even of respected professionals, is moving away from that way of thinking. The game is getting more and more competitive and the truth is that to succeed in this industry most players just can’t afford to play such a readable game. If an opponent knows that you will never discard a to wait on an , the chance of them beating you becomes to great.

Watch Kojima-sensei’s game. He plays a beautiful form of mahjong that you won’t get the chance to see from the new breed of pro’s. And, he still wins.

Pair Theory (Part 2)

xKime — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:19:41 +0000

This is from an actual MFC hand history, sitting North. If you draw 9 of bamboos in the 4th turn, what would you discard?
For a Group Hand(i.e. 4 groups +1 pair, the standard winning shape) the most efficient discard would naturally be 9 of bamboos.
In appearance, since this hand has many pairs it looks like it should be easy to form a group hand, but it isn’t. At the time we only have the 789 completed run (shuntsu). We still need one of the remaining two 4 and 9 of cracks (manzu), 3 of dots (pinzu) and West Wind (shaa) to have a chance at winning the hand. There are only two tiles remaining of each, so the tile efficiency here is really low. The most important thing is, we need the pairs to form a good shape, but that’s not easy either.

Therefore in this hand we must go for All Pairs; in this actual game, I discarded 2 of bamboos (souzu).

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Comments from Garthe
Ah yes, another age old conundrum, 7 Pairs or normal shape. I remember running into it a few years ago in my last game at the OUI tournament. I made the wrong decision, at least regarding what I eventually drew. I opted for 7 Pairs as I tend to do, the tiles I drew afterward would have completed a Simples, Peace, Dora hand.

Distraught that I had knocked myself out of the tournament I looked for support so I could blame the loss on bad luck. I wasn’t so lucky. Both Rumi (who was at the same table that game) and Jenn were surprised that I chose that road, and Jenn’s reason for why the normal shape was so obviously the right choice has stuck with me since that time: if the waits are good, take the easy road, go normal!

I have to admit, as I play more and more, one of the things I’ve noticed on days that I can’t seem to win a game is that I’m often going for a lot of 7 Pairs hands. Sometimes I remember Jenn’s advice at a crucial moment and manage to go normal instead of taking the hard way. But more often than not, I keep my pairs.

I won’t go into a long explanation of why the approach may or may not be justified, especially as it might just be unjustifiable. But perhaps I can still provide a little method to my madness.

The article says that the only loss in discarding 3-dots in the first example is drawing one of the other two 3-dots. First of all, I would argue that that is in fact a pretty big loss because that would have completed a group moving us to one away from ready. 1,2, 4 of bamboos team up to only form a nice potential shape for a group, and we’re still two away from ready.

Second of all, that reasoning also assumes that we’re really no longer aiming for anything but Peace. I would argue that if 7 Pairs is still on the table, a draw which pairs ANYthing else in our hand is also a loss, seven singletons at 3 remaining each gives a loss of 21 tiles. And finally, if we’re ok with just the fastest route to ready then completing the other triples is even something of a loss as we’d still be two away from ready rather than one, four more losses.

I tend to go that route because I dream of hitting monsters. 7 Pairs can become a potential monster with just the addition of one Dora, haneman if self drawn after reaching. If the pairs start tripling up 3 Concealed Triples is usually at least mangan because Reach and self draw are in there as well. And of course if the triples keep coming to the end, yakuman (limit hand)!! 4 Concealed Triples is my favorite hand.

I can appreciate the reasoning for breaking the pair there, but I would keep it and throw one of the bamboos.

One last note, many people thought Kosho Tsuchida was perhaps the best player in Japan until he left our association to start his own and we had to start thinking someone else must be the best player in Japan. Anyway, he was famous for leaving pairs in his hand when no one else would have. What does he know that we don’t?

Well, time to get lucky…

In Garthe’s League

garthe — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:00:49 +0000

Well, it was another long night of happiness on Saturday leading straight into league play on Sunday.

I played tight and smart to win the first game and decided to switch it up at the beginning of the second game. My first hand, dealer, I won with this hand:

Draw:

Except I didn’t win. It was still only the 5th draw and this hand could be such a monster. Dropping 33 means any Character or letter tiles make me tenpai (ready) again. Gees, even 9 Gates was a remote possibility. 1000 points each for that hand just seemed wrong.

Why I like to break things that are working for me I will never know. So I stopped with the tightness, went for the Full Flush, and of course drew nothing but the other suits and the one letter tile of which there were already 3 on the table. By the time I got back to Ready, Kitano had caught up and I threw to her Simples, Peace, 2 Dora for a -7700 start to the game. Not quite the 3000 plus I could have had.

Failing another 3 consecutive big hands I was in quite a funk when I opened my hand to find this in the last of the east round:

Once again, fantastic possibilities, but I just couldn’t pull any triggers, didn’t pon when I had the chance and eventually drew 2 for 800/1600. Phhfthtt!!!

Next hand, I’m dealer again and find myself with this on the 8th or so draw.

I reasoned I’d gone for the monsters enough already. The middle tiles obviously being wanted by the other players, I took the first 7 that came out, and the next tile I drew was the 七.

Take that suckers!!! Not the super monster, but 6000 from each player would just have to do.

Next hand, 5 draws in, I got to ready with this:

Dora was so it was a monster if I got the , a bit disappointing with . If I drew the monster after reaching it’d be another 6000 from each player. But again felt weak, waited quietly, and Koshino eventually threw me the for 12,000 points.

So I won that game running away with it when I tightened back up my play again. What do you think my strategy was for the 3rd and 4th games? That’s right! LOSE!

Nothing big until the 1st South round hand, I got to tenpai (ready) with 7 Pairs and Dora but I was waiting for the Dora. I reached, tightening everyone else up. Oh except for Kitano who was dealer, ponned East, and won off me with a half flush for 5800. She followed that with a 5th draw reach for which I ran out of safe tiles after a few draws and again threw to her Simples, Peace, Dora Dora, Reach. Ouch.

Who knows if I would have won the hand waiting quietly. But it definitely shifts the focus from the dealer to me when I reach. Without the reach, Koshino might not have given Kitano her East, and the hand might have ended very differently.

My gigantic 2nd game win now erased I finished with a mighty plus 2 for the season, leaving me in 36th out of 43 in D1. I’m reminded of Charlie Brown, just wait til next year!

Now, let’s get lucky!!

Winning a Hand

garthe — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:00:44 +0000

Commentary from Garthe Nelson.

Sometimes your pair might not even look like a pair at all until you actually finish the hand. Consider a hand like the following:

Obviously, throwing the is fastest, making me one away from ready with quite a few options for Ready/tenpai. And this would indeed be a good choice if, for example, it’s the end of the game and I need only to win the hand or finish ready to win the game.

But think about the possibilities if I were to drop the pair of ‘s. Let’s say it’s the end of the game and I need an 8000 point hand to win the game. It’s going to take some pretty huge luck to get there with a Reach only hand. I’m much more likely to create such a hand by dropping the upper pair and going for at least Simples. 456, and even 345 and 567 Three Colored Runs are all within reach. In addition, I might end up with a 3 sided wait if I complete 3 runs in the other suits and my wait shape is . With just a little luck I have a good chance of running into an 8000 point hand where as going with the faster

So that’s a shape I want you to remember. It doesn’t look like a pair right now, but it could become one very quickly. And it’s potential could push you toward discarding a ready made pair in favor of a bigger possible reward.

Finally, I want us, me included, to shy away from saying this or that way of thinking is correct or incorrect. I was most recently admonished by Hiro Yamada for speaking of another player’s strategy in such a manner and of course he’s absolutely right. In the case below, thinking of (12) as a possible run is definitely not incorrect and it is definitely a loss and slowing down the hand if we were to draw the (3) after discarding (1). So thinking in that way is perhaps a “faster” way of thinking, whereas thinking of (2446) as two gut shots is perhaps a more “ambitious” way of thinking.

Now, let’s get lucky!

In Garthe’s Hands:

garthe — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:00:41 +0000

I won my first game of the study session last night. And then lost the last 3. It was perfectly representative of why my results have been so haphazard lately.

In the first game I played pretty tight, giving up many hands early because they just didn’t seem likely to win, and not reaching with my semi-expensive tenpai hands. For example, the last hand of the East round, Setokuma was dealer and I was in the East seat with this Ready hand (tenpai):

Dora was , making this hand at least 5200 points. There were lots if possibilities fir changing to an open-ended wait. Indeed, few players would reach here. Setokuma eventually threw my and I was suddenly only 1800 points behind Hisato in first place.

The next hand, Kojima-Sensei was dealer. After 10 draws, I got to be Ready with this hand:

Dora was so I’d obviously like to change at least that and/or the extra for to give me a full straight. Again, an obvious choice for not reaching, and this time I drew my winner. Almost as the tiles were still falling over when I showed my hand, Kojima was already reaching over to take the from my hand to say missed win reach!! Indeed that is his style and it has often paid off huge for him in many situations but Setokuma agreed that for me in this situation it was better to book the cheap win. We’ll come back to this in a second.

Two hands later, Setokuma had already reached when I got to ready with this hand:

Dora was and he had just discarded the last when he reached. It was going to be hard to change this to a better wait and I was still right behind Hisato. Maybe I could draw my and just give up with the ‘s if I drew something dangerous. Again, a no brainer non-reach…until he threw . Then I start thinking he probably doesn’t need either so now it IS a good reach!

WRONG!

But not necessarily wrong in that it would always be a bad play for all players. The exact point that Setokuma wanted to make was that given the way I’d played conservatively to get that far, it just didn’t make sense there to suddenly go on the offensive. If that were my game plan, then indeed I should have reached with the Missed Win earlier instead of taking the cheap win.

As it happened, I was lucky despite my mistake. The hand ended in a draw. The next and final hand Hisato ponned and then Dora , prompting me to give up immediately and Kojima to preserve his third place position with a chow and cheap 1300 points from Hisato!

That actually put Hisato the necessary 100 points behind me giving me the win! True to form, in the end I won by playing tight, despite my effort to throw the game away with a reckless reach toward the end.

The first hand of the next game, I was still some distance from my own half flush when I threw an obviously dangerous to Nakata’s full flush. It wasn’t just a 12,000 point hit. It was a torpedo that left me a ship without a rudder for the whole rest of the night.

I’m not saying tight play is always best or that loose play is always bad. I’m also certainly not saying that because I’d gotten lucky playing tight so far, that I would continue to get lucky that way. Heaven knows my feelings on the whole “tsuki” (rush of luck/bad luck) issue. But if I want to win playing several different styles of play, not only am I l going to have to be good at all those different styles, my timing is going to have to be perfect every time too.

I’m probably better off sticking to what has worked so far. Surely we’ve all heard, “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Half Flushes, Part 2

admin — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 15:00:19 +0000

If you’re in a point situation where you don’t really need to win the hand, Discard the 9 of characters here (or even the 4 of characters) and force your way to a half flush.
Aiming for a concealed reach hand with this hand is complicated enough, and the final score isn’t big either. Since it’s difficult to score a win already, do not use up all of the tiles in your hand. Here, deliberately discarding middle tiles early, along with calling a tile of your half flush suit from another player, is not a bad trap.
If you can draw a few bamboo tiles afterward, you might be able to actually complete a real half flush. Even if you don’t, you can put some threat and pressure on the player to your left. This is the most common type of “bluff” in Japanese mahjong. However, be careful. If after a few discards the shape of the hand is still not good, you cannot continue calling tiles, and you must store a good amount of safe tiles for defense purposes.

We have spoken about most of the necessary conditions for a half flush, in the next section we’ll be talking about how to handle specific situations.

Note: This ends the “beginner” part of this series of articles, and thus we will now be continuing with articles from the “intermediate” section.
———————————————————————————————————————–

Commentary from Garthe Nelson.

A Half Flush is worth more points than other hands because it’s harder to win.

Try not to slide past that point: it’s HARDER to win.

For that reason, I think a lot of strong players choose not to aim for this hand even when it’s a viable option. Or at least they don’t go for it straight off. Look at this hand:

It’s a pretty good candidate for a Half Flush, but I have seen a lot of players throw the in this sort of situation. The reason is that it will make other players much less suspicious to see those middle tiles in other suits come out of their hands after something in the Half Flush suit. Thus it might not be as hard as usual to win the hand because of the increased possibility that other players will throw useful tiles or even the winner.

If they get something in the other suits creating an open-ended wait, well, that’s the direction the hand went, and to continue pushing for the Flush is not likely a winning strategy.

I doubt they even feel like it’s such a loss if after throwing , it would have paired or even tripled up. Having thrown those other middle tiles early and then finally letting go of something in the flush suit, other players will be immediately tipped off. They’ll be careful with that suit and the value tiles too.

Really, the more I think about it, the less I recall seeing many Half Flush hands (besides mine) in our study sessions. I think strong players (in contrast to me) must assume that given the obviousness of the danger zone to other players, it just tends not to be worth it.

Hmmmm, I hope you learn as much reading this stuff as I do writing it.

Half Flushes, Part 1

admin — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:29:40 +0000

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. We also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.
From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/520.htm

Right now in Japanese mahjong, Half Flushes and Full Flushes are called “somete” (dyed hand). Along with Reach, All Simples and Value Tiles, it’s one of the four most important yaku/hand in Japanese mahjong.

Sure, a Half Flush is a 2 han (HP) yaku, relatively easy to complete, and it can be combined with value tiles. However, since it’s a yaku/hand easy to build, beginners really love to aim for it, so much as to try to go for it every hand…

Let’s view a few hands where beginners mistakenly aim for a full flush.

1) Half Flush Disease

I saw this starting hand in a game room in tenhou. At this time, the player in his dealer turn, unexpectedly discarded 5 of bamboos!
Was only able to see a characters or dots Half Flush? He may as well be mahjong short-sighted, he needs treatment.

Just think, there are three types of number tiles: characters, dots and bamboos, this means it’s possible to draw a character tile about once every three draws. Right now, you only have five character tiles, you need at least five more to aim for a Half Flush, this means it will take you about 15 discards. A round only has about 17 discards, do you still have time to win the hand?

With this hand, we cannot consider making a Half Flush, it’s okay to discard any of your guest wind tiles.

Generally speaking, you can consider a Half Flush if you have at least 8 tiles of the same suit or more.

2) Possibility for other yaku/hands
Of course, just having a lot of tiles in the same suit doesn’t guarantee that aiming for a Flush or Half Flush is a good idea.

Even though there are 10 dot tiles in this hand, no matter what go-around this is, we should discard 1-3 of dots.

This hand’s final shape should be Reach, All Simples, Peace, Double Run and not Full Flush. With Reach, it’s a guaranteed mangan (8,000 or 12,000pt) hand, and with a little luck it can go up to haneman (12,000 or 18,000pt).

On the other hand if you go for a Full Flush, in most cases it ends up being a mangan, there are not many chances for it to become haneman or more. Moreover, we only have three sets in dots, we need a fourth set don’t we?

This example also comes from the hand of a beginner, at that time he discarded the bamboos, he is as well short-sighted. Afterward, he picked up a pair of the guest wind North, and called the 8 of dots from the player across from him.

(Pung )
What remains is a tenpai (ready-hand) of 2000 points with a bad shape, there is a huge difference with discarding 1-3 of dots.

Another example

dora:

Look at this hand, many people may think, “Isn’t this the time to go for a full flush?” and a lot of them will be convinced and discard the 3 of bamboos. But in my opinion, even here we should discard North first.

In this hand too Half Flush is not the only thing we can aim for, if we discard North first we can have the following options:
a. Draw 3 of bamboos. The goal is Red Dragon and 2 dora or a Double Run and 2 or 3 dora.
b. Draw 2 or 4 of bamboos. If this happens we can pursue a concealed hand, Reach, a Double Run and a dora. Not bad.

If we discard 3-bams, we may have:
c. Draw North and end up with Red Dragon and a Half Flush or only a Half Flush.

There are many chances for situations a and b occurring (theoretically, the chances for a and c occurring are the same), and the point difference is also high, therefore discarding three of bamboos first is, in comparison to discarding North, inferior.

In reach mahjong there are many other roads besides the Half Fush. For beginners who want to improve, the most important point is enlarging your field of vision.
————————————————————————————
A word or two from Garthe:

Oh how I wish I could rain down my wisdom upon you as if I was a player immune to Half Flush’s half baked charms. Alas it’s not just beginners who mistakenly aim for it when there are better options. I go for it far too much and it is a sign of weak and lazy Mahjong that needs to be fixed.

Remember my comment on the last column, “mentanpin” (Japanese abbreviation for “Reach, Simples, Peace). The second hand shown is a prime example of why you should repeat that mantra 100 times before you go to sleep and again when you see these tiles in your hand.

While closed it is a 3 Hand Point (HP) hand, the majority of Half Flushes will require at least one chow or pung, dropping it down to 2 HP and making reach impossible. Add to that the fact that I’m probably discarding valuable tiles in the other suits making other players reluctant to discard those tiles I need to chow and pung from them. It just becomes a more and more difficult hand to win.

And for what reward? If I could make Peace one of my HP, it means the hand is still closed so Reach is still a possibility and there are the Half Flush’s 2 hand points made up for right there. Add to that the possibility of Concealed Self Draw, (First Turn Win and Hidden Dora if using those rules) and the possibility of winning the hand and it becoming a monster are much better than with the Half Flush.

Same with Dora out of suit. With one in my hand that I couldn’t use in my Half Flush, I need only one more to get 2 hand points again, getting me right back to where I probably am if I discard Dora and go for the flush. Similarly, if I can use Dora in a run and Reach, there are the two hand points made up for again already. Not to mention the dangers of discarding Dora, which other players are likely to want.

When going for Half Flush, we should have a good start in at least 3-4 of our final groups and and at least one or two of them should be Value tiles or use Dora to really make it worthwhile.

So as I drift off to sleep, I’m going to say it again a few times now, men-tan-pin, men-tan-pin, mentanpin, mentan….

Jenn’s Corner: Women’s League

jenn — Mon, 30 May 2011 12:15:48 +0000

Wow, it’s been a while since I wrote a proper Jenn’s Corner. I know the updates have been slower than I’d like, but thank you everyone for sticking through this with us. We’ve got a few projects going on that we can announce in the summer and I promise (again) that we’ll be updating more regularly here as well.

To get right into it, I jumped back on the horse last week, playing in the Women’s League 2011 season. I couldn’t play in Pro League because of health issues, but the Women’s League is only 5 times per year and I didn’t want to miss out on it.
It felt good to be back on the table and I hadn’t touched any tiles for nearly 3 months, so to be honest I was nervous at first. It took a couple of hands, but everything came back and it was like I had never left. It was a rush.

One thing I can say is that no matter how long I play or don’t play mahjong, when I sit at the table the feeling never changes. I’m happy to be there. I hate when my opponents beat me. I love to win hands, even small ones. I love to win bigger hands even more. I love this game and it felt great to be back.

I have to say I enjoyed playing with the people at my table this round. There were 2 new players (whom I have to say were very sweet and also very generous) and one player, Makoto Tenne (past Rookie Cup winner) that has been around just a bit longer than Garthe and I.

With the 2 new players and a few long breaks in between games (I had to get away from the smoke at the table everytime), we ended up as the last table to finish by a long shot. I think we were out of there at least 30 minutes after the people before us. That made my last game really hard. My endurance is definitely lacking after the long break.

There were not any special hands that stood out. I ended up with a negative 2 or so, putting me in 22nd place out of 41, but there are a lot of people around the 0 mark, so there’s still lots of opportunity to move up. Only 5 move up to A-League this year and there’s a good chance a number of players will be moving down next year, so I’ll have to play well and make sure to make it to every session (I’ve missed at least one session every year until now).

This year I just want to work on my game. I’m not worried about results. I’ll improve my game this year and let those results show next year.

Yaku (Hand Points)

admin — Sat, 21 May 2011 15:29:17 +0000

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. We also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.
“The Yaku (HP) of Reach Mahjong”

From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/518.htm

(Attention, reader: these series of articles are about Yaku (HP) and their characteristics, it is assumed that the reader already knows the Yaku (HP) of reach mahjong. If you don’t know them learn them first)

Reach mahjong has about 37 types of Yaku (HP) (not including dora), the frequence in which they occur and the tiles they require are not the same. Just like a “Heaven Blessing” hand, all you need is good luck and no skill. -laughs-

Beginners tend to think it’s too troublesome to remember all Yaku (HP), however just learning the basic most recurrent ones will already leave a good effect. Below, there is a list of Yaku (HP) in reach mahjong with an occurrence rate of above 2%

(Occurrence rate in parenthesis and you can find the original stats here http://www2.odn.ne.jp/~cbm15900/html/y99.html )

1 Reach (45.1%)
2 Value Tiles (40%)
3 All Simples (21.4%)
4 Peace (19.9%)
5 Concealed Self Draw (17.6%)
6 One Shot (ippatsu/First-turn Win) (10.2%)
7 Half Flush (6.31%)
8 Double-Run (4.75%)
9 All Pungs (3.92%)
10 Three Colored Runs (3.46%)
11 Seven Pairs (2.52%)
.
.
.
14 Full Flush(0.94%)
…
19 Self-Draw after a kong (quad) (0.28%)
…
27 Thirteen Orphans (0.043%)
…
37 Heaven Blessing (about 330 thousandths)

Among all Yaku (HP), only one third is above an occurrence rate of 2% just learning these, you’ll be able to endure a lot of games. You don’t need to invest time learning the other rarer ones.

The above Yaku (HP) can be further divided in categories.

A. Reach, Concealed Self Draw, Ippatsu (first turn win): All this hand needs is to get to a concealed a ready, the requirement is tile efficiency, we’ve talked about it in general terms already.

B. Peace, Double-Runs: They both need to be concealed, therefore tile efficiency is also required. However, since you can’t use your opponent’s tiles for these two Yaku (HP), it’s a little hard.

C. All Simples: The required element to attack calling tiles, we’ll spend a few pages introducing this one later on.

D. Half Flush: The Yaku (HP) most aimed for by beginners, however since many people are confused about it, we’ll have a detailed explanation about it next time.

E. All Pungs, Seven Pairs: Both Yaku (HP) are similar, beginners usually don’t know whether to go for seven pairs or all pungs. The data belows comes from 6 months of tenhou, statistics on the occurrence of all pungs:
General room: 4.43%
Dan room: 3.09%
Higher Dan room: 2.07%
Phoenix room: 1.48%
The better the players are, the less they rely on all pungs. What is the reason after all? We will also be explaining this one in detail.

F. Value Tiles: An extremely high occurrence rate, but compared to Half Flush, there is less space for confusion.

G. Three Colored Runs: A very frequent high scoring Yaku (HP).

From this article onwards, we will be focusing on these Yaku (HP).
———————————————————————————————-
Garthe’s Comments:
When I tell people here I’m a professional mahjong player, the inevitable guffaws of disbelief are often followed by whatever tidbits of mahjong jargon they’ve managed to acquire from somewhere. “Ron! Chi! Tsumo!” just to show that they know as much about mahjong as me.

Another favorite is “Mentanpin!” and there’s a reason that it’s half of what people who know 2 words of mahjong know.

Looking at the list again look at which of the hands are most frequent and still not mutually exclusive: Reach (men from menzenreach in Japanese), Simples (tan from tanyao), Peace (pin from pinfu).

That’s three hand points blam! And you’re well on way to getting an 8000 point hand!

While you’re still learning, making the base of your game mentanpin without worrying too much about the other hand points will still net you some pretty good results.

One difference between my stats and the ones listed there interested me. My rate of Concealed Self Draw is 21%, considerably higher than the rate from Tenhou. I don’t want to say I must be really good, but I’m afraid I have to. And it’s another hand point that fits nicely with the aforementioned mentanpin combo. Making it another reason to make the effort to keep your hand concealed.

So in the beginning while it’s a good idea not to focus too much attention in the hands with less than 2% frequency, you can narrow it down even further to those around 20% and above and still play a pretty successful game.

Important complex shapes (Part-2)

admin — Fri, 06 May 2011 15:43:29 +0000

Important complex shapes (part-1)

admin — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:00:44 +0000

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. This time we also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.
From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/506.htm

In the last article we mentioned incomplete sets (taatsu), that were easily distinguishable simple shapes. This time we will explain complex shapes.

1. 4556 shape
A very common mistake seen in beginners is that they treat this shape as “a 456 run + a lone 5″,and they discard this 5 prematurely.
In reality, this should be treated as two 45+56 open ended waits, it can accept a 3, 4, 6 and 7, and there is also a chance for a double-run (iipeikou). This is a very valuable shape in reach mahjong. Whenever I get this shape in my hand, it is hard for even me to discard it.

2. 4567 shape
For the same reason, you must look at the shape like 45+67 open waits. This shape has a lot of evolution: you can draw 5 or 6 and form 1 meld+open wait, draw 3 or 8 and make a three sided wait, or draw 4 or 7 to have 1 pair+1 meld. Its value isn’t any lower than that of the 4556 shape.

3. 4456 shape
This is 1 pair+ a 56 open ended wait, so it can use quite a few tiles, however since it doesn’t have that many opportunities to be completed, it isn’t exactly the best open ended wait, its value falls a little short to the shapes mentioned before, however, it is still considered a good shape.

4. 3567 shape
This is a shape that even intermediate players forget sometimes. In the same way, we can think of this shape as two 35+67 shapes. It can connect with 1,2,3,4,5,8: six types, among them, drawing 1,5,8 leaves us with a gut-shot wait, so its value is lower than that of 4456.

5. 4445 shape
If you have played mahjong you are probably familiar with this shape, this is the most common three sided wait ready shape. But when the hand is at a point where it’s not yet ready, the value of this shape is trivial.
This shape can’t give you two melds, at most you can get 1 pair+ 1 meld. What you must remember is, what you need to go out is 4 melds, and you only require 1 pair (head), therefore your need for melds is far higher than your need for pairs. In reality, when your hand has too many pairs, the 5 in this shape is in many cases a useless tile.

From Garthe: Both 4556 and 4567 are shapes whose value it may take some time to fully appreciate. It is counter intuitive for most players to look at these as more valuable than end wait or closed wait incomplete set (taatsu) because after all, that 89 shape only needs one more tile to become a finished run whereas these 4 tile groups are going to need 2 more tiles. The key is indeed to think of them as two open ended waits rather than a completed group plus a loner. Thus in many situations, even most perhaps, I will discard especially end waits first and keep these later, even when it actually takes my hand further from ready.

For example, let’s say I have 124556 in my hand. I often discard the 2 and 1, keeping the 5. Why? Well, if I keep the 12 I’m only ecstatic if I later draw the 3 (4 possible tiles) and I’m disappointed if I draw the 46 or 7(10 possible tiles). Of course, I’m much happier with the open ended waits I get from drawing any of 467. And I’m not even really disappointed if I do draw the 3 later as there’s a good chance I’ve increased the value of my hand by adding Peace and Simples as hand points. I may have slowed the hand down a bit but not without benefit.

Finally, the open ended waits make the hand much more reachable than it would be if the final taatsu wait is on something like a 12 side-wait. And never forget, we play REACH mahjong. We want to Reach!!!

Beginner Tile Efficiency: Incomplete Set (Taatsu) Theory

admin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:00:24 +0000

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. This time we also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.

After we deal with the starting hand, we can assume all useless tiles have been taken care of. If the remaining tiles are not melds, we can divide them in the next three types:

1. Incomplete Sets (Taatsu): pre-shapes consisting of linked tiles, such as 2-3 or 2-4 which will eventually form a meld
2. Isolated tiles: Letter and number tiles that are alone
3. Pairs: Two of the same tiles paired up

The following text may explain the issues with Incomplete Sets/taatsu.

Types of Incomplete Sets/Taatsu
Taatsu may be open-ended (2-3), center-closed (2-4) or edge-closed (1-2), making it three types (namely open-ended (ryanmen), gut-shot (kanchan) and side waits (penchan)). Edge-closed shapes have the lowest value, then comes center-closed shapes, and open-ended shapes are the best. Therefore when you must abandon an incomplete set/taatsu, you should start by discarding the set with the lowest value.

In this hand what we should naturally discard is .

Now, when you must choose between two shapes of the same type, you must think about which one has the most chances of becoming good shape (i.e. open-ended).

Under these circumstances, we have two candidates: and . In appearance both the and 35 of dots are closed waits, but in reality there is a difference: can become open-ended with either the or , but , on the other hand, will become an edge-wait if you draw . Therefore the functionality of 2-4 is relatively lower to that of 3-5. To anticipate the opportunity of drawing , discard the first.

Therefore beginners should incorporate this sequence of values:
Listed as least valuable to most valuable
4. Edge waits (12, 89)
3. Closed Waits (13, 79)
2. Closed Waits (24, 68)
1. Open-ended Waits

From Garthe: The article concludes by saying beginning level players should use these guidelines as a way to decide which Incomplete Sets/taatsu to discard first when there are too many potential groups in the hand. In fact, a lot of advanced players would benefit from reviewing and reincorporating these guidelines back into their games as well.

Of course there will be times when we will want to choose an edge wait or closed wait over what might be a better closed or even open wait, e.g., we’re going for an Outside Hand or 3 Colored Runs, the bad wait uses Dora, etc. The reason the above is a good strategy “for the new guys” is that as a new player it’s hard to have a good feel for when the benefit of going for that more difficult Incomplete Sets/taatsu truly outweighs the benefits of going for the most likely one. These guidelines help you choose the most winnable sets and thus, by extension, the most-likely-to-get-you-to-ready-first. And even in Reach mahjong, the benefit of being the first to ready cannot be overstated, especially when hidden Dora and First Turn wins are allowed. Many a winning hand has been missed because some “advanced” player tried to get tricky and go for a big hand instead of a fast one. This is often a double edged sword as he not only missed the win, but may have allowed time for a bigger hand to catch up and win instead.

So caveat even for us know-it-alls, we ignore these guidelines at our peril. Choose wisely!

Introducing Puyo!

admin — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 12:00:01 +0000

For the last year I have had the privilege of writing a regular column with Kelvin “Puyo” Ng, from Hong Kong, about mahjong in a Macau-based magazine called World Gaming Magazine. Puyo and I are both Reach-based mahjong players, but we’ve collaborated to broaden our coverage, emphasizing on Chinese-based rules as well. Puyo is a regular Mahjong Fight Club player and keeps a blog in Chinese about Japanese mahjong. Puyo has worked as a senior official at the World Series of Mahjong and was a member of the RM.com/WGM team at the 2010 event.
One of our avid readers, xKime, has volunteered to translate Puyo’s blog so that our English audience can enjoy this expert’s insight. Twice a month we will introduce one of Puyo’s blogs. This first one is an introduction in tile efficiency. So enjoy and if there’s a subject you’d like more info on e-mail us and maybe Puyo will oblige!

Introduction to Tile Efficiency

This is the first one of the series on articles for beginner-intermediate players. If you already have an idea of what tile efficiency is, feel free to skip right to the theory part.

[It's possible] that anyone reading this has played Hong Kong mahjong or Taiwanese mahjong before, but the need for tile efficiency in reach mahjong is relatively a lot higher than in those two. Therefore after learning the rules, you need to work on your tile efficiency skills so that you can progress. I will explain why tile efficiency is so important in reach mahjong, and explain reach mahjong’s characteristics at the same time.

Reach mahjong is about placing, not about points
Beginning players must remember, mahjong is about placing, not about points. In reach mahjong, your placing is calculated at the end of every East-Only game or East-South game. Your level of achievement is measured by the average position that you seize at the end of every game. An East-Only game only has four rounds, although your winning tile may not show up in the first place, regardless of that, if you don’t win a single hand it is assured you can’t win. In Hong Kong mahjong you can make big hands most of the rounds, winning one big hand will grant you an income just about as good as winning 10 smaller hands, but this isn’t possible in Reach mahjong: If you can’t complete one single hand in many East-Only games, you are unavoidably going to lose painfully.

The importance of a concealed hand
Look at the tiles in Reach mahjong, and you may discover the importance of a concealed hand. Just getting to a concealed Ready (tempai) already allows you to Reach: it satisfies the requirement of one han from yaku (one Hand Point minimum) and also gives you access to the power of the hidden lucky dragons (dora). Also, Reach mahjong has a few yaku (Hands) that only apply to a concealed hand, or others that are worth more when concealed.

For a concealed hand, you are depending fully on the tiles you draw. You are depending on very few tiles, so a good tile efficiency will increase the number of opportunities for you to incorporate tiles to your hand as much as possible, its importance is far higher than in Taiwanese mahjong where you can just pung to your heart’s content.

Reach mahjong’s scoring system
Reach mahjong’s scoring system is very unique: Between 1~4 han (Hand Point) hands, the points are pretty much doubled each step, but when it comes to 5 han (HP) and more it’s a complete different deal. For example, 5 han (HP) is a mangan hand (8000 for non-dealer, 12,000 for dealer), one han (HP) more and it’s a haneman (12,000 for non-dealer, 18,000 for dealer) and it becomes a 50% point increase. When you have a 6 han (HP) hand, adding one more han (HP) doesn’t change anything.

In Hong Kong mahjong, the value of 8 han (HP) is eight times as much as that of 5 han (HP). In Reach mahjong it’s only worth double. Therefore in reach mahjong, it is only on very few occasions you should ever aim for really big hands, because the tile efficiency of such hands is really low. Playing with three red 5’s, everyone has in average about 2 dora. Even just when you win with 3-4 han (HP), this phenomenon becomes evident.

Because there are so many dora, 3-4 han (HP) hands aren’t too hard, there are a lot of chances to win hands, and big hands may just come on their own. What you want to promote is your Win Percentage. For that you need good tile efficiency.

Well, enough chit-chat, we’ll enter the subject in the next part.

Beginner Tile Efficiency
(From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/504.htm)

Tile efficiency allows you to win a hand in the shortest time possible. In Japanese Mahjong, to be the first one to go out means to be the first one to complete “four groups/melds and a pair of tiles (head).” Therefore, since tile efficiency is a consideration of this, first you discard tiles that have the lowest chances of becoming melds, and you promote your opportunities to complete melds as much as possible.

Tile efficiency is actually already useful from the time you receive your starting hand.

With this ordinary starting hand, how would you proceed?

Order of Priority for Discards
This tile efficiency is pretty simple; just discard the most useless tiles. What are the most useless tiles? Of course, eliminate lone guest wind tiles first (wind tiles without value), as you can’t use them to complete runs, all you can do is draw another one to get a pair (and later on a set), hence their value is very low. What you must pay attention to is that Yaku-Tiles/Value Tiles (Round/Seat wind, Dragon tiles) are a whole different deal. That’s because you can pung them and easily clear the 1 han yaku (hand point) requirement. After that, you can freely call other people’s tiles. That’s why their value is far higher than guest wind tiles.

After lone guest wind tiles, next is the lone 1 and 9 terminal tiles. That’s because they unavoidably become a closed central wait or edge wait. However, in the above hand, the value of the 1 of dots is lower than that of the 9 of dots, and the reason is we already have a 4 of dots too. Because even if you discard 1 of dots and then draw a 2 or a 3, you can still use them with the 4 of dots already existing in the hand and it won’t constitute a loss. On the other hand, if you discard 9 of dots, the 7 and 8 become a complete backfire. In this example, because we have a 4 of dots, the value of the 1 of dots falls to the same as guest wind tiles.

To put it simply, the order of unneeded tiles in the early stage of the game is as follows:
1. Lone guest wind tiles. 1s and 9s when you have a 4 or 6 respectively.
2. Lone 1s and 9s.
3. Lone yaku-tiles/Value Tiles.
4. Lone 2s and 8s.
5. Lone tiles from 3 to 7 and edge waits.
(Note: The order of points 3 to 5 may vary according to the situation and hand)

Let’s bring up another example.

1 of dots is the least useful of tiles, discard it first. This hand cannot be said to have a good shape so we may need to pung the red dragon. Discarding the red dragon is a bad move.

Discarding is correct. Because already constitute a meld, even though we do have a , this can be considered a lone 1-9.

Why is s/he playing?

garthe — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:00:59 +0000

Man have I played a lot of mahjong lately. And actually, results on the whole haven’t been so bad recently too. I was feeling pretty good about my play until I ran into the same comment a couple times, once directed to me, once to someone else, and both with unveiled disgust for their target. It has definitely been food for thought.

On the plane back to America for Christmas I had the good fortune to sit next to the sweetest little grandma returning from an adventure in Viet Nam. In addition to fretting about my marriage status (mothers will be mothers won’t they) she was really taken with my occupation, game player, and we got to talking about games and her game of choice, Bridge. Her group of friends has been getting together to play their game for who can imagine how long now, but there is a good friend in that group whose play she has never ever liked because “She just wants to win.” (Look of disdain)

Next instance, when I got back to Japan, some old friends invited me to play an all nighter. It was the first in a while with these guys as the last time we played I really beat the crap out of them; they didn’t seem to have had a very good time. I was starting to go on the rampage again when one game I woke up with this hand as dealer in the East round:

Dora was (twice!) and the one in my hand was red. One thing about the game these guys like to play, it’s often referred to as “inflation mahjong” in Japan as the rules they use tend to create huge hands. First of all, there are two red fives in each suit. Also, when we roll the dice doubles means we flip over two tiles for dora and any combination of 1′s and 6′s means 3 dora! Finally, they also like “wa-re-me” which means that the person whose wall is split first at the beginning of the hand, pays or receives double what they would normally for that hand. So because I rolled doubles and the fact that two turned up as dora indicators, I actually started with 3 dora in just that one tile. I ponned the east, chied and was now waiting for another dora for a 12,000 point hand. My friends were gossiping away about work and this and that when one of them dropped the other red ! Ooops! Because it was also red that made 4 dora for 18,000! Oh but actually he was the “wareme” for that hand so actually it was 36,000! TKO! The other gossiper glared at me in contempt and scoffed, “You just don’t get it. You’re always just playing to win.”

In both situations, my immediate reaction was to ask incredulously, “What are YOU playing for?!” In a game where the only option besides winning is not winning, are they really playing to lose?

Alright, I know in a lot of games, people are just playing to have fun and the winning and losing is secondary to the chance to hang out with friends. I just can’t stand losing to that guy because I know that in truth, he really wants to win too, evidenced by how different the conversation is when he goes on a run and wins several games in a row. He is an even worse loser than I and his whines just make me want to crush him all the more. Still to keep myself in their game, I probably need to soften up a bit, and not go for their jugulars every chance I get.

But what I found more interesting was the continuing conversation with Grandma. Not sure if I have the bridge strategy exactly right, but what she really disliked seemed to be the fact that her friend liked to bid no-trump because it took fewer tricks to win that way. And in turn, nothing gave her more pleasure than to stop her friend from trying to win that way. And by extension, win her OWN way.

Her comment about winning is also not exactly to her point either, which is more about the way her friend is winning, and the way she likes to win herself. And that I think is something that is a lot more interesting to think about. Her entertainment comes not just from winning, but the way she wins.

If Grandma’s friend knows Grandma thinks and thus plays that way, that is very valuable information she can use to her advantage when she decides to play that way, or even when she decides to play another way, despite Grandma’s expectation of that same style of play.

A similar analogy in Hold ‘em would be that guy who always wants to win on the river by drawing out his flush or straight and will call any bet you make on the turn, no matter how bad the odds. In mahjong, there are people who like knock out punches only, and despite long odds go for limit hands every chance they get. My red 5 throwing buddy from above goes for 13 Orphans whenever he has 8 or even 7 tiles for it in his starting hand. And he is similarly (to Grandma) disgusted when I win that hand and stop him with a no reach peace only hand.

Something to think about as we join our next game with friends, at work, or walking off the street into a cash game, look across the table and ask yourself, “why is that guy in this game?” It will help us decide not only how to win, but whether to win as well.

Jenn’s Corner: Mahjong in 2011

jenn — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:00:42 +0000

I have played live mahjong exactly 3 times so far this year. I’m on my way to play Mahjong Fight Club now (literally as soon as I post this for tomorrow’s publishing), but games are very different than playing live. So far I’ve played at League (4 games), at North-Kanto League (4 games) and at the make-up session I played for North-Kanto League. Basically I went from really crappy to crappy to not bad at all.

My league score was -28, which normally wouldn’t be a big swing, but the scores are all close in D1 this session and that pushed me down about 10 spots, putting me in danger of dropping down a league next session. I had a penalty for missing a session for a job I couldn’t get out of and it’s almost impossible to come back from a -50 point blow. Garthe is at the bottom too and we consoled ourselves with a meal of boneless chicken wings and fried pickles at the new Hooters in Akasaka.

In North-Kanto I did bad in the make-up session. I felt like I couldn’t do anything. I was at the table with Kaori Shimizu and she wins a lot. With big hands. I did my best to conserve my losses and took a -20 hit. That still kept me at about 75 points for the league with 2 more sessions to go.

The next day I was with 3 young players and boy did they like the word “Reach!” I took a small hit in the first game, frustrated at my lack of winning hands and ready to tape the mouth shut of the next player that declared reach. I played my small game (the big hands just weren’t coming) and managed to get a positive score. The 3rd game was the worst. I was in first place and the player across from me self-drew every hand under the sun as dealer. He was up to over 50,000 points. Then, my turn as dealer, I started with this hand:

The player to my right threw 白 right away and I snatched it up. I was tilting a bit and I wasn’t going to let anything get by. Next he discarded 四 and I snatched that up too. I drew 二 myself the next hand and then the player across from me discarded N. That left me waiting for 一 and 二 and the player to my right threw it almost right away. Suddenly I was up 18,000 points from before and got another shot at dealer. This is not a recommended strategy. I was tilting and desperate, 2 terrible traits of a losing mahjong player.

In the end I won that game and posted a small positive in the last game for a total score of +47 for the day. I had to calculate the total 3 times before I believed it. The entire day I felt like I was struggling and then I ended up with the most points at my table. I felt a lot better about my game after that and this week I can’t wait to get more games in. I have lots of catching up to do with MFC, so if you’re in Japan or Hong Kong, look for me online! I’ll be showing up on Ron2 and Mahjong Club as well, so join me from the rest of the world too.

Continue winning! Blech!

garthe — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:00:15 +0000

What? Continuing to win is a bad thing? No. But needing to win to continue is. Why does Garthe hate everything, you may ask. I don’t. Name one thing, you order. Tenpai-renchan! I say.

OK, I see we’re going to have to make an addition to our glossary, and thus come up with some English equivalents of these two rule styles. “Tenpai,” you may remember, means for a hand to be ready. The word you may not know yet is “renchan” which means “continue”. So “tenpai-renchan” means that the dealer gets to continue his turn as dealer if he wins the hand or even if the hand ends in a draw but he finishes with a ready hand. The counterpart to that concept is “agari-renchan”, “agari” meaning a win. Thus, in this situation the dealer is only allowed to continue his turn as dealer if he wins the hand.

I hate “agari-renchan.” I suppose it could just be similar to why I probably like Japanese Mahjong better than Chinese or American, i.e. because it’s what I first learned to play. However, I do think it’s one of the things that makes Japanese Mahjong more interesting. One of the things that makes some players stronger than others is a strange ability to hold on to their turn as dealer. It’s obviously much more difficult to continue that turn if one has to actually win the hand to continue.

How about an example. My turn as dealer in the 10 steps tournament, dora was , I reached on the 5th draw with this hand:

No hand points, no dora, crappy wait, what’s so special about this hand that warrants a reach? It was my turn as dealer. and a dealer reach is scary.

In fact, because of that hand, I was able to continue my turn as dealer 3 more hands. One of them I did the same thing here, one I got to ready on the last draw, and the last I finally won to win some bigger points and get back the reach sticks I’d risked on the previous hands. I ended up getting 9000 points just on finishing ready! If agari-renchan were the norm there, I would have gotten 3000 minus my reach stick, and my streak would have ended right as it began.

As a non-dealer, the obvious choice with agari-renchan is to avoid clashes with the dealer. In fact, that’s not a bad strategy in tenpai-renchan games also, which is why mahjong parlors don’t like it so much. Players will sit around and play defense all day, games take longer, and they can’t collect as many game fees.

I like the fact that Reach Mahjong rules tend to make defense more strategically viable than in Chinese Mahjong, but this is for all the wrong reasons. This is a huge advantage for whoever has the lead, especially if it’s by enough to still win without finishing ready. Players with earlier turns as dealer have a bigger advantage as they have the first chance to build leads. Even with a turn as dealer remaining, it’s going to be difficult to make any substantial comebacks. Defense is good, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of totally discouraging aggressive play.

Alright, this rule is not going to go away, so I guess it’s time to think about how to adjust strategy to cope with it. As dealer it is our chance to make points not only because of the continuation but because our hands are worth 50% more than normal. That means that faster cheaper hands are probably going to benefit us more than choosing the slower but more expensive ones. We want to choose hands that will be easily winnable, not necessarily expensive.

However, when we do wake up with a monster we still want to win the hand of course, so what do we do? Well we certainly don’t want to call attention to ourselves by reaching. Take this hand I had yesterday in the first hand of the game:

Dora was , I got to ready on the 7th draw. I had even thrown early so as to make my winner seem safe. Reach? Absolutely not!!! True, reach makes the hand a certain 18,000 points and if I draw the winner on my next draw or there’s a hidden dora it’s suddenly worth 24,000! But actually 12,000 points is still a lot of points too and with those points, I took the early lead, played defense the rest of the game, and won all the strength of that very first hand.

So if you do find yourself with the misfortune of playing agari-renchan, remember to slow your game down. Not only is there more benefit to playing defense as a non-dealer, but you will also probably benefit by not playing so aggressively as dealer too.

Jenn’s Corner: Waste of Time

jenn — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 12:00:03 +0000

OK, time is moving way too fast. There are too many deadlines, too many tournaments, too much gaming and testing, too many updates and not enough time in any day of the week. Not to mention handling our own homes and lives, if you can imagine that those things even exist.

My days have been spent the last 2 and a half weeks working non-stop. Garthe and I spent the Macau Poker Cup in Macau, coming back straight to media events, translation deadlines and, of course, Mahjong Fight Club. Not to mention North Kanto League, the OUI qualifier and our normal study sessions. Unfortunately we’ve not had nearly enough time to do all of the things we want to, namely, podcasts.

That’s all changing this week, though. Lately the more time I spend away from Mahjong, the more I feel like I’m wasting my time. I should be at study sessions, I should be playing casino-style at the parlors and I should be calling up people for sets. In my off-time I should be playing MFC. Well, at least I’m doing the last thing on that list…

So today I’m changing all of that. I got up earlier, the laundry is going, the dogs are walked and before I go anywhere, ReachMahjong.com is getting updated. We have a podcast scheduled for tomorrow and for the rest of the day/night I’ll be playing Mahjong, visiting poker rooms, selling calendars (YES! The 2011 JPML calendars are on sale now~ If there’s interest in the forums, I’ll put them on MahjongMart again) and then wake up to do it all again tomorrow. Tuesday I have a long-awaited guest job and I finally get to put my qi-pao (china dress) back to use.

I really haven’t found a good way yet to balance my Mahjong life and my personal life. I want to spend all day with my puppies, I want to play Mahjong all day, I want to attend, cover and sometimes play in poker events and I really don’t want to do anything else. This makes any private relationships pretty difficult. Luckily I’ve got other degenerates like Garthe to keep me company.

If anyone has a better idea at keeping a realistic schedule and getting enough Mahjong hours in, I’d love to hear it. See you on the forums!

Who are you fooling?

garthe — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:00:43 +0000

This is part of my continuing series on dumbing my play back down because I’ve gotten so good I can’t stop winning any more. Ok, of course the problem is that my play has gotten so smart I can’t win at all anymore. There are a lot of tricks we learn along the way to help us win games in this situation or that. But it’s easy to trick yourself right out of winning if you overuse them.

Sometimes, in fact probably even most of the times, it’s going to be best to simply go with the option that gives you the most options. Jenn pointed out this trend in my recent choices of strategy, that I’m often trying to be too tricky instead of using this obvious strategy. Let’s look at a few of my mishaps.

In the example Jenn was watching it was toward the end of the hand, I had ponned the Green Dragon and dora was the . I had this left in my hand.

I drew to get to ready so the decision was then what to wait for. There were already 2 , 1 each、and no on the board. I dropped the to leave me waiting for of which there were actually only 4 left. I reasoned that with all the ’s being used, would be difficult for other players to use (logic which works equally well for , by the way), and my discard would actually help bring it out. Lo and behold what actually came out was the . Had I thrown the , to wait for, of which there were still 6 tiles out, I would have won the hand. Had I taken the most tiles available option instead of trying to be tricky, I would have won the hand.

Another egregious error: last hand of the game I needed 2000 points to overtake first, dora was　, I had this after 5 draws

When I drew another , I dropped the hoping that I would get something nice around the and make Simples my hand point. What did come a couple draws later was the , which would have made me ready with a Peace hand. I did draw a to finally make me ready, but the never came and the hand ended with both me and first place ready, and me remaining in second place.

My last example is one where I again made the wrong choice for what eventually came, but at least maybe the decision was more debatable this time. Let’s see what you think. In the 3rd hand of the East round, I was in the West seat, dora was East, and I had this:

At this point, 7th draw, I drew another . There was one each of the already out on the board and no . I dropped the thinking I could pon either of the Winds (4 tiles remaining) if someone threw them. Of course, what should come on the 10th draw but which would have made me ready and I could have reached. I chose to wait for 4 tiles instead of 6 which were still remaining in the wait.

What would you have done?

I think arguments could be made here for both answers but what tips me back in favor of going for the most tiles available option is a salient comment Jenn made about the first example I made. In my defense I had chirped back that someone might throw the 9 because I threw the 6. She pointed out that when I play that way, I’m depending on someone else to make a mistake for me to win.

In general that is just not going to be a winning strategy. Certainly there will be times when you can win on another player’s mistake, you may even need to depend on it sometimes. But when you have options, it’s probably best for you to choose your best option rather than hope that your opponent chooses it for you.

Jenn’s Corner: Other Games

jenn — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:00:22 +0000

As I write this, Garthe is on his way to Macau for a poker tournament. I’ll be joining him shortly, although I’ll mostly be covering the event and working, not playing. On the other hand, if I have time, I’ll definitely jump at the chance to play a few hands in the cash games and maybe even the ladies’ event.

As a mahjong pro, it’s important to keep your game up. This doesn’t mean just practicing mahjong all the time. Nearly any game you play is going to help your mahjong game. Card games like poker, rummy, even memory games are going to make you a better player. Although there are a number of mahjong players that don’t like gambling, I have yet to find a mahjong player that doesn’t appreciate other games.

The biggest difference between mahjong and poker is folding hands. In poker you fold your hand and you’re no longer at risk, while in mahjong you have to continue reading your opponents, even after giving up your own hand. At the poker table, this is a time you want to develop skills that will help you in both games, a luxury you don’t have in mahjong.

Reading movements and tendencies in your opponents is just as important in both games, but poker is where you’re going to have a better chance at developing these skills. This is also one of my biggest challenges in all games. Once you throw away your cards, watch your opponents like a hawk and take everything in. At first it won’t mean much, but as you practice and get used to watching for things you’ll pick up more and more, sometimes without even realizing it. Personally, when I drop my hand, I lose interest and look at my phone, my ipod, whatever I can to think about something besides the games. Don’t do this.

Even if you don’t have a chance to play a lot of live poker, during mahjong your best chance to watch your opponent is going to be after you’ve declared Reach If you’re like me and stop watching the board after reaching, rethink your game. If you play mostly online, a good way to force yourself to pay attention is by taking off the “auto-win” button. Notice what other players are throwing and if you can, look at their hand afterwards. Usually you can tell by their discards if they are folding or not, what they are going for, and sometimes even their level of play.

Mahjong is a four player game and the winners are going to be the ones that notice things the other players don’t pick up on. When you’re at the table and even when you’re not, watch, watch, watch. You’ll be surprised at how fast your game and your understanding of the game improves after you gain these observation skills.

Jenn’s Corner: Out of Practice

jenn — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:00:17 +0000

I have to play mahjong everyday to keep my game up. When I had the parlor last year, I was playing about 8 hours of real mahjong everyday. My game was better then than it has ever been. Lately I’ve been playing real mahjong once or twice a week, I play Mahjong Fight Club between 2 and 5 times per week, and I play online on Ron2 and Mahjong Club. It feels like I never play.

Playing live mahjong and playing online is completely different for me. I think playing online is great for practicing the basics, trying out strategies and reviewing games, but for me online games are the most difficult to concentrate on. At the arcade there are loads of games surrounding the MFC machines and tons of noise. I like to wear my noise-cancelling headphones and play music or podcasts while I play… yet another distraction. At home there are pets all over the place and TV shows to watch, making it near-impossible to concentrate on online games.

When I’m at a mahjong parlor, either playing in league, playing free or playing a set, I can concentrate on the tiles. Everything disappears around me and things on the table make sense. That doesn’t mean I’m always winning, but I’m always thinking and always analyzing. That’s the key to improving your game.

The best players I know are always thinking while they play. They think about their hands, their opponents’ hands, the board and even the remaining wall, all at the same time. When we’re at study sessions, players always want to know what the other players drew to make them Ready (tempai). On the other hand there are a lot of players that think too hard about the game too.

There are lots of easy decisions in mahjong, but once you start thinking about the game, it’s easy to make every decision a hard one and over-analyze each move. Here’s a common one:

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Yeah, you can see 3-Color Runs (sanshoku) in this hand, but there are no guarantees. In most situations a 2d-4d discard is the right choice here and there isn’t really much to think about. If you pull a 3d on the next discard, you will be disappointed, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. In Japanese that’s called “Ura-me,” a backfire. In most cases you’re going to pull something that makes your hand Ready (tempai) with a good or even a great wait.

Practicing mahjong is important and for most people, playing everyday is the best recipe for success. The most important part of improving is thinking about and analyzing your games while you play and after the games, but make sure you’re thinking logically and realistically, don’t beat yourself up over correct choices that go wrong, those are the moves you need to forget. Beat yourself up when you do something silly or discard without thinking. Make sure you come practice with me on Ron2 and Mahjong Club too!

Final Destination?

garthe — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 18:40:01 +0000

Sometimes when my game is a little bit off and I stop and think about why I’ve been losing lately instead of being my normal non-stop winning self, one of the things I find is that I’ve been over-reaching, pun executed!

In fact, there are lots of reasons a Reach may or may not be warranted, which I may cover in my next column. The one I want to look at right now is that the shape of the hand right now is just not the final Reach-able shape.

In the second to last hand of a game, I was out of first place by 3600 points. I got to ready on the 7th draw with this hand:

Dora was and my was a red dora. So if I reach and draw my winner (1000/2000) or someone throws it and I get hidden dora (5200)I jump nicely into first place. Or if I reach, draw it AND I get hidden dora (2000/4000), I actually have a nice lead going into the last hand. But those are kinda a mounting pile of if’s to go along with my rather iffy wait.

Look at the number of tiles I can still draw to improve my hand other than my winners. (6 tiles) improve my wait in the bamboos and add Peace to my hand points. Actually the loses me the red dora, but the extra niceness of the wait combined with the possibility of instant win and hidden dora makes reaching there a viable argument. Drawing (7 tiles) allow me to drop the so that I have Simples and can thus win off someone else discarding without needing to reach. It also puts me in the same spot as before if I draw but even without reaching (1000/2000). Red (2 tiles) were still not on the table too and would similarly improve my hand for Concealed Self Draw. That’s a total of 15 tiles which still improve my hand in comparison to just the 4 which give me the win. The argument is pretty strong for considering this a non-final shape and looking to improve the hand.

How about a non-reaching situation where you could still alter your hand? In another game, dora was and kan dora was and mine was red! I had ponned and gotten to ready with this hand:

when my upper house(player to my left) reached. My next draw was a red which didn’t look safe at all with not one cracks tile in the reacher’s discards. Both and , however, were in his discards so I began by throwing . It was looking not so good for me to win as I’d also thrown earlier in the hand so even if I was able to get the from the reacher ( already one in his discards) I would be in a missed win situation. But what should my next draw be but another ! And red!! Dropping the extra , safe because it was in his discards, I was now waiting for the in his discards, which was soon thrown by the dealer as I didn’t look dangerous because I was throwing tiles in the reacher’s discards so he was just looking to play safe with respect to him.

True enough, some rather fortuitous draws came there, and one can hardly expect such things to happen regularly. But the point is that my hand was in fact still changeable. And in fact, changing it is probably what allowed me to win as my previous wait didn’t look safe for anyone to throw at all (the reacher said he actually had 2 in his hand).

So as I often say, stay flexible! ‘Take a moment to consider whether that shape is really your final destination or could it still be improved upon.

Teaching Mahjong

Gemma — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:30:47 +0000

It’s been a long time since I could anticipate that I would be anywhere for longer than six months so I have shyed away from teaching people mahjong, knowing that I would probably have to leave them just as they really got into it. However, I finally have a proper job and a place with a decent table to play mahjong on so I figured it was time to give something back to the community.

Running a mahjong lesson is a bit like any house party. You need preparation!

Mahjong table – This is probably the hardest part for small modern apartments. I have the good luck to have a perfect sized table and four chairs.
Mahjong mat and set – This shouldn’t be a problem for most of you by now.
Books/Magazines – You need to be able to entertain the masses if some of them come late so some mahjong books and magazines are recommended to get people in the mood. DON’T put a movie on; you’ll never get a game started.
Food – You don’t want your students wondering off midway through a game to a takeaway. Get some frozen pizza in and make sure there’s a steady supply.
Drink – Alcohol for Brits
Cheat cards – With the characters etc. on for those who don’t speak Japanese
Music – A playlist of music that won’t upset anyone. Stuff from the 80s goes down well. You don’t really want heavy metal or rap unless you know the people well.

So… With my preparation done, I invited four people round. I wasn’t going to play, anticipating that as most of these people had little to no knowledge of mahjong, my time would be better spent jumping around helping them.

First of all we went through what a hand shape looked like… And that was as far as we got… After playing a few rounds, I realized that it was going to take my little fledgling champions a little longer than I thought to get to grips with the flow of play and hand formation. It was a long time now since I learnt and I seem to have forgotten that it isn’t as natural as it feels to me now.

However, they seemed to enjoy it immensely! Each of them went out of their way the next day to tell me how much they enjoyed the night. I’m definitely buoyed! I’m hoping I can get this going at least once a week, if not twice a week.

I’d highly recommend starting your own group and spreading the word of riichi mahjong!

Jenn’s Corner: It’s All Over

jenn — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:57:04 +0000

Wow, how long has it been since I wrote a Jenn’s Corner?! Things were so incredibly hectic with the WSOM and my other work keeping me busy that I left most of the site up to Gemma and the rest of the team. In the end we had a great series and things have finally settled down.

Working up until the World Series of Mahjong I was running qualifiers every month, sometimes every 2 weeks, in addition to playing MFC regularly and appearing in 2 mahjong parlors as well. Starting in July I added more TV work to the mix and there just weren’t enough hours in the day. Add in poker blogging trips to Macau and you can imagine how Jenn’s Corners got pushed behind.

Now it feels like I have nothing to do and thankfully that gives me time to concentrate on ReachMahjong.com and make it the best again! I never get tired of this game or bringing you information, strategy, events and insight. We got a bit behind in August, but coming in September and October we’re back on track with regular columns and a library full of hand histories.
We also have a few podcasts that haven’t been put up yet, so look forward to those. Our producer has a new business, so we’re at his mercy (^.^)

For now I guess I should touch on my experience at the WSOM since I did cash and for once beat Garthe at his own… wait, nevermind.

So! WSOM. For me the trip started in July when I started arranging everyone’s plane tickets and there were a lot of them! I personally took responsibility for at least 10 plane tickets between players, staff and support. Everyone had to leave on different dates, everyone had different expectations for the event and none of us knew exactly what to expect.
I do have to say that while the event was considerably smaller than previous years in terms of number of players and prize pool, for the RM.com team it was a much better experience overall. We were able to house our staff and players at the Venetian, which made it much easier to run things and gave all the players on our team an excellent experience overall. There was also an extremely positive attitude among the players. There was certainly a sense of competition, but all the players felt friendly this year compared to previous years and we made a lot more friends.

The structure this year was new to all of us and I’m really glad that I got a chance to try it out. The first 2 days for people on our team were great. With games like Mahjong, where luck and skill go hand in hand, it’s important to play as many games as possible when you feel like you have an edge. I certainly felt like I had an advantage in this tournament and I really appreciated having 2 full days to try and prove this. In my case it paid off too as I made it to Day 3 in 10th place!
The other big change was the prize structure. While the standings for Day 1 and Day 2 were just like any other tournament, Day 3 played out like a cash game. There was $250,000 HKD awarded for each cashing round and there were 4 cashing rounds total. For the final 3 cashing rounds on Day 3, each player essentially started with 250 points and once those points were gone (once your score for the round went below -250), so was your prize money for that round. As far as I know, this was the first time this structure was ever used in a Mahjong tournament. I fell victim to this system, discarding into one big hand and not getting lucky enough to win any other hands for the round. With only 2 games to try and stay alive it was all luck for the last day. Also, each player’s final placing was based on the amount of cash prizes they received instead of their actual mahjong results, which was a bit hard to swallow.

I have to say I’m not a fan of changing to a cash-game-like system in the final rounds, but I’m really glad that I got a chance to try it out and I do think it was really interesting to calculate the prize money based on the number of points you scored in the game. It was the first year to try this system and I think it will be improved, but it was fun to test it out and being one of the guinea pigs is one of the things I love about being part of the new Mahjong culture.

The WSOM team from Taiwan, Rules Director Alan Kwan and the PR Team did a great job bringing you this year’s event and hopefully things will be announced soon for next year’s event too! For now I’ll be busy getting things organized for the site and I hope you all will join us as we get things back into full swing.

Column 1–Put up, or…

Benjamin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:32:49 +0000

Everyone I’m sure either knows Benjamin Boas or has at least heard of him. After much cajoling, he has finally agreed to write a column for RM.com. A big thanks to Ben for writing for us!

Anyway, his first column is about ECR 2010. Please be aware this was written before Ian’s article on MahjongNews.com. I’m sure it will add something to the debate!

-Gem

Hello Everyone,

This is my inaugural column for reachmahjong.com. It’s great to be here!

I recently returned home to Tokyo after completing my first job as a referee at the Second European Mahjong Championship. My trip was an absolute blast. It was wonderful to see all of my European friends, as well as a couple new American ones.

As the referee, I had the best view of peoples’ play at the tournament and I must say that I was very happy with what I saw. The skill level at this year’s championship was much much higher than 2008. I think this is due in part to the influx of skilled young players from countries such as Finland and Russia. In fact, players at this tournament were, on average, younger than any other I’ve been to. This isn’t, of course, to rag on the more senior members of the European community. After all, one of them pulled off a very impressive win!

This was my fourth European tournament. My first was the Open European Mahjong Championship of 2007 and it’s hard to believe how much I have changed since then. Three years ago, I could only see what was wrong with tournaments in Europe. The rules were full of problems, players didn’t appreciate the skill gap between Europe and Japan, and most of the organizers were not the best players. “How can EMA be in the hands of such amateurs!” I thought, and I went to all of the people I could trying to convince them that I knew better than they did and that they should do things my way. Then I got on this website and began flaming anyone who disagreed with what I thought was the pure, Japanese way of mahjong (sorry, guys!).

This particular method of criticism isn’t, I found, very productive. Of course, this is notwithstanding that my criticisms then, along with many criticisms I read of EMA and its tournaments now, are accurate in their content. EMA rules still have errors in them. The contents of this website and its book are not always completely accurate. The general level of play found at live tournaments in Europe is significantly behind that of Japan or its online mahjong servers. Plus, the MCR rules are still quite problematic. The organization as a whole is still very young.

Now, three years later and with a taste of life on the other side, I realize that I was missing the point. It’s certainly important that tournaments be run with the right rules and attract a high level of play, but its much more important that the tournament exists. Being able to play a game skillfully is all well and good, but if not for organizers no one would be able to play at all. We have a lot to thank of people like Tom Sloper, Martin Rep, Tina Christensen and Ilka Stummeyer, all players who would never claim to be the best but all instrumental in making this year’s tournament possible.

Furthermore, its important not to lose sight of how much progress has been made since 2007, or even since 2004 when I started playing. Back in 2004 there were no major tournaments outside of Holland; now there is a major one every year. We also have official rules for riichi–which don’t even exist in Japan–a rating list, an international governing organization, non-Japanese players who are demonstrably good, and a real international mahjong community. None of these things are perfect but all can be improved and they’re certainly a heck of a lot better than what I had 6 years ago.

So readers, consider this column to be a call for all those players who would say that EMA and other organizers are doing things wrong. If you really think so, then put your money where your mouth is! If you don’t like the way the tournament was run, organize your own! If you’re frustrated that the players around you aren’t striving to become better as much as you are, start up your own league. If you want the level of play in general to rise, then get more people into the game and it’ll happen.

Granted, all of this has been happening in the past couple of years, but I believe it could and will happen more. A small national mahjong organization of young and skilled players has already approached me asking for advice about running the next Riichi Championship. The USPML has thought of several very interesting ways to grow a business based on the game–something that’s not my forte but quite important in growing a significant player base. Even osamuko.com has started a league.

As the largest English-language community of riichi players, I think it’s our duty to be supportive of all of these efforts because they are the only way the game will grow. For those who would criticize and belittle efforts such as the above, while my 2007 self certainly understands and appreciates your feelings, criticism in and of itself simply doesn’t do any good. Start a blog, start a group, start a tournament. Every little bit counts!

UK Open Riichi is Tomorrow

Gemma — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:15:33 +0000

Sitting in the Premier Inn in Guildford waiting for the tournament… It seemed like a good time to write about pre-tourney rituals.

I’m quite a superstitious person anyway so it’s not a total surprise that I like to maintain a few rituals before a tournament.

1) No playing mahjong 24 hours before – This has some sanity to it. Because I’m superstitious, if I throw a tile and lose big, I have a grudge against that tile for several games later. It makes no sense and is detrimental to my game.

2) No fruit – Everytime I eat fruit before a tourney, I don’t do well. So now I like to eat junk ^^

3) No tea – Similar reasoning to (2)

4) Charm – I have a cornish pixie charm that I like to put in my pocket (but I forgot it today!)

5) No talking about mahjong – I hate talking about strategy before. It always makes me overthink my game.

Not all of them are superstitious but for some reason I feel they sway my luck/performance. Do you have any pre-tourney rituals?

Well, I just hope I don’t make a total fool of myself tomorrow. I’m feeling a little rusty at the moment so I’ll have to hope that fortune smiles on me! Look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow!

Tournament Deposits?

Gemma — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 22:35:00 +0000

…Whatever next…!

Mahjong Time have just introduced a system to try and discourage non-attendance at online tournaments; a deposit that will be refunded upon completion of the tournament. If you fail to turn up, that deposit is forfeit. Awesome idea or a tax on the muddle-minded?

http://mahjongtime.com/mahjong-news.aspx?newsId=708&PageNr=0&catId=1

The problems of non-attendance at online tournaments is something most of us understand and have experienced. It has become a mild joke when a player soars ahead after sitting on a table of bots. Mahjong Time are planning on tackling this head on.

In an upcoming Hong Kong tournament players will have to pay $3 to enter the tournament of which $2 will be returned if they turn up. It’s great to see the online clients finally tackling this issue. Up until now, bots at tournaments have wreaked players’ online experiences.

It’s certainly a good solution! However, is it enough? $2 are pennies to lose compared to missing out on the last few minutes of a World Cup match and possibly seeing England score the winning goal (in my dreams of course…).

Perhaps we should be naming and shaming the “Mahjong Hooligans” (see Adrie Van Geffen’s discussion on Mahjong News)? A little dunce hat over their profile pic perhaps? So you know who is to blame.

But is that even fair? Internet problems are something beyond any of our control. And mahjong clients haven’t yet proven themselves to be very stable either.

Also, some of us are inadvertent hooligans. We sign-up, fully intending to play but then just forget… Making us pay a deposit is not going to help us not forget. We need the clients to help us not forget! I wouldn’t mind paying a few pence for a text message sent to my phone:

“Gemma, stop what you’re doing – It’s Mahjong Time!”

…Now that really would be perfect.

Anyway, I only hope that MJT’s experiment is successful and that we finally find an answer to our online problem.

Gemma’s Journal: New Site!

Gemma — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:59:39 +0000

Well I hope everyone thinks our new site is as sharp as we hoped it would be! Still a few kinks to work out but at least they’re only kinks and not the mountains we had to surmount with the previous site!

I think now would be a good time to thank all those who were involved in getting the site set up. I feel especially grateful because I was too busy with work to get involved. A special big thanks to all those who helped us move our archives over!

We’re getting the forums sorted out as I speak. Although plain at the moment, they are functional and as I mentioned a few days ago, Asian characters compatible! Make good use of them

Apart from that, I haven’t much else to say! I’ve been playing a lot on Mahjong Club. I played with a few of your already. I was doing quite well for a while but I’m on a losing streak so I definitely recommend you play me this Sunday if you want some easy cash!

Speaking of online mahjong, check our Adrie van Geffen’s column on Mahjong News. http://www.mahjongnews.com/en/index.php/columns/46-our-guest/810-mahjong-hooligans.html

I truly understand his pain. The amount of time in tournaments I’ve faced bots and cleaned up, or seen people in first place clearly having had the luck to sit on a table of bots. The mahjong clients need to come up with a system to tackle this issue as quite frankly it puts people off playing.

In many situations the problem mentioned is caused by unstable internet connections or you simply just forgot. (I look forward to the day when I get an app that will warn me when a tournament I’ve subscribed to comes up.)

Adrie suggests some ideas so I think it’s worth a look and definitely a discuss. This is our game and I know for sure that the people who own the mahjong clients want to hear our feedback. Positive action is the way forward!

Until the next rant…

Konno’s Kolumn: Qualify for the WSOM in Macau

admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 22:00:24 +0000

By Shintaro Konno

Hello Mahjong players of the world. I am Shintaro Konno. Ten years have passed since I became a professional player. I joined this world with the idea that I didn’t want to live a life where I had to wear a suit and tie a necktie around my neck, but now, with the classes I teach, the games I play in and the study sessions, more days than not I tie that necktie and go to work. That is how much this industry has changed in 10 years.

Until 2 years ago, I had never travelled abroad and I didn’t even own a passport. When I joined this industry I didn’t have much interest in other countries and I didn’t think I would have any reason to travel outside of Japan.

However, just like the professional mahjong world has changed, the environment and surroundings of mahjong itself is also changing daily. Of course, the internet must play a big part in this progress. Now, there are many people around the world interested in Japanese-style mahjong.

Within all of that, two years ago in September, there was a mahjong tournament in Macau called the WSOM (World Series of Mahjong). In that series, one of the events was a Japanese-style Reach Mahjong tournament.

It was for this event, two years ago that I first travelled abroad to join as a staff member. For someone like me that can only speak Japanese, it was difficult to run the tournament, but Jenn and Gemma helped me out a lot and the tournament went smoothly.

This year I will probably be in Macau again in August. The WSOM will be held from August 19-23 this year.

The venue for this year’s event has been moved to the Venitian, the biggest hotel in Asia, and besides the Reach Event, there will also be the WSOM-rules Main Event and a High Roller Event, for a total of 3 tournaments.

If you’ve read this far, perhaps you have some interest in these events. But, when it comes to travelling abroad, the airline ticket, room and board and entry fees for events really adds up.

I bet some of you are thinking, “If only I could cut some of the costs… But there’s probably no way…”

Now there is.

I know I sound like an infomercial, but you have a chance to join the fun too.

Right now ReachMahjong.com is holding monthly tournaments and those tournaments are serving as qualifiers for the WSOM Reach Event in August. In other words, if you win one of these qualifiers, you will get a full package, including an airline ticket, hotel accommodations and entry into the tournament.

The next events are to be held:

May 15th (Saturday)
June 13th (Sunday)
July 19th (Holiday)
August 1st (Sunday)

Besides the tournament entries, there are lots of other prizes for participants and you can also get the hand histories from past tournaments.

All the details will be on ReachMahjong.com

Win the tournament and join Jenn, Garthe and I in Macau.

We’ll see you there.

The Stagnation of Riichi Mahjong

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:56:21 +0000

Hi everyone. In March, there is no pro league and major tournament either (well there is “grandprix 2009” but it’s only for the JPML top-pros). So this time of my column, I’d like to introduce one story . I often go to Free Mahjong parlor in Akihabara. It’s not because I am a deep otaku, but there is a friend of my working at the parlor. This day, as usual, I was playing non-rate riichi mahjong. However, there was some unusual sight at this day at the mahjong parlor. There was a foreigner playing mahjong with me at the same table. I could tell from his face and the way he speaks. He must be a mahjong maniac from outside of Japan. Let me call him Bob because I heard someone called him Bob. I had no clue whether he was a skilled player or not. After few rounds, however, it was obvious that Bob is not that experienced. The way he “tsumo” and discards tiles were bit clumsy. In addition to those, by the time east-round ends, he did not made any “Agari”(Tsumo nor Ron),and tempai either. When the first game ends, Bob ended up by 4th place. I felt little pity for him, but I never made allowance for him. Because I thought it is rude to think about allowance. I thought giving all my strength to him was the best way to show respect to him. By the time the second game was close to its end, Bob was still losing. However, during this match he won a hand with “Hatsu (Green Dragon) only”. It was only a 1000 point hand, but when I looked at his face, there was a big smile on his face. “What a strange kid…” That was my first impression on him. At the third game, Bob was getting something. He won his hand two rounds in row and trying to catch the first place. But you know, riichi mahjong is not that easy. He also had “Houjyu”, as many time as he won his hands. When we got to the 4th round of South-round, our scores were pretty much flat. Anybody could have won this game if he/she won a 1000 point hand. The consequence was that the other player won the game by “Tanyao” hand. Right after the winner was settled, Bob showed us his hand. He was close to tenpai, actually it was 1-shanten. However, what he was making was not usual to this kind of situation. He was making a half flash hand with ponned “Hatsu”. It was pretty obvious that 1000point could have led to the winner, but he was going for more difficult way of winning. Everyone in the table thought, how newbie he was;nevertheless, I was not. Showing his hand, Bob mentioned with big smile on his face “aw I almost won this hand and this game…”. Yes, he was very happy all the time. No matter he wins or loses, he never changed his face. When I looked his face I learned something very precious from him. As we getting to know more strategies about riichi mahjong, we tend to forget the precious moments. The moments which the first time you won your hand, the first time you won a yakuman hand, or the very first time you touched mahjong tiles. Do you still remember those moments and big excitement you experienced? You must have been happy just because you could play mahjong with buddies. This anecdote sounds very typical to readers, but those people feeling stagnant of riichi mahjong these days, please remind those moments and enjoy playing mahjong again. Simply enjoying mahjong will lead you to play better mahjong. This is also my slogan that I carry every time when I participate at big tournaments.

Luck Revisited

garthe — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:00:23 +0000

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, (which I’ve also said before and will again too probably) Mahjong is a lifelong study. At least I expect it will be for me. There are several things I think that will always be mysteries or at least will always be parts of my game which need improvement. One of those is the Japanese concept of “tsuki” or “nagare”, often translated as “luck” and “flow”. I’ve written of my disdain for the idea before. But the more I play and try to fly in the face of the idea, the more I seem to be done in by it. Let’s look at a couple series of hands from some recent games.

First, from a recent study group session. On the first hand of the game I won a big hand from Sawazaki. He had thrown an obviously dangerous 二 to my reach which was with this hand:

Wooohoo! The expensive one! Moriyama then began to comment on how I couldn’t really be happy about that because Sawazaki was obviously playing me for a fool. (Apparently this was sarcasm which in my 11 years in Japan would bring the grand total of times I’ve heard it from Japanese to about 2 and half) Really apparently, what I should have realized at that point was that I had the “tsuki”, I was the lucky player in the game at that moment.

I won the next hand too on a Concealed Self Draw only, immediately after the dealer had just reached. Then I really should have realized I was in the luck driver’s seat. On to my turn as dealer, I got to ready with this hand on the 7th draw:

With no hand point, I decided not to reach, and on the 8th draw when I drew the , decided to break my ready hand for the moment by dropping the , and hope for something good to happen in the dots. Of course, the next tile I drew was , should have been my winner except for the fact that I don’t understand “tsuki”.

Two draws later, my upper house(Osanai) reached, I still hadn’t gotten back to ready again, and had to fold the hand to let her win 1300/2600. When we opened our hands, Moriyama was beside himself with disgust for my wimpy non-”tsuki”-appreciating play. How could I break a ready hand when I so obviously had luck on my side at that point?!?!?!?! When a second had come out and it became less and less likely that I’d be able to change my hand, I should have reached! Or at the very least not broken up my ready hand. What should have been a positive 1500 or even 3000 points for me turned out to be negative 2600, a 5600 point swing. Worst of all, I had thrown away the “tsuki” I had gained on the previous two hands and handed it to Osanai.

Whatever.

On to my tournament performance this weekend. On the second to last hand of the game, I drew 2000/4000 to put myself in first by 4500 points. On the last hand as dealer I got to ready with this hand on the 7th draw:

No hand point, and lots of possibilities to change stuff in the bamboos, I decided to wait for something better. The next tile my lower house drew and discarded was 西, what should have been my winner except for the fact that I hadn’t reached because I still don’t understand luck. 3 draws later I did get the 4 of bamboos to change my wait to the 369 but it was too late, as the next draw 2nd place reached followed immediately by 3rd place reaching. I decided to go for it, throwing my next draw, , but unluckily for me, of course it was 3rd place guy’s winner and 8000 points from me to him made us switch places. Instead of a nice little first, I dropped myself down to 3rd.

So there you have ‘em, two instances where I threw away my luck to not win hands. There is, however, a bigger lesson to be learned here, I think, rather than just jumping on the “tsuki” bandwagon and going for it every time you happen to win a hand. What really did me in? I should say what the final result was in the first example. I actually won that game. What makes these two games different is the way I played after I had thrown away my luck/tsuki, if in fact it is possible to do such a thing. I played the rest of the first game very conservatively(like I had in the hand I lost to Osanai) taking a couple small wins and finishing hands ready without reaching. I finished a few points ahead of Osanai and Moriyama teased me for sneaking off with a win on such weak play. In the second example, I continued to go for it, even after I had missed my chance. I could have played it safe and dropped my head, the Wests. If the hand ended in a draw, I’d still take first place and it was possible the other guys’ hands weren’t even big enough for them to overtake me even if they won the hand anyway. I pretty much had 2nd place sealed up and maybe even 1st if I could have just played wimpily again. But I went for it after not going for it in the first place, and it cost me big.

So the real moral of the story I think is consistency. If you’re a head-in-the-clouds-believe-in-luck player then play like that and go for it when luck is on your side. But if you’re a solid feet-on-the-ground sort of player, play like that, and don’t try to get lucky when the odds are against you. Playing both half-ass is a sure way to shoot yourself in the foot.

Mahjong Travel Journal: Taiwan

garthe — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:59:47 +0000

Hey all. I was a little worried people might start thinking all I ever think about is Mahjong so I thought I’d write about a recent trip I made to Taiwan. It was a lot of fun. Checked some sights, met some cool people, oh! And um, well, played a little Mahjong.

This weekend in Taipei, they held the first of a series of qualifiers for the World Series of Mahjong, to be held this year at the Venetian in Macau, August 19-22. Jenn and I trekked down from Tokyo a day early to take in some of the sights and meet up with the WSOM peeps to talk a little business.We’ll be holding the Reach event again at the beginning of the series so Japanese style Mahjong players can strut their stuff on their home turf, so to say. By the way, the first qualifier for that event will be this weekend. Check that out here (link)

After taking care of business with WSOM, Jenn and I visited 101, the old tallest building in the world, and checked out extremely appropriately named things inside it like the “super big damper”. It dampens motion of the building from earthquakes and high winds, and as you might have already guessed, it’s not just a little big. Massage was also the order of the day, traditional Thai massage on Friday and Shanghai style foot massage on Saturday. Jenn has some pretty dope friends down in Taipei who took us out to some of the happening night scenes, notably Barcode, around the corner from 101.

The tournament was a good time of course, even if we didn’t make it into the top 10 for a spot in the World Series. First of all, we were a little unprepared as we had mistakenly assumed they would be using the World Series rules when in fact they went with the local Taiwanese style. That means even MORE stealing of tiles than we originally imagined as they allow the “chicken hand” there, a hand without any hand points, Fantastically enough, Jenn and I managed to both draw the 6 of dots when determining which tables to sit at for the first game. Actually, I think that helped me tremendously as I needed all the help I could get with rules explanation.

Of course, I like Japanese tournaments too, but if there’s one area they’re a little behind the times on, it’s refreshments. After losing the first game in straight down to -48 points fashion, it was nice to get a little liquid encouragement for my second game.

Congratulations to the winners who will be representing Taiwan in Macau this summer. Hope to see some of you at this weekend’s qualifier and the rest of you at the big event in Macau!

Yu Takehana Introduction

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:00:27 +0000

By Yu Takehana

Hi everyone. How has your mahjong been lately? Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Yu Takehana. I’m currently a member of the JPML and participating at D3 of the Phoenix league.

I will begin this column this month. I will report on riichi mahjong news especially in Japan. I know that Jenn and Garthe have been doing live update of riichi mahjong news, notably their pod-casting; however, what I will try to do instead is reporting riichi mahjong news from a Japanese point of view.

This time of my column, however, I’m writing about what I think about current riichi mahjong culture in Japan. I’d like every reach mahjong.com reader to somehow grasp my enthusiasm of diffusing riichi mahjong culture all over the world.

I do respect the work of ReachMahjong.com and I am very happy to write a column at reach mahjong.com because ReachMahjong.com is the one who made me realize that reach mahjong is not mere a table game but one of the Japanese culture. Riichi mahjong is not genuine Japanese culture but in last 5 decades or so, Japanese people made a great effort to establish riichi mahjong as single part Japanese culture. Now it is totally different from Chinese original rules of mahjong. It’s become more complicated and needs more tactics, but this is a suitable rule for Japanese people. Certainly I am one of them who became crazy about riiching.

There are 3 major pro-mahjong associations. I assume there are more than 500 pro players in Japan in total. Nevertheless, out of 500 pros, how many of them really think of riichi mahjong as Japanese culture. Moreover, is there any body who really thinks about removing the stereotype that riichi mahjong is “gambling”? In the JPML’s slogan, there is this theme of shifting riichi mahjong to a respectable game.

If those 3 big associations of riichi mahjong cooperate with one another, simply thinking, it should be easy to do activities to remove the “gambling” stereotype, but apparently this has not yes been successful. In my point of view, they are just busy and concerned with profit compared to other associations. They are not really helping one another to establish riichi mahjong culture. If this stagnation continues the next decade, riichi mahjong will become just a table game, and there will be no professional competition in it.

I’ve been thinking about this endangerment of riichi mahjong culture these days. Then I came up with this idea of “external pressure”. Thanks in part to a great effort by ReachMahjong.com now there are many riichi mahjong tournaments around the world. Riichi mahjong is surely growing its recognition. I feel that the great boom of riichi mahjong is coming soon if we push little harder. I think once we push very hard to a certain point that riichi mahjong is taken over by other nations, Japanese people would realize that riichi mahjong is in danger!! This hypothesis may sound ridiculous, but Japanese peoples’ minds are so peaceful that they won’t act until riichi mahjong is in that much danger. This is one of the reasons I am in favor of the activities of ReachMahjong.com.

But what I do not want is to let the riichi mahjong culture go extinct from this world. I want to pass on this fantastic culture to the next generation. I want to be a “sower “ for the bright future of riichi mahjong.

I am also planning to participate at the riichi mahjong tournament in Germany: European Riichi Championship 2010. So those who will participate this championship, I will look forward to riiching with you!

Konno’s Kolumn #11: Style

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:00:52 +0000

Hello Mahjong players of the world. I am Shintaro Konno. These days Tokyo, where I live, is cold everyday and snow has been falling. I don’t know if it’s because of that, but I’ve felt a cold coming on and I’m writing this in between coughs. I hope all of you are taking care of your health.

For this month’s column I think I actually want to write a bit about Mahjong.

Let’s say you have this hand in the East Round, 1st hand as a non-dealer, dora:

It’s the 7th discard and no one has reached. What would you do?

There are 4 options:
1. Discard without Reaching
2. Discard and Reach
3. Discard without Reaching
4. Discard and Reach

The first and second options of discarding gives you a Peace (pinfu) hand and the third and fourth options give you a Ready Three-Colored Run hand (sanshoku). People who chose 1 or 2 are certainly thinking that it is still the East Round and they want the double-ended wait and an easier win. On the other hand, players that choose option 3 or 4 are thinking that it is still the East Round and they want to get a jump start on points with a big hand.

But wait a second. I wrote the reasons for each choice, but isn’t there something strange about the reasons?

For the players that chose to discard , there is no problem with the choice, but why Reach?

Discarding certainly gives you a better chance of winning the hand, but if that is your motivation, then why Reach and make the win harder on yourself?

There is no problem with the 4th option, but why would you choose 3 and not Reach?

You chose to discard to get a higher score, right? Shouldn’t you Reach if you’re aiming for the highest score?

In Mahjong, your own “style” is very important. If you are an aggressive player then you would choose the 4th option. If your style is more protective than you would choose number 1.

In Mahjong, the “situation” is just as important as your own style. In our example above since we are still in the East Round, 1st hand, so the best choices are or . But, if this were the last hand of the South Round, or if the dora was , or if you were the Dealer, or if Reach had already been declared by another player, etc., the entire “situation” would be different. In that case the 2nd or 3rd option might be better.

You need to figure out your own “style” and apply it to the “situations” in front of you.

See you next time.

Jenn’s Corner: I Blew It

jenn — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:00:45 +0000

I wanted to wait until after the North Kanto League to write this month’s column. Now I wish that time hadn’t come. Last month I wrote about all of the opportunities I had and how scared I was of losing these chances this month. Well, my worst fear came true.

I managed to squeak out of any sort of prize or final table in every single league I was in.

Starting with the Special League at the end of January, I had a bad day, putting me in the red when I had been in 3rd place with a big lead. The next day was only slightly better, in that, I posted a much smaller negative.

The next week was North Kanto and I kept my position in 2nd place for the pro league, but dropped down to 11th in the Pro-Amateur Mixed league. I remained the most confident for these leagues.

The next week was the JPML Pro League. I had a small positive and my goal was to at least keep it and then try to come back in the Special League. This would turn out to be the only goal that I was able to achieve. Despite having a terrible time concentrating and despite a few mistakes, I was able to win the table and get a positive 20 points or so, putting me in 14th place.

Then we had the Special League and it was horrible for me. I started out well, but then gave all of my points away and more. It was a very disappointing day. Champions League wasn’t much better, but I wasn’t even hopeful for that one, so we’ll skip over it.

Last weekend was the North Kanto league I had been waiting for. I had a great chance in both leagues. I woke up early and even had time to stop by Starbucks on my way to Gunma. I felt well-rested, I had eaten and I was ready to go. There was good music on the speakers and I knew my opponents and even had a plan going in. I got a big hand at the beginning and made it all the way into the South round with a big lead. Then I gave all the points away. That happened again and again, for 3 games… In the final game I was down to about 90 points. I had to get a positive score in the last game no matter what.

In the final hand of the game I made a 5200 point hand. I had just under 25,000 points. There was a Reach stick and a couple of continuances. The final dealer discarded the 6-dots that would give me the higher score (9-dots would only give me 2600 points) and I had done it. I posted my positive score and there was nothing left to do but wait and hope.

The final announcement came, and I was in 5th place. I lost my chance at my first final table by 400 points… Not even enough to declare Reach. If I had done one of a million things differently, I would have made it, but I didn’t.

It looks like I still have a long way to go on this journey.

In Garthe’s Hands: Tsumo

garthe — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:11:02 +0000

Is your basic strategy to reach pretty much any time you have a ready hand? It’s certainly an aggressive way to play. And we all know that aggression generally tends to get us more than passive resistance. At least in Mahjong.

But what happens when the other players start to realize that you reach with anything? They’ll probably start coming back at you with just about anything too. While that may be to your advantage when you happen to have a monster, you can’t always have a big hand. Sometimes you’re going to end up paying big to someone who might have given up his hand in fear of your reach.

To avoid getting too loose, I’d like to remind you of a hand point that you probably don’t tend to think of “going for” on it’s own. Yet it can still be useful by itself and should not be forgotten when you get to ready with a cheapie and are debating whether to reach or not. That hand is Concealed Self Draw, or Menzen Tsumo in Japanese. The explanation for this hand is that it is simply you making a completed hand without taking any tiles from other players, including your final winning tile too. There’s no special combination of tiles needed, they just all need to have been drawn by you. So of course, you’ll have nothing showing on the table, your hand will be entirely concealed. Oh wait, unless you had any concealed kongs. Then just that part of your hand will be exposed but it will still be considered “concealed” for the purpose of scoring and being able to use Reach and Concealed Self Draw.

More often than not, this hand will be part of a combination of other winning hands, especially Peace, Simples, and Reach. In fact, it can of course be coupled with any other hand point to increase the overall value of your hand. But let’s take a look at a hand that beat my reach the other day at work. Lucky Dragon was the Red Dragon and I had reached on the 7th draw.He won with this Concealed Self Draw hand on the 9th draw.

Draw:

No wonder this guy didn’t have any Lucky Dragons, they were all in MY hand! He correctly sensed that I had a monster and threw away
a much better openended wait, in favor of the single tile wait . Was he some kind of future reading genius? No he simply knew that was a dangerous tile, the was safe (in my discards) and decided not to take a stand with that cheap hand if he didn’t have to. As it turns out, it was the tile that made my hand ready so I wasn’t waiting for it anymore and he could have gotten away with dropping this risky tile. However, as it turned out (after it turned out?), playing safe worked even better because he drew another one to escape with a 300/500 point hand plus my reach stick and most importantly, kill my monster of at least a 12,000 point hand.

So don’t forget to consider Concealed Self Draw in your calculations for where to take a stand. In fact, don’t forget it always as newer players will often forget to include it in their scoring when they have a bunch of other hand points already in the hand. But my point for today is that it can still also be useful just by itself. It may leave the hand very cheap not to reach, but it will also leave you an escape route should you need it.

Mahjong Travel Journal: WSOM Press Conference in Macau

jenn — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:00:34 +0000

Last month was the announcement of the 2010 World Series of Mahjong. ReachMahjong.com’s Marketing manager Kirk Camerlingo and I (Jenn) joined the event in Macau and also celebrated the second Reach/Riichi event to be held at the WSOM. I spent only a few days in Macau, but it felt productive. It was probably the first time I took a MTJ trip without actually playing any mahjong!

I arrived in Hong Kong and met up with Kirk and Andrew from World Gaming Magazine. After spending one night in HK, we headed over to Macau. They had house-hunting to do and I had a full agenda of relaxation. Luckily they found a place right away and I got to help with the decorations!

We spent most of our time playing poker and in the Grand Waldo Spa, but on January 20th we woke up early for a meeting with the WSOM organizers. It was exciting and this month you’ll start to see our events in Tokyo taking shape next month, leading up to the main events in August.

The press conference itself went fast. We already covered the announcements in the WSOM News section, but we didn’t mention that Jim Mehren gave Kirk and I a big thanks during those announcements as well. It feels like this year’s Riichi event is going to be a huge success, as well as the main event and high roller’s events. I can’t wait until the preliminaries are successfully finished and we’re suiting up to go play in Macau.

After the announcements I was busy with interviews and meetings. There were so many people to meet from the Venetian, local publications and international ones and the sponsors of the event. It’s a great team this year and being there with everyone kicked my confidence into high-gear.

It’s a short road with a lot of stops until August, but RM.com will be doing everything we can to make the Riichi event a success and get as many of our players as possible into the main events.

A big thanks to Kirk and Andrew for giving me a place to stay and people to hang out with for the short time I was in Macau for the announcement. And, also thanks to them for all of their help at the press conference.

Tournament Evolution?

Gemma — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:00:00 +0000

As in my previous article there was a new time system tested at the Red 5s tournament and a player arrangement system. Tournament formats are notoriously difficult.

I always hear people say “EMA should try XX” at riichi tournaments. The EMA came to the current format after much discussion with experts and experimentation on local levels. I’m not wanting to discuss whether the EMA should or shouldn’t change the riichi tournament format right now. Any change alters the game mechanics and needs to be thought out carefully. However, I would like to summarize the changes that I hear most often.

Open Tanyao (Open Inside or Kuitan)
I really don’t think I need say more?

No Red 5s
Ah… the Red 5 argument… Goes hand in hand with Open Tanyao. If you have red 5s, you can’t really have Open Tanyao without getting rid of these controversial tiles first. (I’m a self-confessed red 5 fan but I find myself in the minority…)

No Renchan (Dealer Continues)
This is possibly less controversial? Possibly… It would certainly alleviate some of the time problems experienced in tournaments at the moment. Getting rid of it would reduce the value of dealership and hence change the game mechanics. So we’d have to proceed with caution.

A Fifth Table
This is a new argument for me but an interesting one. The idea is that games are reduced to one hour to fit an extra table in to a day. It has a friend in No Renchan in that the plan would be to remove Renchan for this to be possible. A fifth tournament could give the good players who have good averages to recover a bad table or two. However, it could be tiring.

A Rules and B Rules
Could two different rule sets mean that everyone could have what they wanted? Or is the community too small and the tournaments too few to justify this?

Anyway, the EMA are very communicative when it comes to rules, tournament formats etc. They did do a lot of research before they came to the current system. I’m sure that they are considering any ideas carefully to ensure the rules evolve with their players. Not everyone can get what they want but we can all say what we want.

Jenn’s Corner: Pressure

jenn — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:56:55 +0000

For the first time since I joined JPML, I feel like I am playing well. It feels great, but it also feels horrible. The potential there is huge, and I feel like knowing me, I’ll get really close and then lose it.

In the 2009 season I played in 6 leagues. I completely failed in the JPML Women’s League. I missed one session and my head wasn’t in the rest. In the first half of the North Kanto leagues (pro and open) I started out OK, but went down soon after. On the other hand, in the first half of the JPML D2 Pro League, I did great, keeping 2nd place until the end and then dropping only to 4th, moving up to D1 and winning myself a seat in the Special League.

That is where the pressure lies. Believe it or not, I already feel like I am jinxing any chance I have at have at holding my current 3rd place status in that league, as well as keeping my positive score in the Pro League, which I worked so hard to get in the 4th session. The winner of the Special League moves up to B2, 2nd place moves up to C1 and 3rd gets a ticket to C2. Any of these would obviously be an amazing jump from my current D-status. This is my big chance. That’s a lot of pressure.

My biggest worry was my negative score in the Pro League. One of the minimum requirements of the Special League prizes is a positive score in the Pro League. Since I got back in the black last week, that worry has been pushed back. However, I only have 3 points and there is still one more session to mess that part up. My next worry, of course, will be my actual score in the Special League. Right now I’m in 3rd with about 70 points. There are 4 more days in that league. Lots of time for things to change. It would only take one or two big negative sessions to put me out of the running.

That is a lot of pessimism to carry around when I’m supposed to be concentrating on a bunch of little tiles. Pretty much, there is nothing I can do and nothing to worry about. All I can do at this point is play each hand and each game as well as I know how. On the other hand, my game is at the best it has been since I started. I still have a long way to go, but I think I’ll choose to take the positive route.

Even if I mess up Pro League and Special League, I’m in the top 4 for both the North Kanto Pro and Open Leagues. Of course, I still have 3 sessions to drop down in those too.

Do you play better under pressure? If you were in my position, what would your approach be? In Pro League, I need to just not lose: the most difficult task in all of Mahjong. In Special League I still have to perform for 4 more days. Can you give me some advice in the forums?

Delicious Sanshoku – Garthe’s Back!

garthe — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 17:11:02 +0000

Greetings, Happy New Year, long time no write and all that!

Yes it’s been a while since I’ve written here at Reachmahjong.com. I’ve been slogging it out in the trenches, trying to figure out how the heck to play this silly game and I think I may finally have some new insights to share with you.

It really is a silly game, a ridiculous way to spend nearly half of my waking hours. Even a sizable share of my non-waking ones too.

But as I become more and more entrenched in this silliness, as I suspect some of you are too, let me try to share some OTHER insights. Hopefully they will be more useful in our continued pursuit of this silliness.

How have I grown since we last spoke? Well, I like crap more. 3 Colored Crap, er, 3 Colored Runs, Sanshoku, whatever that infernal hand is called. Regular readers may remember my disdain for this hand which generally stemmed from the fact that going for it often results in disappointment: the opposite side of the run will come from the side that would have completed the same run in all three suits. In fact, if you are waiting on an openended straight to complete your hand and 3 Colored Runs, there will generally be a 50% chance that you’ll win on the wrong tile. Disappointment half the time!!

Well, let’s not be glass is half empty types. That means the other half is successful, no? And for 2 extra hand points, the effort spent preparing for the chance is well rewarded when it does come. (In addition to the fact that winning those other hands shouldn’t be so disappointing either. Man am I a cynic!)

Let’s look at a hand I had in league last Sunday, pretty much the only bright spot in the whole session. Early on I had some combination of 4s 5s and 6s in all three suits and was thinking I might have a shot at Sanshoku. When the 6 (dora) came in characters things were starting to look good. But then the 7 came in dots and it seemed like it just wasn’t meant to be when I got to ready with this hand:

I didn’t reach because I was still thinking there might after all be some way to finesse the 456 when I next drew another Wait a second here. 567!!! Switching out one of the extra s now makes 3 Colored Runs possible if I draw the It was already pretty late in the hand so I didn’t reach and what should my very next tile be but that very !

Wooohooo 3000/6000 and a great start as it was the first hand of that game. Much neato-er than if I had just plowed straight ahead and gotten 1300/2600 without 3 Colored Runs.

So the lesson here is that 3 Colored Runs won’t always just come in order. You often have to change completed runs in your hand to aim for it, and you may even have to change which 3 Colored Runs you shoot for when the unexpected comes. Remember to stay flexible, keep re-evaluating what you’re aiming for with each new draw and prepare for some occasional disappointment. But there will also be rapturous joy too.

Mmmmm, Sanshoku.

PS. “Shoku” means food in Japanese. Ok, ok, different shoku. But, whatever.

Mahjong Travel Journal : Leaving the comfort zone

jamie — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:00:16 +0000

Greetings everyone, Jamie here with the tale of my trip to Tokyo! For the New Year’s holiday, I decided to venture out beyond the impeccable boundaries of my small, cold island and make the long Journey to hang out with Jenn and Kirk in Tokyo. While this would mark my 3rd trip to Tokyo, it was the first time I ever had the pleasure of experiencing it with a native.

My first two trips were probably like most other peoples’ first trips to Tokyo: Shinjuku, Harajuku, Tokyo Tower, and Akihabara. This time though, I was determined to try to see a new side of Tokyo: one that the tourists’ eye doesn’t have the privilege of seeing. The secondary objective of course was to try and better my Mahjong game.

I started out in Niigata at the parlor I always go to hoping to get some last minute practice in before willingly stepping into the world of the experts. After this, I boarded a bus and took the 6 hour ride to Tokyo, putting me in Shinjuku around 1PM. After arriving and meeting up with Kirk, we immediately set our target destination the parlor where Jenn was working at that day. It was a rate parlor.

Now let me stop for a second and give you a little more background about my Mahjong experience thus far. Though I’ve had interest in the game for a few years, it hasn’t been til recently that I started getting serious about it. Due to where I live too, I can usually get no more than 5 live hanchans in a month. If I’m lucky I can make it to Niigata and play in a parlor, but that’s a rarity. Furthermore, while the players I play with at the parlor are really good, it’s still a no gamble parlor…. it is, in short, is my safety area. Up until now, not only have I never been to a rate parlor, but also I’ve never gambled in my life beyond a few college poker games.

Back to the story. Here I was not an hour off the bus, and I was already en route to get obliterated at a parlor. Those that read this are fully free to call me a newbie, but I was intimidated. We get to the parlor and I’m almost immediately put at a table against Jenn and two other customers. With my hands sweating and my heart beating, I buy in and hit the dice button. For the first two rounds, I stick to an ultra defensive game that will probably make most people laugh, but it got me through without throwing anything bad. Then in the east 3rd round, I received something that I couldn’t bring myself to ignore. My starting hand already had 7 or so mans(cracks) and two dora in it with the other tiles consisting of mostly winds and dragons. While I was still scared out of my mind, I thought if there was a time to make a move, it hand to be then. I was aiming for a hon itsu at best but I kept drawing man after man until it was around the 6th turn and I was in hon itsu ishanten with a wind head. I drew another man that put me in tenpai (Ready). Already fumbling and scratching my head for a minute with eyes beating down on me begging the question why I hadn’t discarded yet, I decided to push my luck and discarded my winds head. The next round I immediately drew another man to put me in chin itsu tenpai (Full Flush Ready). Taking another minute to think about my wait and surely agitating the other players at the table. I decide not to reach and sit there staring at what I could only pray were the correct waits. A turn or two pass putting us around mid game or so turn and I drew it giving me a baiman. After the heart attack and a few shots of wiskey (it was actually just coffee….) the game continued with me a much less nervous player loaded with fake courage.

While I went on to win that game, I lost the next two putting me at about even for the day, but the biggest thing was by the time I left the parlor, I wasn’t nervous any more. Also, the other thing I was surprised about was I played for about 3 hours and ended up paying no more than I would normally at the no gamble parlor I usually go to (I think it’s important to note it was a very low rate I was playing at). I think it was an important boundary to cross.

On New Year ’s Eve we were able to visit another parlor, this time just with friends. We went to a temple for the New Year’s count down, and then were immediately off to Shibuya for an all night session. I was amazed at how packed the place was. While this was a no rate parlor, they had a very interesting way of running it. At this particular place, it’s not about winning money, but about eliminating your losses. At the end of the session, the table charges are split proportionally depending on your rank at the table. For example the last place person pays 50% of the table costs or so, 3rd pays 35% or so, 2rd place around 15%, and 1st pays nothing (if I remember correctly). It’s kind of a fun way to play because you’re gambling without even realizing it. A friend described it as a place where it’s impossible to profit, but also impossible to lose very much. It’s also a good way to find strong players without having to enter the rate parlors. The other thing I noticed while at the parlor, was people all around me just having a fun time. Everyone was laughing, smiling, making mistakes, and just playing. It helped break my image down that I had made of mahjong in anything but my safe no rate parlor being a game of an stress and losses. It really helped me come out of my safety zone.

The next day I had the privilege of attending a pros’ drinking party with Jenn and Kirk. This was amazing for me because I got to meet many of the people I always play against on Mahjong Fight Club. I’m not sure how Japan feels about its’ mahjong pros, but at least for me, everyone at that party was a celebrity. This was the second big boundary I crossed in my trip to Tokyo; I realized they were just people like me, as obvious as that sounds. I spent the night listening to stories of their various mistakes and triumphs in Mahjong, what they do in their free time, and where they want to go next. I was completely blown away by the kindness and openness of everyone there. We were at the party for around 3 hours and I was able to have many good conversations and hopefully make many new friends. It’s definitely an experience that I won’t forget.

I had an amazing time in Tokyo. Everyone I met was very helpful and very friendly. The trip helped me in that not only did I get off of my small island, but I was also able to leave my shell and experience different ways to play mahjong. I feel like I have broken down one of the walls that was standing in the way of me becoming a better player. Most importantly was I was able to visit friends and make many new ones. I hope to visit again soon.

Mahjong 2010 Resolutions

Gemma — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:00:00 +0000

The major news outlet columnists are publishing their New Year resolutions for 2010 and I didn’t want RM.com to be left out.

Well… when I say all the major news outlets I mean the female columnists of the Daily Mail and their resolutions all involve either dieting or “learning to love my curves.” The choice of my reading material recently leads nicely to my first resolution…

1) Read Less Rubbish and Replace with Mahjong Strategy
I do not want to know how much time I spend reading crap. I need to spend more of that time reading mahjong strategy books. After my performance at the 2008 European Riichi Championship, I ordered a load of books from Japan to read up strategy. My game improved massively and I lost a lot of my bad habits. I need to refresh my game again.

2) Reach Less
One of the bad mahjong habits I have at the moment is reaching without thinking. This is a habit I’ve picked up from playing mahjong mostly online. I reach just so I don’t have to think or click to discard my tiles as I wait… That’s incredibly lazy and tragic. I need to consider when I’m reaching and use the strategy I’ve gained from applying resolution one.

3) Learn Chinese Rules
Promised myself this one for a while. This time I’m going to do it. I will print out a list of the hands and I will memorize it. No more wussing out.

4) Keep in Contact with Fellow Players More
Last year I was always so busy with work that I really failed at this. It really isn’t that much effort to chat and email people. But I’m sure you’ve all understood the feeling of being snowed under that even a few hundred words seems too much. This year with the recession continuing is for better or worse not looking to be so busy.

5) Improve my Maths
The product of the British education system, my mental arithmetic ranges from poor to terrible. It’s caused me much embarrassment at tournaments as I’m hunting for a calculator to perform a simple sum while my fellow Europeans can complete far more complicated sums in their head.

Not exactly the most life-changing resolutions but I did qualify that these were mahjong resolutions. Of course I’m maintaining all the usual female resolutions – exercise more, eat less chocolate, shop less. These I guess will last all of one week at least my mahjong resolutions are more realistic!

Konno`s Kolumn – Obaka Miko

admin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:00:35 +0000

For all those who enjoyed Konno’s column and may not have come across Obaka Miiko before, read on…
Benjamin Boas emailed me to let me know that he has translated some of this excellent manga himself with the permission of the artist. If you want to get hold of the English script, contact him via the forums or email him directly (you will need to remove the extra spaces added into that email address).

Konno’s Kolumn #9: Masayuki Katayama

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:00:27 +0000

Hello Mahjong players of the world, this is Shintaro Konno. Last I wrote about, “Golden One-Away,” the word created by the comic artist Masayuki Katayama, but it seems like the fact that I mentioned Masayuki Katayama was noticed by the readers. I asked Jenn, “Why do people outside of Japan know about Mr. Katayama?” She said it was because they read Obaka Miiko.

“Wow, really?” I was surprised to hear that it was read by people outside of Japan. I knew that Japanese comics and animations were popular outside of Japan, but I didn’t think that a comic like Mr. Katayama’s would be read overseas.

When I heard that, I remembered the time when I first got interested in the professional Mahjong community.

It’s already been 20 years since then. At that time I was working at a Mahjong parlor, spending my days working on my game, but I never put much thought into becoming a pro.
Then, one day I saw the comic, “No Mark Bakuhaitou” (No Mark Bomb-tile Clan), written by Mr. Katayama.

“No Mark Bakuhaitou” was a comic about the world of Mahjong pro’s with captivating characters named Bakuoka, Teppeki, Daisuke, Chabashira and Yatsuzaki playing each other and in the end Bakuoka defeats Teppeki. I read this piece and for the first time I was interested in the Mahjong pro world. I started to think that I would like to stand on a stage like that someday. After I thought that I had gained enough skill, I made my debut as a pro in 2000.

I am already in my 10th year as a pro, but when my junior pros ask me what a good book to read is, I always tell them to read “No Mark Bakuhaitou.”

I had one dream. That was that I would be a model for a character in Mr. Katayama’s comic.

There are many dreams that don’t come true, but this one did. In the comic, “Kotodama Mambo” there was a character named “Konjiki,” that was modeled after me. (It wasn’t the main character)

This is one of my favorite memories since I started my work as a pro.

In that way, I can say that Masayuki Katayama changed my life. All of his work is great. It might be hard to find outside of Japan, but if you can get a hold of it, I recommend all of his work. Be on the lookout.

See you next time.
Shintaro Konno is Grade 4 in the Japan Professional Mahjong League and runs mahjong lessons in the Kanto region. You can find him as a pro on Ron2 and Konami’s Mahjong Fight Club.

Jenn’s Corner: Interview

jenn — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:00:35 +0000

I honestly believe that JPML is the best mahjong league in the world. When I first joined in 2006, the JPML website was in desperate need of a makeover. About a year later, it got that makeover and now our site is booming.

One of the best things about the site is the contribution from the pro’s themselves. After each league, a player from that league writes a report. For D1, Garthe Nelson is currently reporting. For our special league, Kaoru Aisawa reported and Garthe and I just happened to be at the same table as her. I have to say that she wrote some very flattering things about us (in Japanese herehttp://www.ma-jan.or.jp/title_fight/tokushou_07_03_04.php).

There are reports on each event that JPML runs and there are also pro interviews. I was interviewed once right after joining the JPML. Sort of an introduction if you will. This time, JPML decided to interview me to celebrate the release of Reach Mahjong: The Only Way to Play. You can see the interview here (http://www.ma-jan.or.jp/interview/special_04.php) It was my second interview, but this time was way more fun than the first time.

The interviews for JPML’s website are done by pro’s and most people choose to be interviewed by someone that they are friends with. The first year I didn’t know many people at JPML. While the interviewer was nice, we spent 3 hours or so at a café and I got hungry. This time, Shintaro Konno (RM.com columnist too!) interviewed me and I chose a place that had caesar salad and hamburger steak. Since Konno already knows just about everything there is to know about myself and my mahjong career, the interview was comfortable and easy.

We chatted for a couple hours, ate good food and took some pictures. It also helped that my results have been steadily improving throughout the year and I was able to give the interview on a high point in the luck cycle.

The best part, though, was the support that JPML has given me. This interview was like a confirmation of my place in the league and many people in the league showed their support for me as well by buying and promoting my book. I’m glad that I joined JPML, it’s the best league in the world.

Back in the Saddle

Gemma — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:00:00 +0000

A while back I wrote that I was finding it difficult to get excited about mahjong. That period of my life is over and I am playing everyday again!

I’m not sure exactly what changed. Perhaps it was while making my travel preperations for the Red 5s tournament and the Cherry Blossom tournament. Or perhaps it was my mother asking me to teach her mahjong over the Christmas period. Either way, there hasn’t been many days recently when I haven’t played some mahjong.

Something is different this time though. Usually I don’t look or care about my stats but recently I’ve been checking my tenhou stats regularly to see how I’m doing.

(No. of battles) 対戦数: 176
(Average score) 平均得点: +5.375
(Greatest score) 最多得点: +76
(Average place) 平均順位: 2.381
(1st place rate) 1位率: 0.324
(2nd place rate) 2位率: 0.216
(3rd place rate) 3位率: 0.216
(4th place rate) 4位率: 0.244

It’s not looking too bad at the moment but one thing I’m starting to notice is that I most often get either first or last place. This week’s ranking doesn’t express that as well as previous rankings have, but you can see the general trend from the above.

I know if I don’t concentrate I lose and that can happen quite a lot on online mahjong. An email comes through or the phone rings etc. Often I play as a break to my workday but that doesn’t help my performance as I often lose when I’m tired. But the biggest factor is that I have a tendency to lose it and go on tilt… If I lose once or lose a hand that I feel I should have won, that’s it; I won’t win anymore in that session. I just starting making really stupid decisions. Reaching when I shouldn’t, playing aggressive when I shouldn’t and so on and so forth.

My tilt isn’t confined to online games though. I go on tilt in real games too. I can get frustrated really quickly when my tiles don’t come through for me. I need to work on that, and I think that’s going to be my aim for the next month or two – learn to stay calm and keep control of my hand. Otherwise, there is no way I’m going to improve in the 2010 tournaments.

The Chairman’s Opinion of Mahjong

Gemma — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Diverting snippet for those of you with an interest in mahjong and/or China’s history.

Not the most exciting commentary you’ll ever read in your life but… I thought it curious.

I’ve been reading “The Private Life of Chairman Mao” by Zhisui Li. I’d highly recommend it so far as an interesting and readable biography. I was reading a few chapters this morning and came across this section:

(Copied out and as this is only a small extract it should be within fair use!)

The author relates one of his first conversations with chairman Mao (page 82-83):

‘[…] He wanted to know if I played mah-jongg.

Mah-jongg is a gambling game that four people play with a set of 136 small tiles, and for many Chinese the game becomes addictive. My family had always disapproved of gambling, and since middle school I had regarded mah-jongg and opium addiction as two cancers eating away at Chinese society. I had never learned to play.

“Well, don’t look down on mah-jongg,” Mao chastised me. “With a total of 136 tiles, every player has to watch not only over his own pieces but all the other pieces on the table. You have to observe how the others are playing and put all this complicated information together to calculate the possibility of winning and losing. If you knew how to play the game, you would also understand the relationship between the principle of probability and the principle of certainty.”

Mah-jongg is indeed a game of strategy, and Mao was both China’s great strategist and a superb mah-jongg player. But I think his strategic brilliance came from other sources – from Sun Zi’s ancient Art of War, from his reading of Chinese history, from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But sharpening his strategic wit was not the only reason he played mah-jongg. His partners, I learned later, were usually pretty young girls. While his hands were busy with the tiles, he was also flirting with his partners, using his feet to touch this one’s feet or that one’s legs under the table.’

I don’t think I’ve read mahjong strategy so well described before.

Although I find it curious that these were Mao Zedong’s words. As far as my mahjong history knowledge goes, I believe that mahjong was banned after the Communist revolution as a bourgeois pursuit. This ban wasn’t lifted until around 20 years later… So it seems odd that the great leader of Chinese communism would have such praise for the game! The world is indeed full of contradictions though.

Anyway, I hope you found it interesting.

[“The Private Life of Chairman Mao” – Zhisui Li published by Arrow Books]

Tournament Structure

Gemma — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:00:00 +0000

For those of you who haven’t attended an EMA tournament it’s based on total score. There aren’t knockouts as in the World Series of Mahjong. But is it the best way?

I actually don’t pay attention to tournament structure much. I approach it like I did my exams, understand the criteria to succeed and then adjust my playing as best I can. I don’t really assess the rights and wrongs of the system.

Reading 0x23mahjong’s (drob) blog post (and the post that prompted his by TACOS – you can find the link on 0x23mahjong’s page) really opened my eyes.

Link here – http://0x23mahjong.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/ema-tournaments/

Read it yourself and you’ll find some very interesting commentary and I guess I’ve noticed the same thing myself subconsciously when I quickly hurry to check to see if I’ve been drawn against Sjef, my ultimate nemesis (and friend!).

To summarize the argument – if a good player gets “easier” tables to play, then the good player will win larger amounts of points compared to an excellent player who draws “harder” tables, receives fewer points and ultimately loses in the end rankings to the good player. 0x23mahjong argues that this isn’t fair.

I believe the crux of the issue is that there is still a large skill variation in the players that attend EMA tournaments, which means that this situation arises. If the players were organized into a league with levels, the extremes within each league would be minimal and “easy” tables would not be so much easier than “hard” tables so the results would not be affected so much.

However, we don’t have enough European players for a league yet. So what is to be done?

0x23mahjong seems to be quite a connoisseur of boardgames and tournament systems! He suggest that instead of keeping the points you won at the table, you should be awarded table points:

First place gets 10 points
Second place gets 7 points
Third place gets 4 points
Fourth place gets 1 point

The problem this system would pose is that some players would inevitably score the same points, especially in the limited number of tables played during an EMA tournament. 0x23mahjong suggests the Buchholz system. This system sums up the scores of the player’s opponents and favors those who have confronted better opponents.

It’s starting to sound horribly like an A-level maths problem to me right now. This suggestion does have some very sound logic to it though.

Is a change possible now though? On an individual level, a system change like this would effect how player’s approach tournaments. On the level of the EMA, would they have to discard the EMA ranking system scores that have been collected up until now to start this new system?

In the end, I think there will never be a perfect tournament system and each one will have its critics. I don’t think one system that works in one country will necessarily work in another. But I guess the question should be which system is the best fit for European mahjong.

I’m not sure of the answers to these questions. But please feel free to discuss in the forums. And big thanks to 0x23mahjong for his informative blog entry!

Journalism in Mahjong

Gemma — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000

MahjongNews really seems to be at the centre of controversy this month! Some more article comments seem to have triggered some interesting opinions.

ReachMahjong.com are obviously longtime friends of MahjongNews. We have an ad for MahjongNews at the bottom of the site and they link back to us. They even have a great news feed from our site on theirs right now. We seem to happily occupy slightly different roles as mahjong sites so we haven’t had to compete too much.

MahjongNews was at the centre of the recent controvesy about MahjongTime and whether it’s a reliable bearer of the internet mahjong flame. The article comment sections seems to have been witness to another argument. This time regarding the journalistic quality of the site.

The main issue in question seems to be the usage of articles from other mainstream internet newspapers (reuters articles etc.) that are then posted up to MahjongNews.com.

The arguments given so far are thus:

The reason to do it: It sums up interesting stories from the internet about my hobby that I can read all together in a nice digestible package. I don’t have to search for articles. Someone has done it for me. Yay!

The reason to not do it: There is no added commentary to the news article so it’s not contributing something new.

The thing to remember is that this sort of thing is done quite a lot on far bigger sites. Kotaku, for example, often post links to interesting articles from news pages, blogs etc and then simply summarize the story before the link. Their journalists are just people writing articles and reading the internet like us and then bringing it all together in an easy collection.

I suspect that is what MahjongNews is trying to achieve and in that case, they succeed. If they started posting too much commentary then RM.com and MahjongNews.com might find ourselves in competition!

Mahjong Travel Journal: Sado Island

jenn — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:00:43 +0000

If you’re a regular ReachMahjong.com reader, you’ll know that we have added a new contributor, James Johnston, to write book reviews each month. James resides in Japan, if you can call it that, on Sado Island. While in most of Japan the term “foreigners” means a person like Garthe or I, on Sado this term refers to all mainlanders as well. We ventured to Sado and spent the day letting Jamie drive us around this little island of the shore of Niigata.

We made it to the 8 am ferry and got to the island by 9, where Jamie was waiting for us with his car. Sado is famous for its red-crested crane, the Toki, which were originally gifts from China. We went straight to the Toki sanctuary and through the cold rain, barely saw a few beautiful birds. It was Jamie’s first time to the sanctuary too and it was a fun experience to get to know each other.

After some coffee to warm up, Jamie took us to the only 2 Mahjong Fight Club machines on the entire island. This was a bit of a puzzle since the minimum MFC machine order is 4 machines, but there was no one to ask questions to, so we sat down and played a few games. The pressure was on with Jamie watching me and I proceeded to get 4th, 2nd and 4th in the 3 games I played. Way to go Pro! (note the sarcastic undertones)

Luckily Jamie didn’t judge me too hard and we went to a great sushi lunch. I love sushi and Sado’s fish was exceptional. Unfortunately I’m never able to eat as much as I want to at sushi restaurants and even though I left with a full stomach, there was a lot more I wanted to try.

The next stop on our journey was some live mahjong. Sado has no free mahjong parlors and for all I know, no mahjong parlors. We played in an entertainment center that had karaoke and mahjong all in the same building. There were only 2 tables and the other one was full, so we sat at the other for a few hours and I took back my honor with at least one win in there! Jamie won a game or 2 as well and we all made a couple of new friends. What a great game we play.

The final stop of the evening before the last ferry (yes, it was still 6:30 pm) was yakiniku. I have never eaten so much good food in such a short time-span. We had about 20 minutes to stuff our faces before making the 7:30 ferry and stuff we did. Then it was a rush back off to the ferry and a 7 hour trip back to Tokyo.

Thanks to Jamie we saw a bit of Sado (which may be the same as most of Sado) and had some great meals coupled with some great mahjong. Hopefully he had a good time too. We look forward to seeing Jamie every month on ReachMahjong.com reviewing and translating Mahjong literature for us. You can also catch him on the forums and we’ll see you there.

Jenn’s Corner: Book Corrections

jenn — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:45:12 +0000

First of all, thank you to everyone who bought my book. It was a 2 years project and all of the positive feedback and support has been extremely encouraging. We all want more players and more places to play Reach Mahjong and hopefully this book will help take a few steps in that direction.
It is my first book and the first edition and inevitably, a few places were overseen in the edit. Thanks to the help of loyal readers 5 of these have been brought to my attention and I’ve addressed them all below. Hopefully this will clear everything up and make the book even more useful.

Page 202: Hand Point Quiz #5 Answer

The answer says 3 HP: Seat Wind (1), Full Straight (2), but there should also be a Half-Flush (3) for a total of 6 HP.

Page 202, Hand Point Quiz #6 Answer

The answer says 6 HP: Red Dragon (1), Green Dragon (1), Mixed Outside Hand (2), Small Dragons (2), but there should also be a Half-Flush (3) for a total of 9 HP.

Page 202: Hand Point Quiz #9 Answer
The answer says 4 HP: Concealed Self-Draw, Pure Outside Hand (3), but it should read: Concealed Self-Draw (1), Three Concealed Sets (2), Pure Outside Hand (3) for a total of 6 HP.

Page 202, Hand Point Quiz #14 Answer

The answer to Question #14 on page 76 has been omitted. The answer should be:

3 HP: Inside Hand (1), Peace Hand (1), 1 Lucky Tile (1)

Page 202, Scoring Quiz #5 Answer

The answer says 4,000 each (dealer: 40BP, 4HP)

It should be: 4,000 each (dealer: 40BP, 5HP)

Page 204: Quiz 8: Getting Ready #2 Answer

After the 5-dot should include the 8-dot, so the answer is:
1-dot, 2-dot, 4-dot, 5-dot, 8-dot, 9-dot

Page 205: Quiz 9: How Many Away 1 Answer
It says 2 Away from Ready, but it should be 1 Away from Ready.

Page 205: Quiz 10: Getting Ready #2 Answer

After the 2-crak and 3-crak should include the 5-crak, so the answer is:
2-crak, 3-crak, 5-crak, 8-crak, Green

Page 149-150 Chapter XII Exposed Hands:

There was a mix-up with the images on these 2 pages. The correct images are posted here.

1st Hand (p. 149):
Discards:Exposed: Hand: 2nd Hand (p.150):Discards: Hand: 3rd Hand (p.150):Discards: Exposed: Hand:

Not in the Mood…

Gemma — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:00:01 +0000

Is it wrong to not want to play Mahjong everyday?

I’ve been taking a bit of a break from mahjong recently. Partly I’ve been super busy with my house move. Partly I’ve been a bit too excited by Jedward on X-Factor (search for Jedward on Youtube if you want to find out). And partly I’ve just not been in the mood…

I think about playing sometimes and then I just sort of drift off and find something else to do. I’m not sure if anyone else experiences this, but sometimes mahjong can be a chore. It’s not that I don’t love mahjong. it’s just we’ve been together a long time now.

We’ve lost the excitement of discovering new things about each other. The strategy lessons are getting complicated and I need commitment if I’m really going to progress. But I’m starting to wonder if this is what I want. Maybe there are other games out there that I’d like even more… I just haven’t met them yet. Do I want to devote myself to mahjong and find I missed the game that I’d excel at because I’d not been playing around?

The analogy is ridiculous… I know… But I guess what I’m saying is that at the moment mahjong has lost the thrill for me. Maybe it’s because there aren’t any more tournaments to look forward to in the near future. Or maybe it’s healthy…

I do tend to go off things and come back to them later realizing what I was missing. (World of Warcraft is an infamous cycle of cancelling my subscription to only reinstate it a few months later.) I didn’t play mahjong for a stretch of a couple of months, but when I came back I played much, much better. I’d forgotten all the bad habits of my past. I came back to the game with a fresh mind. Perhaps we all need a break sometimes.

Anyway, I need to train at monopoly so I can beat my brother in the annual game my family have every Christmas!

Busy Week!

Gemma — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:00:01 +0000

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.

MahjongTime is a commercial venture and to ensure its commercial viability, it’s going to have to please the majority of its customers and be competitive within the market. (You’re never going to please everyone.) Looking at the poll on MahjongNews at the moment, http://www.mahjongnews.com/en/index.php/component/poll/20-playing-on-mahjongtime.html. They have some work to do. But a site update is promised before the year is out so perhaps that will bring players back to them.

Another interesting point raised, and not one that attacks MahjongTime, was whether EMA should even have a permanent relationship with one online mahjong provider as it may have an impact on the development of competitive websites offering a similar service. (I suspect individual tournaments will still need sponsorship.)

These are debates that may indeed restructure EMA’s relationships with businesses in the future. Either way, these will be interesting times for both the EMA and MahjongTime, and consequently us.

Finding Friends

Gemma — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:01 +0000

Follow up to my last column relating the emotional trauma of being without a mahjong club…

As some of your know, I now own my own house and am finally starting to put down some roots after many years of travelling. This should be perfect for me to finally get a mahjong club organized and some regular face-to-face playtime in…

I’d like to point out but there are so many obstacles!

1) Time – It is hellish to find a time when four of my friends are free and/or have babysitters. My job is notoriously fickle too and it’s sod’s law that if I finally find a time that suits all, I’ll suddenly get that job which will mean I can eat more than toast and butter for the next month.

2) Patience – Most people want to pay casually. Although I like to assert that mahjong is a relatively simple game (no more difficult to poker for example) it does still require an initial investment of time and concentration. People just don’t seem to be able to do this with all the demands of modern life.

3) Unfamiliarity – I know a lot of people who read this site entered mahjong from an interest in East Asian cultures (especially anime or manga) but in the Westcountry I’m very much in the minority for having lived abroad. It’s very difficult to convince people that mahjong is just a game like any other despite its origins from being somewhere very foreign. I think me and my interests are viewed as something of a curiosity most of the time…

4) Space – UK homes aren’t known for their size! I can barely fit in the few items of furniture I do own, let alone another square table for mahjong use. If I do organize something, it inevitably ends up with someone perched on a box. It doesn’t really lend itself to a comfortable play time.

I know that these obstacles aren’t the most horrific in the world but after several attempts you start to lose the will to expend more effort. I guess the easiest way would be to cuckoo off another club like the chess club (which I notice seems to have none of the above problems. I guess chess has that respectability you just can’t argue with) and build up a small fan base before kicking off alone.

I’ve also considered combining mahjong with language lessons.

I guess the problem is how to get people excited about mahjong. We really need it to feature prominantly in a popular TV show or film and I’ll have people banging on the door for me to teach them.

Until then… I’ll continue to be the curiosity amongst a sea of chess players…

The Lone Player

Gemma — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:00:01 +0000

Tina Christensen and Morten Anderson held an amazing riichi mahjong seminar this month after the Copenhagen Open. The first one of its kind in Europe and I hope something that will set a precedent for more…

It was especially useful for players such as myself that are alone in their hobby. I rarely get to speak with others about mahjong and certainly not peers. I certainly need criticism regarding my play style.

But not having a club or people to play with and discuss strategy has made me curiously closed about my tactics. I’m not sure why; I’m not very secretive about anything usually.

Of course, this isn’t healthy. I think I’d even be anxious to allow someone to watch a whole game of mine. I don’t know what I feel like I’ve got to hide…

Maybe it’s because I’m actually worried people will realize what a donk I am. I’ve improved my game a lot over the past year. I was really struggling to work out how to play my hands and I had a lot of crushing defeats. Of course, I still have those days but I also have the good days. Unfortunately, I still think those good days are down to pure luck rather than skill.

Am I selling myself short? Perhaps… After an impressive fail at the World Series of Mahjong I spent a lot of time playing and reading strategy books that I imported from Japan. I guess something must have gone in… The reason that I’m not feeling confident is because I don’t have the support of a club again.

This lack of friends is working against me in two ways! One is I’m not getting enough criticism from others and I’m also not getting enough support to be confident in my own strategy.

I guess the answer would be to set up my own club. It just seems so daunting to get all the materials together (sets, table, space) and potentially a bunch of complete beginners to teach (my teaching skills leave much to be desired).

Where is this article going… The moral is for those of you with clubs, make sure you appreciate them! They’re your key to success in mahjong!

Jenn’s Corner #34: The Quest

jenn — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:00:43 +0000

Suddenly being a professional mahjong player in Japan has a new requirement. You also have to be a professional or at least an aspiring Dragon Quest player. That’s right, Dragon Quest IX has been out in Japan for the past few months and that is what all mahjong players are doing between tournaments. Believe it or not these types of games are much more common to find in a professional mahjong player’s DS than, say, a game based on mahjong.

My good friend Kaori Shimizu practically has an adapter for the Nintendo DS installed in the palm of her hand, so I knew that she was playing at an early stage, but the idea of this really hit home when I went to the North Kanto league in August. In the morning we play the pro league and in the evening we have the amateur league. There is always about a 30 minute break in between the leagues and this time, every single pro (except Yukio Yoshida and myself) were playing Dragon Quest on their DS. Not only that, they were adventuring together in the game.

I went outside to take a nap.

Then last month on my regular trip to Costco, I joined the club. I bought Dragon Quest IX and my DS has not been shut off since. Even though I jumped on the bandwagon quite late in the game, everywhere I go there are at least a few people playing the game, including on the train. The great part about Japan is that everyone rides the train and everyone is always playing the same game. In Dragon Quest, you can pick up other “travelers” and get treasure maps from them using the wi-fi feature on the DS. I have about 100 people at this point. People that ride on the train daily have 10 times that many. RM.com columnist Shintaro Konno, has over 1000 travelers in his database.

True, this column has nothing to do with mahjong, but this is what the Japan Professional Mahjong League members are spending their time doing while not at the table. I would like to write more, but there are more monsters waiting to be beat!

In other news, the 2010 JPML girls’ calendar is on sale and we will be putting it on MahjongMart.com this month. Don’t miss out. There are 16 girls in this edition and all are players that appear on Konami’s Mahjong Fight Club.

Konno’s Kolumn #8: Golden One-away

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:00:44 +0000

Hello Mahjong players of the world, this is Shintaro Konno. Mahjong is a game in which the goal is to “win a hand.” In order to “win a hand,” you first have to get your hand to, “Ready.” Before “Ready,” you must get your hand to “One-away,” In Japan, there is a special “One-away,” that we call the “Golden One-away.” Today I would like to introduce this “Golden One-away,” concept to you.

The term “Golden One-away,” was coined by the comic book artist Masayuki Katayama, the most famous mahjong comic artist in Japan. So, what is the Golden One-away? I’m going to use hand examples to explain this.

This is the idea. If your next draw is a or a then you are Ready with a Full Straight (ikki-tsuukan) and if you draw a or a you will be Ready with Three Colored Runs (sanshoku). In other words, you are One-away with a shot at either the Full Straight or the Three Colored Run, two hands that cannot be completed together.

Let’s take a look at other hand cominations that can be included in Golden One-away hands. Look for these opportunities in your next game.

Full Straight and Outside Hand

Three Colored Runs and Two Double Runs

Also, even if you are already Ready, there may be hidden, “Gold” in your hand.

You may feel the urge to Reach with a － wait, but if you show a little bit of patience:

In this hand a will give you a Full Straight

Hands like these include Golden One-aways in the Ready hand.

Mahjong can be enjoyed in many ways by many different people. Looking for hands like this is another way to find enjoyment in this game. It really feels great when you achieve the hand that you have been aiming for. The secret to aiming for hands is catching small seeds like this. Search out these tiny seeds and grow them into big hands.

See you next time.

Mahjong Travel Journal: Fukuoka

jenn — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:59:55 +0000

I am just getting back from a short weekend in Fukuoka. I was going back to my roots. Fukuoka International Airport is the first place I ever landed in Japan and that was over 10 years ago. The last time I walked the streets of Tenjin was 8 years ago and now I was going back for my job. What a great thing.

I wish I had more time to reminesce. I wanted to eat the ramen at the famous Kyushu food stands and call up my host mom from all those years ago. Instead, I played Mahjong and it was good.

Kaori Shimizu and I met Saturday morning at Haneda airport. Our flight didn’t leave until 11 and we had to play for 7 hours at the Tenjin Blue Dragon branch, so it was going to be a tight schedule. It didn’t help that the JAL (ugh. ANA is so much better) flight arrived late and there was traffic on the road. We dropped our bags at the hotel and rushed off to the parlor.

Blue Dragon has a few special rules. They do not recognize the 3 Quads hand. But, the most interesting rule they have is the White Dragon Win.

One of the white dragons has a dragon face and the words “Blue Dragon” printed on it. After reaching, if you draw this tile at any time you can win on it. It’s also good for 2 extra chips. As you can imagine some people forget for a split second that it’s wild and accidentally discard it. It happens often enough that they do not implement the Missed Win rule for this special tile (unless you’re actually waiting for the white dragon). The hardest part about this rule for me is remembering to pon when the special tile is discarded and I have 2 more whites.

Lucky for me these rules suit me better than the Sakae rules (lost a lot there… the red 5-dots should NOT be a valid minimum hand-point!) and I had enough in my pocket at the end of the day to splurge on a foot massage at the hotel! But before that Kaori and I had dinner with a Buddhist priest from Oita, who also works at the parlors part-time.

Sunday morning was of course the ReachMahjong.com meet-up and I had my trusty laptop as usual. Since my puppy Luna ate my 2-prong charger and most hotels don’t work with the US 3-prong plugs, my plan was to head to McDonalds at 6:50 and get all charged up.

Only Kyushu McD’s aren’t the same as Tokyo… I would be getting no power there.

I booked it back to the hotel and made the chatroom by 7:10. I had only 35 minutes of juice left and spent it all on Osamu and Bunta, going over the final table from last week’s tournament. Sorry I disappeared guys!!!

After this there was time for a nap before the 11:00 checkout and I milked every minute of it. We were scheduled at the parlor at 11:30 but the big boss, the owner, had other plans.

I met him and Kaori in a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant and what was waiting on the counter for me but a tall, frosty brew. The traditional Japanese breakfast: beer, raw fish and soy sauce. I was in heaven. It seemed to work for my game too because I did even better Sunday than I did the day before.

The flight back was uneventful. We had ramen at the airport and I slept on the plane while Kaori played DragonQuest on her DS. Apparentely she picked up a ton of new people on her quest thanks to this trip. Whatever that means.

So in conclusion, I saw zero of Kyushu. I hope I can get back for fun and not for work, but I can’t really complain about travelling around to play mahjong. I love it and I can’t wait for the next trip.

Compromise

Gemma — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:00:38 +0000

Benjamin Boas wrote a fantastic article for Mahjong News and it’s had me thinking…

(Don’t worry, I’m fully aware that I’m starting to sound like a mahjong version of Carrie Bradshaw!)

If you haven’t read the article, please take a read: http://www.mahjongnews.com/en/index.php/columns/46-our-guest/191-benjaminboas-column.html

“Compromise” is quite an apt word for this week as well considering the action we’ve seen in the forums. I think it’s something we’re going to need more of as increasing numbers of players join our throngs. All of them from different backgrounds and walks of life. Manners, patience, understanding and, of course, compromise are going to be needed to keep us together.

The problems of bringing diverse people together within a national setting is difficult enough, but Europe is even more interesting as we’re seeing so many players travel from so many different places to play mahjong together. This is going to pose some problems as despite what the EU would like us to believe, we are different. We’re culturally different and sometimes manners can differ. These differences are inevitably going to present themselves in the high stress environment of the mahjong table.

I dread to think sometimes how much I adhere to the stand-offish stereotype that Brits have. (I know how much the lack of a formal queue enrages me…) How do people perceive me because of that? Do people get the wrong impression of me because of the way I act or speak? For example, it’s been interesting for me to graduate from a good British handshake, to full European hug and kiss on the cheek. I still feel I probably have this awkwardness about it… But I’m getting there!

Anyway, I’m straying from the mahjong table. I believe that it illustrates my point – we have to try new things. Some of them we’ll like and we’ll be better people for them; Others, we won’t, and we’ll have to learn to be patient and compromise.

I’ve drifted away from Ben’s original intent of how being polite may win you the game. However, I think it can be applied just as well to European mahjong as a whole, and how our group of players can be victorious as a whole.

Ben also called us European’s “nicest and most polite in the world”. (Thanks, Ben! We love you too!)

Let’s be proud of this. It’s a much greater compliment than any comment on our skill could be!

Maintaining it will keep our tournaments fun, pleasant and inclusive. Let’s make the mahjong world envious of Europe!

Konno’s Kolumn #7: Quads

admin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:00:39 +0000

Hello Mahjong players of the world. This is Shintaro Konno. Today I want to talk about Quads (kan).

First of all, let me introduce the types of Quad. There are 3 types:

1. Concealed Quad

2. Add-a-Quad

3. Open Quad

Let’s start with number 1, the Concealed Quad. You can declare this when there are four of the exact same tile in your hand. Something like this:

Draw:

You had 3 North tiles and drew the fourth one, so you can declare a Concealed Quad. You don’t have to declare this quad right away though. This fourth North tile is also a safe tile, so you may discard it right away, or discard the 9-bams first and calculate when would be best to declare the quad.

Draw:

In this situation (Add-a-Quad) you also drew the fourth 6-bam, but you don’t have to declare a quad right away. With quads there are good points and bad points.

The third type of quad, Open Quad, is possible when you have three of a certain tile in your hand and the fourth one is discarded.

Discarded:

As I wrote above, with quads there are pro’s and con’s. Let’s go over those.

Quad Pro’s

1. Increased Base Points

2. Increase Lucky Tiles/Dora

3. Increase number of immediate draws with supplementary tile

4. With Ready hands you can aim for the King’s Tile Win (rinshan)

5. For show

I am half-joking about number 5, but if you find yourself in a situation where you have 4 Lucky Tiles/dora, but your Ready is still far away, you can show off how many dora you have and let your opponents fold to you.

Quad Con’s

1. Opponents can use the new Lucky Tiles/Dora

2. The quad tiles cannot be changed or used, so your hand is smaller and it’s more difficult to adapt to other players

3. Add-a-Quad may result in a win for your opponent

4. Open quads ruin your hand if it was concealed before that

When I write it like this, the pro’s seem to out-weigh the con’s by a long shot for aggressive play and the con’s seem to promote more defensive play. So we can conclude that declaring quad is a move used more for offense.

Draw: Lucky Tile/Dora:

Let’s say that you had this hand on the third draw of a hand. I see many players quad this right away, and get stuck when their opponent declares Reach on their next discard. If you hadn’t quadded, East could have been a safe discard and there would be no extra Lucky Tiles/Dora. Maybe your opponent wouldn’t have even Reached

Of course, there is a small chance that the hand may have turned out like this:

Reach/Self-Draw: Quad Lucky Tile/Dora: Hidden Lucky Tiles/Dora:

If you learn how to quad effectively, your Mahjong will improve another level.

Until next time.

EMA Rules – Tina

Gemma — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:00:39 +0000

I’m sure a lot of people have already read Tina’s response to my article regarding EMA rules. But I thought it was worth posting on the front page. Hopefully this can lead to more discussion on an interesting issue that European mahjong faces.

If anyone else has a response or an opinion, head to the forums! Or perhaps you’d like to write an extended article yourself? If so, please send to gemma-at-reachmahjong-dot-com. If you’re worried about your English, I’ll help you so just get your ideas down!

(The only caveat is that I won’t accept any entries that attack individual players or members of the mahjong scene. Keep it diplomatic, try to understand the position of others, and your opinion will hold a lot more weight.)

From Tina:

EMA is certainly democratic, I would hate it if people think otherwise, and of course rules can – and should be – debated!

Before returning to the questions posed, let’s begin with a little background on the EMA riichi rules.

In early 2008 EMA established a riichi rules working group which consisted of Dutch and Danish players and some English speaking advisors from Japan including Jenn Barr and Ben Boas. The Dutch and Danish riichi player communities were and are the largest in Europe, to the best of my knowledge. And independently of each other we played virtually the same riichi rules, which it turned out were in some instances a bit oldfashioned compared to modern day riichi in Japan. We changed several rules to be more up to date, but some we chose to keep, full well knowing that they would seem outdated to the pro Japanese players.

Keeping Tanyao concealed was not due to a fear of change, or anything like that. It was motivated by the different play level and thus play style of pro Japanese and most Euro players. Expert players know when and how to use Tanyao: defensively for a quick win in order to keep a dangerous opponent from winning, or offensively if combined with e.g. several dora tiles. But if the field of players are less experienced they might simply go for the hand almost every time, in a way a pro player never would. It tends to spoil the fun of the game somewhat. In a way the concealed tanyao is there in order to increase the defensive element in the European riichi game.

Pro players really ought to have no problem changing between rule sets, but yes you need to remind yourself if you’re used to other rules. One day’s intensive training should do the trick. I recommend showing up a day early for tournaments, this usually allows you to play with the competitors, e.g. Friday night before the tournament the next day, as well as having time to meet and greet with new and old mahjong friends.

EMA is not ready to make changes to the riichi rules just yet; the issue has just been discussed. This is not a top down, stubborn, undemocratic decision; actually we also talk to players. In the Danish riichi community the concealed Tanyao is strongly supported. The concealed Tanyao is still well motivated, and rules should not be changed too often. But one day EMA might be ready for Open Tanyao.

Lastly I must say that I am strongly opposed to the idea of allowing different kinds of riichi rules sets in European ranked tournaments. It would kill the whole idea of a standard, unifying rule set. Standard rule sets is what allows mahjong to spread, and what allows us to play with each other across borders.

I hope this sheds some light on the process and the motivation of the rules.

Tina

(EMA vice president, President of Mahjong Danmark and author of the EMA riichi rules)

EMA Rules

Gemma — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:00:39 +0000

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!

Shin’s Eye

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:00:52 +0000

Another installment from Shin! This one is a bit complicated… Hold on…. Our next example is the psychology of a player that is revealed through their discards.

For example,

It’s their second draw and their hand looks like this.

(Yay! I’m close to winning already. Heh heh)

What should the player discard?
There is no difference in the risk between ５ and ⑤. But the vast majority of people will discard the 5. Why?

So in their second and third draws they’ll discard 5 and 5, they’ll draw 一　or 四 and reach. They will have easily have reached their hand and be waiting for 1 or 4. They believe that one of their opponents are sure to drop a 1 or 4 because it looks safe from the discards. Or at least that’s what they THINK is going to happen…

This is a camouflage technique. What I mean by “camouflage” is that if, for example, a lot of character tiles are discarded, then players believe it is more likely for their opponents to discard in this area.

In the past, if a player had 2233 and discarded 2 and 3 to wait on 1 and 4, this would b camouflage. However, this technique is so standard and the risk of 1 and 4 is well understood so this is no longer an effective camouflage.

Let’s get back to our example. Subconsciously (believing this to be their tactic) a lot of players will choose to discard the 5.

In other words, humans tend to similar behavior I guess.

I think it’s because we unconsciously think that we think the same as others. So why don’t we discard ⑤ instead of 5? If you have opponents who don’t think like the ones in this article, then you’ll win easily. In other words, the important thing is not to attack but to field. You can’t just discard a 5 and a 5 to make your opponents think 1 and 4 are safe. It just won’t work. In mahjong you have to think outside of the box.

A player could know it’s dangerous but discard the tile to take a risk as they have a dangerous hand. Or perhaps they’ll think that it’s safe and discard it. You just can’t chance it!

I only really got to touch on this topic and what I’ve discussed isn’t even the absolute truth! However, I hope that it all expanded your ideas on mahjong.

Thank you for reading my article! To leave you with food for thought…

“In life and in mahjong, people can take the same route and do the same thing but still not win. Players need to understand this and find their opponents blindspots if they are to find victory.”

Until next time!

Jenn’s Corner #33: Book it!

jenn — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:28:23 +0000

We finally have a date! On September 1st, 2009, my book, Reach Mahjong: The Only Way to Play will finally be available to purchase. You can already pre-order it and the e-copy of the book is already available as well!

http://www.shoplva.com/ProductDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=1556

It has been a long process, but an amazing experience and I have to say that I am extremely proud of what I’ve done. It may sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but I started writing this over 2 years ago and it’s hard to believe that it’s finally finished. I have all of you to thank for your ongoing support of this site and me personally for the past 3 years.

The support increases as time goes on too! My sister, in particular, has decided to help me with my promotion and started a campaign and a group on Facebook to challenge Stephen Colbert (from the Colbert Report) to a game of Mahjong! (Please join the group! If you have Facebook, please join the group “Send Jenn to battle Colbert!” and support us!

The book itself is a guide to the game from A to Z. I start with the most basic of rules and explain all the details of setting up the game, playing and scoring. The 2nd section is variations, focusing on 2 and 3-player games, since I know the biggest problem for many players is getting 4 players together on a regular basis. This section will give you ideas to work on your game even without a 4th. The final section covers strategy, including all the basics that you’ll need to get started in an experienced game, and get you on a winning path. There is also a detailed glossary, suggesting English terms for all of the Japanese equivalents and explaining the words that you may have heard, but never found the definition for. Finally, in the appendices you’ll learn all of the basic manners that are suggested for quick and trouble-free games.

My book was published by Huntington Press, where Anthony Curtis and Laurie Shaw helped me every step of the way and created a great piece of work. I hope that you will all be able to say that this completes the trifecta, and there is now a competent book available for all major forms of Mahjong (referring, of course, to Tom Sloper’s book on the CO and American rules of the game).

You can buy the book directly from Huntington Press’s site, Shop LVA here , or find it on all of the respective Amazon sites.

I worked hard on it and I want to thank all of you again for all of your help and support. It has been great sharing this experience with you the entire way and I know I’ll continue to look to you for future projects. You’re amazing and wonderful! See you guys on the forums!

The Linguistics of Mahjong

Gemma — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:00:39 +0000

The world of mahjong is now multi-lingual. How do we face the problems that occur when players don’t share the same language?

This was a topic I discussed with quite a few players at the recent Austrian Riichi Championship but it’s not the first time it’s been on my mind.

The upcoming UK tournament in Guildford has stated that it is English only. Some may think that this excludes people and may accuse the English of that thing we are so good at in assuming the universality and superiority of our home language.

I’d like to dispute this opinion.

English generally gets a bad rap for forcing itself into almost every corner of the world for good or bad. However, not including English as a main tournament language is even more exclusive.

If a tournament organizer restricted their event to Spanish only, you can imagine the turn out!

Whether we like it or not, more people speak English or at least have a working grasp of English. We can’t change cultural history now and we may wish that Esperanto had got a stronger grasp in Europe, but it didn’t. Facts are facts. Most people in Europe have a good grasp of English and in more cases than I care to admit, better English than native speakers!

The other issue with using non-shared languages is that there is the fear of collusion on the table. Let’s imagine that I go to Thailand to play in an international competition and the three players I’m on a table with all speak Thai and do so all through the game. How do I not know they’re not helping each other?

The World Series of Mahjong tackled this by actively encouraging as little conversation at the table as possible – A rule that most players stuck to. There was little conversation and multi-lingual assistants checking the tables.

I wouldn’t like to suggest enforcing minimal conversation on the European tables. Our tournaments are comfortable and relaxed; losing that would be a great loss.

So what is the answer? Fortunately, I think part of the solution lies in riichi mahjong’s routes – Japanese. I’m not saying we should all spend a few years learning Japanese so that we can be fluent before we go to a tournament. But we can all certainly learn hand names and basic game terms. Perhaps European players could even learn to count in Japanese!

This would allow us to all play in Japanese. Our home languages would not matter anymore! Of course, we wouldn’t be able to escape the fact that announcements and stuff will have to remain in English but at least on the table players of all English abilities will be able to join in with the confidence that they will understand exactly what is going on. It could be a universal platform for us all to progress mahjong in Europe and beyond!

RM.com Interview: Raphael Hobbinger

jenn — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:45:23 +0000

ReachMahjong.com caught up with one of the founding members of Kasu, the popular Japanese game club in Austria, Raphael Hobbinger. Raphael is currently studying in Niigata, a prefecture just North of Tokyo, and will be there until September learning Japanese and honing his Mahjong skills. He took the time to answer a few questions for us about his accomplishments and goals in Mahjong and his studies.

ReachMahjong.com: What’s your best finish in a tournament?
Raphael Hobbinger: I´m sorry but I can´t remember *laugh*. I only played 3 tournaments so far and each one I was in the middle, but I´m looking forward to play a tournament after my stay in Japan.

RM: What are your goals as a mahjong player?
RH: To become capable to play only mangan or more. I don´t want the small hands anymore and furthermore to get a view for the development of hand at the beginning of a round. You know, just to look at the hand and say “Okay this will be a pinfu tanio and ippeko” for example

RM: What are your goals as a mahjong event promoter
RH:To get as much as possible players to the game. In europe only a few people know this game and I want to make it big. Furthermore I want to get the good players from Japan attracted to Europe and the scene, so that one day maybe we will have a world tournament without money and small entry fee, where only the best of the best can win and everybody has fun.

RM: What do you hope to accomplish by studying in Japan?
RH: In mahjong or my life ? Its hard to say but I wanted to get a new point of view to my life and the experience to be far away from home. For my mahjong one of my goals is to play at least one tournament in Japan and get under the top 10

RM: Have you had the chance to play with many Japanese mahjong players?
RH: Yeah ! I play twice a week in a non rating parlor in Niigata and at Mahjong Smile in Tokyo when I´m in Town. Its everytime a nice and relaxing atmosphere.

RM: Do you think your mahjong has improved in Japan?
RH: Definitely. All the small things that matter in Mahjong you can only learn in Japan nowadays, because europe don´t have the same style or the same level in mahjong. So for everybody who wants to become good I recommend to come to Japan, at least for a month and play the hell out of it

RM: What do you plan to focus on when you get back to Austria?
RH: University and music. Of course I will play mahjong too but after this trip I need a rest and will only play tournaments I think. As I mentioned before on such a trip you learn much about yourself and now I know what I want to do in the next years. I think that mahjong will leave the focus but will stay a part of my life.

RM: What are Kasu’s goals and your goals with Kasu?
RH: In the future I want to share my knowledge about Mahjong, that I gathered in japan and try to make mahjong even popular in Austria. Maybe I will organize two tournaments in the future in austria, but we need to discuss that and furthermore I want to promote other games like shogi or Koi Koi.

Shin’s Eye 7 Part 3

admin — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:00:46 +0000

Part 3 of Shin’s Eye. Make sure you check out the previous installments! Today I want to continue to talk about opponents who are intermediate or higher and the signals that may unwittingly reveal their hands.

Intermediate players and above don’t like to think that they’re bad at Mahjong and can act very proud. They’ll throw their tiles with purpose to show their opponents that they know what they’re doing and they meant to do it.

For example, an opponent may look ready, but our confident player also has a good hand. He’ll draw a dangerous tile but will decide to discard it but will do so with increased speed and purpose (this is against manners). The following tiles will also be discarded quicker. As far as he’s concerned, he’s thinking “I have a good reason for throwing this dangerous tile. I should show this. I don’t want the other players to think that I’m a beginner and don’t know that it’s a dangerous tile.” However, this sort of play may make another player think, “Perhaps he’s showing me that he has a high hand. I should be careful not to throw to him. Or if there is a chance, I should ron no matter how cheap my hand is.” This will be a disadvantage to our confident player as his opponents change their strategies.

Or even worse, one of our confident player’s opponents may call a discarded white dragon when no other dragons are out. Our player will behave as I just described (this is the important point) and discard the green dragon soon after (with purpose). When the player that called for the first white dragon calls for this green dragon, our confident player will nod.

By doing this, he is basically telling everyone that he has the red dragons in his hand. If they are a fairly experienced player, they would be careful of a Three Big Dragons hand. If he didn’t have the red dragons, he would have been much warier of the green dragon and it would make the hand much tougher.

Of course, the person who called for the white and green dragons, could have only had a maximum of one red dragon. From the confident player’s reactions he would be able to see that he should give up on Small Three Dragons. Perhaps he would not call the green dragon at all and instead change his hand. Through this, the other two players would be able to confirm that Big Three Dragons was not in play, and although they may be wary of the player who threw the green dragon, they would proceed with their own hands.

This is pretty high-level play, (of course, giving away hints like that is against the rules), but the majority of intermediate players will behave pompously to their detriment.

Beating people who behave like this is easy with theory. Please, don’t be one of those proud players!

Jenn’s Corner #32: What in the World Was I Thinking?

jenn — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:00:35 +0000

My mahjong decisions are improving drastically as time goes by. I went from a long, hard losing streak to an upbeat and frankly, fun winning streak.

As of now I have scored positive in every session of every league I’ve played in this season. Thats 3 pro league sessions, 2 pro North-Kanto league sessions, 1 open North-Kanto league session and 1 womens league session. There are still a number of sessions to go but this is still a consisty that merits celebration.

That celebration could take the form of some drinks, a nice dinner, maybe even a weekend away. But the impulsive degenerate that I am, I took to celebrating by getting pets for my pet.

I now have 2 puppies and a kitten. They are all babies, they are all adorable, and they all poop.

What in the world was I thinking?

But now these animals are part of my family and this is the hand I must play.

It’s the same in Mahjong. While you will ideally always plan out your hand, your points and your opponents, sometimes you are going to make a decision hat will merit the phrase,

“What in the world was I thinking?”

Just like in life, with experience these moments will diminish, but it’s important to pay attention to these situations and learn from them.

Have you ever ponned a dora/lucky tile without a glimpse of a hand point? Ever gotten ready only to realize your first discard makes you furiten/missed win?

These things happen and beating yourself up over them won’t do you any good. One good punch in the face should be sufficient.

After that look at your hand, look at the board, and form a new strategy. Most likely you’ll want to start folding at this point.

The priority is to get through this hand without injury and the next goal is to think twice before you make that mistake again. That’s why Ron2s playback feature is so useful. You can analyze these situations and avoid making the same mistakes in the future, without beating yourself up during the hand.

For instance, I will avoid taking my paycheck directly to the pet shop on the very day I get it in the future.

But for now I’ll take care of my babies and pray they start to get along with each other.

In other news the book is done! Edited and shipped off! You’ll definitely see promotions when everything is ready to come out and I hope that you’ll all support me and the site and give it a read! I’ve been working really hard on it and it will definitely be a huge step towards our goal of a world of Reach! I love you guys!

Mahjong in Europe

Gemma — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:00:40 +0000

It’s come a long way. Although I’m a relative newcomer to the European Mahjong scene, I’ve seen a lot of changes. I guess the most important for ReachMahjong.com is the rapid expansion of Reach Mahjong in Europe. When Jenn first started introducing me to Mahjong in Europe and the world, the predominant rule set was Chinese Official. Chinese Official is still the most widely played but Reach is getting there and there are increasingly more tournaments held in an increasing number of countries.

My first game in Europe was at the European Riichi Championship 2008 in Hannover. I was amazed at the number of people attending and it was my first chance to meet other Mahjong fans. It was a great experience. Although my experience playing in Asia hindered me in some respects as there were a lot of differences in playing style and mannerisms. Since then I have attended three other tournaments, each better than the last. I’ve formed friendships and now I eagerly await a new tournament on my calendar. It’s exactly how a hobby should be!

I am sad that I didn’t get to be there in the beginning. I feel my contribution to Mahjong is so insignificant when compared to those who actively participate in the European Mahjong Association and the founders of MahjongNews.com. I’m sure there are many others in clubs across Europe whose names I don’t even know that supported the founding of Mahjong in Europe. What these people built was a firm framework for Mahjong to grow and develop.

Mahjong is becoming more than a few people that meetup over their summer holidays. It’s far more than a group of internet friends – Things that may fizzle out over time. European Mahjong has a very bright future. Our player’s are going from strength to strength and even someone like myself, who is far from expert, can see that the skill of the European players is coming along in leaps and bounds.

The Riichi Seminar in Copenhagen this year is going to be another milestone for this wonderful progress. Although you can hear the muttered strategy conversations in the 15 minute breaks at tournaments, now we can bring our ideas and strategies into open debate. We can learn from each other and ultimately, take on the world!

Reach’s success in Europe is down to the sheer dedication of its devotees. The distances people are prepared to travel, the money that they are prepared to pay is amazing. And let’s not forget the organizers who devote huge amounts of their time and effort into organizing these tournaments. Every tournament I have attended in Europe, no matter how small or big, has been immensely enjoyable. I guess that’s where all the European Mahjong players are winning – We’re all having a great time!

Pro Interview: Naoki Setokuma (part 2)

jenn — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:41:03 +0000

Last time we started our discussion with JPML A-Leaguer, Naoki Setokuma. You can check out the beginning of the interview here. This time we’ll learn about Mr. Setokuma’s experience in the Mahjong SuperCup and his thoughts on Mahjong outside of Japan.

RM: What made you decide to play in the first ReachMahjong.com Cup?
NS: I saw the website after the World Series of Mahjong last year and was really impressed by the prize money. When I heard that I could play in a qualifier for an overseas event using JPML B-Rules I thought that was great. I knew I wouldn’t win in the Mahjong SuperCup, but I thought this would be a great experience to get out and overseas.

RM: So you went with no hope of winning?
NS: I think it will take about 3 times of this experience to make it to the finals. Especially after trying it out, I really felt the language barrier and was kind of engulfed in the entire atmosphere. But, I think it was a really great experience.

RM: What did you learn from that experience.
NS: I really thought that in order to go there and play, you need to learn the language. I also think it is important to go to the place where the rules are being played and practice with the locals that are used to these rules. But everything is like that.

RM: The WSOM will be at the end of November this year. We’ll have another Riichi tournament, what do you think about the spreading popularity of the Riichi rules?
NS: I really think they are amazing. Garthe said this once, but in many mahjong rules all players must pay, even if another player has discarded the winning tile. I just can’t accept that. I also have a hard time accepting rules that don’t have a Missed Win (furiten) rule. I think that in order to make things popular in the world it’s important to spread them through America.

RM: What do you think of the Chinese Official Rules?
NS: When those rules first came to Japan, everyone had a problem with the lack of a Missed Win (fuirten) rule. There is no reason to read your opponents hand, you can just play your own hand and go straightforward. This feels very strange. If there is no chance for defense, and I think this is the same with poker, it’s not really about skill.

RM: I think many people around the world also enjoy the defensive aspect of the Riichi rules. One thing that a lot of people notice is the strict manner rules in Japanese Mahjong, what do you think about that?
NS: In pro competitions I think that it’s very important to have strict manners. That might be the most important thing. In open tournaments and overseas I think it’s OK to relax those rules a bit. Golf competitions also have many manner nuances and I think it’s a sign of serious competition.

RM: You’re wearing a suit today. We’re used to seeing you in a suit at JPML tournaments, is this how you always dress?
NS: Well, since I was being interviewed today I figured you would take a picture, so I thought I should dress for the occasion.

RM: What did you think of Hong Kong?
NS: It reminded me a lot of Japan.

RM: How about Macau?
NS: It reminded me of how Japan used to be.

RM: What kind of food do you like?
NS: I used to like to eat Korean Barbeque a lot but lately I haven’t had the appetite for it quite so much. I really like ramen.

RM: Any other good stories to tell?
NS: When I was in Fukuoka, I was staying in a high school dormitory and my friends and I would sneak out to play mahjong. The parlor we went to was run by an old man and women and people from our dorm would fill the tables. We all climbed down the wall in the middle of the night and go to the parlor. That old man and woman would fall asleep so we would work the desk for them and bill their customers.

All of us had just learned mahjong and we were horrible, but we were great at pachinko and slot machines, so we would play those all day long and gamble our money all night at mahjong.

RM: You write a popular blog. What got you started with that?
NS: When you look at JPML’s website and Kindai Mahjong, there are lots of things that pro’s write, but it seems very controlled to me. I thought if I started a blog then I could have freedom to say what I wanted. Then I started writing and I realized that there was a lot of stuff I couldn’t write in blogs…

RM: Do you have any mentors?
NS: I’ve watched all of my elders and lost to them throughout the years and that’s how I studied. I can’t say that there was ever one player that taught me how to play. I really learned on my own.

RM: What goals do you have?
NS: Every pro wants to win the JPML Phoenix Cup. That is the most prestigious and the hardest to get. Everyone puts in years to achieve that status and honor and that means that it has great value. At one time 4 years ago I thought I had it. I was in the finals with a lead, but in the end I was overtaken.

RM: Any final words for our readers?
NS: The most important thing in Mahjong is the order of discards. You have to pay attention to this. Jenn, you should play in as many tournaments as you can and get the opportunity to make a final table. That is an important experience and will make you a stronger player.

Naoki Setokuma is in the JPML A1 League. He won the first-ever ReachMahjong.com Cup and represented Japan in the Mahjong SuperCup in Macau, December, 2008. He makes appearances as a featured pro on Mahjong Fight Club and Ron2.

Konno’s Kolumn #6: Multiple Waits

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:00:14 +0000

Hello Mahjong players of the world. I am Shintaro Konno. I want to ask all of you what kind of environment you are playing Mahjong in. If, like in Japan, there are many spots where you can play live games then there is no problem, but I think there are many of you playing most of your Mahjong online.

Playing online is extremely comfortable. You can play wherever you want, listen to whatever you want and drink whatever you want while you play. If you get tired you can quit at anytime, if you’re half asleep during the game no one will know or care.
However, that does not mean that playing live is boring. There are a lot of great things about playing live. Since your opponent is right in front of you, you can enjoy a live conversation and even shake that person’s hand. You can read your opponents hands from their expressions and movements and put pressure on them, as well as feel pressure yourself.
When playing live there are some things you have to be careful of, since you don’t have the same support from the game as you do online.
For example if you are ready with this hand:

Online the computer will realize you are waiting for - and let you know when it is discarded, but live you have to understand this yourself, on your own. If you have a hand like the one above it’s not very hard, but how about this hand?

Even us pro’s get a bit confused if we are suddenly faced with a hand like this. (We don’t get lost if we have been playing through the hand from the beginning, but at first glance it’s tough for anyone)
Hands like this that have a lot of waits are called multiple waits. Conquering multiple waits like this hand is the key to getting one step closer to becoming a strong live player.
Now, how can you actually verify what the above hand is waiting for? In order to find the multiple waits you need to split up the hand.
Reach Mahjong is a game in which you try to make 4 sets and a pair, so first of all let’s separate the pair.
　　　　
First, we found the 5 wait. However, there is another in the hand already, so we can also see the hand this way:
　　　　
Here we have learned that the hand has waits. Next, let’s look at 1 as a set instead of as a pair and divide the hand.
　　　　
Now we have found the - wait as well. We’re almost there.
Next let’s separate the hand the opposite way:
　　　　
In the end we revealed a hidden wait. It was hidden quite well, but by dividing the hand, we were able to find it.
After this verification, we have determined that the hand is waiting for . By following this pattern to divide the hand it wasn’t too difficult.
Here are some tips to help you check your multiple waits.
1. Start by taking a pair that can be used as your head.
2. Take out sets starting with the smaller numbers.
3. Next take out sets starting with the higher numbers
That’s all you need to do.
Finally, let’s end with the most waits possible in a multiple wait hand. Divide up the hand and find these waits.

See you next time.

Shin’s Eye #6: Mahjong Psychology and Philosophy (part 2)

admin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:00:32 +0000

These are things that apply when you are playing against a beginner. Since they are just starting, this player will not have the idea of hiding their thoughts and emotions, making it very easy to catch these things. This time I will cover these standards and next time we will go over intermediate players, and then advanced.

For example, in the middle of a hand, one player’s draws and discards may slightly speed up or slow down. So, how can you catch this phenomenon?

It is common in Mahjong, especially for beginners, to think about what they will do after they draw a tile. What I’m getting at, is that with a difficult hand, the time after the draw will be longer and if it is not difficult it will be shorter.
However, speed in hand movements of draws and discards themselves are not based on this. So what is it?
There are a few reasons.

First of all, when direct discards of drawn tiles becomes faster or slower, there are a few conclusions we can make.
The first one is that the player is feeling stress.

This stress is:
A. No good tiles are coming and they are frustrated with this hand that is going nowhere
B. They have a good hand, maybe 3 Lucky Tiles (dora) and are 1-away from Ready, but the last tile they need isn’t coming and they are getting frustrated with that.

Both of these things may cause a player to draw and discard faster than normal.

However, A and B are complete opposite situations. A has a bad hand and B has a great hand. How can we tell which is which?

First, if this is a player shows this stress so easily, they will show opposite emotions as well. When they draw a good tiles, they will have a reaction that shows this. In the situation of A, above, even if some good tiles come, it will take much longer for this reaction to appear than it will for B. But with B, the reaction when a useful tile is drawn is a complete 180. The draws that were quick before become much slower. I’ll explain this more in the next section, but this is because the player wants to call another player’s tile to make their hand Ready (especially if they have 3 Lucky Tiles/dora), so they are worried about the other discards as they play. Specifically, they can pon or chow the tiles of the player to their left, so inevitably they will have to double-check these discards and the speed of drawing their next tile drops.

On the other hand, if they are Ready, then they will be looking for their winning tile and there will often be one beat after the player to their left discards before they start to draw the next tile.
This timing is prevalent even in very strong players. That is because humans see the tile with their eyes and this message is sent to the brain before a decision is made and that message is sent to the hands that will be drawing the tile. As humans, this second of thought can’t be helped. The way to hide this is to make sure that each draw includes enough time for double-checking the previous player’s discard and using the same timing for each draw. However, if each draw is very slow, that is bad manners, so you need to practice this and make your confirmation as short as possible. This is human body physiology.

Many intermediate players go from this step to slowing down their discards to match the draws. They think that if only the draws are a bit slower then all of the things above will be noticed by their opponents.

This is the most important part of this article. When a person is trying to hide something, then that person will show some sort of reaction. Mahjong is a game with a lot of hidden pieces. Because of this, it is important to think of ways to hide things from your opponents and find things that they are trying to hide.

Once you can do this effectively, it will be a key to winning much more often.

We brushed on the topic a few paragraphs ago, but the change of speed of draws and discards are usually because there is a tile that the player wants to call for. This is a bit technical, but when a person’s draws are slower than usual from the very first discard, there is a very high possibility that they want to call for a tile to pon or chow. At this stage in the hand Honor tiles are the most common. You need to catch this and take the proper care by squeezing tiles you think may be useful to them.

Shintaro Kamimura is in C2 League in the Japan Professional Mahjong League and is Grade 2. He runs multiple parlors in Tokyo and is very involved in the ReachMahjong.com Cups.

Pro Interview: Naoki Setokuma (part 1)

admin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:37:51 +0000

It’s been a while but we are finally back in the groove with a featured interview. This time we sat down with Naoki Setokuma, JPML A-Leaguer and the winner of the first-ever ReachMahjong.com Cup. Join us as we take a dip into Mr. Setokuma’s journey from an after-school gambler to a top-level pro.

ReachMahjong.com: Hello and thank you for taking the time to join us for this interview. Let’s get right into it with the story of how you started playing Mahjong.
Naoki Setokuma: Well in high school my friends and I played Card Mahjong at school on our lunch breaks, but it wasn’t long before that wasn’t enough for us, so we called around to all the Mahjong parlors until we found one that would let us in wearing our school uniforms.

RM: Couldn’t you just change out of the uniforms into normal clothes?
NS: What a pain, no, our way was definitely better. We must’ve called a hundred parlors before we found one that would let us in.

RM: Where did you go to high school?
NS: That was in Kumamoto on Kyushu island. We went there because my dad was transferred.

RM: Aren’t job transfers pretty rare in Japan? Especially to someplace as remote as Kumamoto?
NS: My dad was part of the Self-Defense Forces, so we moved around a lot. We moved about once every 2 years. I’ve lived almost everywhere from Aomori on Honshu all the way down to Kumamoto on Kyushu. I went to 4 different elementary schools.

RM: How did you end up in Tokyo?
NS: I came here for college. Well, I actually spent 3 years here before I got into college. In the end I graduated but I have to say that I spent most of my time in mahjong and pachinko parlors.

RM: What did you do after college?
NS: I got a job right away. I was already 25 when I graduated. That year I played in the JPML Masters tournament as an amateur.
RM: What did you think of that?
NS: I made it to the quarter-finals (the final 16), and I noticed that the pro’s got to come into the tournament later, without all the qualifiers that I had to go through. I thought that I should become a pro too so that I could take that easy-street.

RM: How did you balance that with work?
NS: It wasn’t a very big company, there was just one owner and one office. After working there for a year I was doing really well and I was due to get a promotion. The problem was that if I took the promotion, my weekends would be filled with golf and meetings with clients and I wouldn’t be able to play mahjong anymore, so I quit.

RM: When did all of this happen?
NS: I would say about 10 years ago.

RM: What made you decide to go with the Japan Professional Mahjong League?
NS: I watched the league tournament and all of the famous players in Kindai Mahjong and writing books like Takeo Kojima, Masayoshi Ara and Ando were part of the JPML. If I was going to be a pro, I thought I should join the league with the strongest pro’s.

Shintaro Konno: I thought the same thing when I joined. We all wanted to beat the strongest pro’s and were absolutely sure that we could.
NS: At that time there weren’t games like Mahjong Fight Club, so my main goal was to join a league where I could play against the strongest players.

SK: Once you join you realize that you’re not as good as you thought you were, but most of us wanted to join because we thought we were the best and we wanted to prove it by beating the best. That’s why we chose JPML.
NS: It’s so embarrassing to remember how confident and arrogant I was that I was the best when I really still had a lot to learn.

RM: So what happened after you quit your job and put everything into Mahjong?
NS: There was a parlor in Shinjuku called Gofu and I was offered the job as the parlor manager so I did that for 2 years. After that I got sick from overworking and was in the hospital for 2 months. I realized that working as a member in a parlor was too hard on my body.

RM: But as a professional mahjong player there aren’t a lot of other options. What did you do after that?
NS: Yuko Ito told me about a parlor in Hachioji that was looking for a store manager and he told me that I should work there, so I did that for 3 years. I ended up quitting when it changed owners to someone that wasn’t connected to JPML. After that I basically just hung out for 2 years before I started working as a prop player at a parlor in Nakano.

RM: Is that what you’re doing now?
NS: Yes. I realized that was the best situation for me and it’s not too demanding.

RM: What is your schedule like now?
NS: Now I work as a prop player on weekdays and head out to play Mahjong Fight Club after I’m done. At night sometimes I play on Ron2 and on weekends I’m usually running JPML tournaments and events. I usually get a day off each week.

We will continue our interview with Naoki Setokuma next week. In the meantime, you can catch him on Mahjong Fight Club, Ron2 and all major JPML tournaments.

Mahjong Travel Journal: Kanazawa (part 2)

jenn — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:57:07 +0000

I started my journey last time up to Kanazawa to visit JPML’s Kourin’s parlor. You can read part 1 here.

Now, on to the tournament and the games!

After a good night’s sleep I was back in Kanazawa at Nankuru’s sister parlor, Gal-nan, a parlor that employs only girls. This time it was a tournament, the monthly tournament for Kanazawa and Toyama players. Many of the JPML pro’s living in Kanazawa play and the parlor and tournament is run by JPML’s Ms. Kourin.

I got this job from Kourin and her associate. They were in Tokyo and took the time to come visit me at Fairy. It seems the idea was to get to know me and invite me out to Kanazawa, so we played a few games together and I gave them my card. Kourin e-mailed me right away and we arranged a time when I could come up as a guest, which happened to be last weekend. The only problem was the time.

Sunday morning’s tournament was to start at 11am and so if I was there by 10:30 it would give me ample time to get ready and say hi to everyone. Or so I thought. Thanks to a bit of traffic I was set to arrive at 10:45. And then the call came at 10:30. Thinking I would still make it in time for the tournament and they were just worried, I answered the phone and let them know my status.

Only the tournament was to start at 10:30, not 11am.

I had never been to the parlor and now besides being late I also risked getting lost. Lucky for me the parlor was easy to find.

So after parking in a spot NOT belonging to the parlor (which ended up not being a problem) I rushed out of the car and up the stairs, frantically searching for this door that I had never been through.

When I walked in it was like a bad nightmare, the kind where you show up late for a test or a big presentation and you’re naked and everyone is staring at you. Luckily I wasn’t naked but the rest held true. The only open seat in the house was saved for me and everyone else was ready to go, staring at the door, waiting for the only white girl pro in their league to show up from Tokyo.

If any of them had showed up at the same time as me it would have been a penalty.

Luckily I had confirmed the incorrect time with the manager of Nankuru the day before, so all was forgiven quickly enough. I quickly took off my boots and took my seat with the others.

We played 4 games of JPML A-Rules and despite my great run since last month, especially with A-Rules, I couldn’t pull it together this time. I didn’t get last place though, so I, as the guest, got to present the 2nd to last player with the bag of rice he won, and the cash prizes to the top 3.

I am choosing to blame my performance for the day on lack of breakfast.

I spent the afternoon and evening playing in the free games at the parlor and did much better than the day before. Not to say I did great, but it was a fun time and I ended up with more than I started with.

Since I had to be at Fairy by 10 the next morning, the 6 hour drive home was brutal, but Luna was happy in her cage in the back of the car and I got some naps in and took advantage of the weekend discount.

All in all it was a great trip and I can’t wait until they call me up to Kanazawa again. I also can’t wait to find out where Mahjong will take me next!

Mahjong Fairy Report: May

jenn — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:35:13 +0000

My time for running a mahjong parlor has come to an end. It was a short run, but I learned a lot. I did have a good time, but I can’t say I’ll miss the hours, the losing, or the wages.

Mahjong Fairy: Hachioji branch will be closing its doors on May 31st and reopening them on June 1st as Fusion: a speed Mahjong parlor that allows smoking. The speed Mahjong concept is starting to catch on throughout Tokyo and now they’re going to give it a try in Hachioji. The new pro faces on the parlor will be Rumi and Aki Nikaido.

Fairy was having trouble making enough to cover expenses, despite our loyal and non-smoke-loving customers. With all of the parlors in Hachioji (there are a lot!) there didn’t seem to be enough room for us. Hopefully Fusion will find a different market niche and hold on.

The good news is that my time will be freed up for Mahjong Fight Club, ReachMahjong.com and this year’s World Series of Mahjong, where ReachMahjong.com will once again be hosting the Reach/Riichi event. My first order of business is to open up our Japanese site (which will be the first test of our new site template) and organize the 3rd ReachMahjong.com Cup, which will take place on June 28th.

I am sad that I will no longer have my own parlor, but with my book coming out in a few months and all of you to keep me busy I still have a lot to look forward to. I also have my guest jobs and the PokerStars Japanese blog to take up my days, so I doubt you’ll see me taking any breaks. See you all on the forums!

Shin’s Eye #5: Mahjong Psychology and Philosophy (part 1)

admin — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:00:31 +0000

Hello Mahjong players of the world. It’s been a few weeks.

I am Shintaro Kamimura from the Japan Professional Mahjong League.

For the next few columns, I would like take the time to look at Mahjong from a number of different angles.

The three themes I have in mind right now are:
1. Mahjong from a psychological view
2. Mahjong from a quantum mechanics view
3. Mahjong from a philosophical view

Number 2 and 3 are very specialized fields and quite difficult concepts.

Also, it is very abstract and perhaps self-righteous, I think maybe you can feel Mahjong in a way different than your normal senses, so I really hope you will join me until the end of this series of columns.

I’ll start with the easiest concept to understand on the list, the psychological view.

First of all I want to let you know that the things I will say are not the be-all, end-all.
That is because according to culture, lifestyle, religion, gender, and various other factors, each person’s psychological make-up is very different.

On that note, you all might be thinking, “So what does any of this have to do with playing Mahjong?!”

Certainly, on the surface each person’s psychological make-up is different and that makes any judgments difficult. However, deep in each person’s heart and soul there are also many similarities with the psychological make-up.

Those similarities are not in our conscious mind, but show up in our subconscious.

If you’re still with me, some of you may now have an idea of what I am going to talk about in this series.

In the beginning:
“Reading your opponents’ hands by considering their psychological state based on their subconscious actions.”

I think that poker players understand this concept very well. The idea of observing your opponent to determine whether they actually have a big hand or are bluffing is very similar to what I am talking about..

Generally, beginners show on their face and expressions what they are thinking. However, this can’t be helped. That is because it is natural for humans to act this way. It takes a lot of practice and training in order to hide such expressions from your opponents. In poker this is called a “poker face.”

In my opinion, when playing Mahjong techniques using math theory and logic are very important and are the fundamentals of the strategy of the game.
However, I do not believe that those are the only things that decide the outcome of the game.
I believe that the result of observing your opponents appearance and using those conjectures to guide your math and logical theories to read their hands, which you can’t see, with accuracy is a huge jump to being a winning player.

Professionals are always observing their opponents to look for chances to take advantage of and to make sure they don’t miss changes in their opponents’ psychological state.
Personally, I am of course looking at my opponent’s expression, eyes and gestures, but I am also looking at their breathing patterns, muscle movements, changes in skin color, representing changes in body heat and other factors as well.

Besides that, in Mahjong just training and learning a perfect poker face won’t defend against this.
This is because you also need to take very meticulous precautions with discards. Even a discard order based on a small subconscious tick might give away your wait and give your opponents a chance to pounce.

The introduction has been very long and I’m sure that you’re all thinking, “Get to it already.” I’ve run out of room this week, but I promise to jump right into real-game examples in my next column and go on with the series from there. I hope you’ll all be ready to read.

Mahjong Travel Journal: Kanazawa (part 1)

jenn — Sun, 24 May 2009 12:00:05 +0000

I was called to a guest job on North Honshu, to a city I’d heard of, but never been to: Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. There are a number of JPML members in the neighboring Toyama prefecture, but I had never stopped anywhere north of Tochigi, so this was an exciting trip for me.

I started my trip by looking up the travel time. Plane: 4-5 hours (including train time), Car: 4-5 hours. With the new toll system in place in Japan, allowing you to go anywhere on the freeway system for about $10 USD on the weekends, the decision seemed extremely obvious to me, so I packed up my puppy, Luna, some egg salad sandwiches and we set off at about 6am on Friday the 14^th of May.

Japanese freeways have great rest stops and our first stop was the Takasaka Parking Area. Here they have a dog park, sell doggy bentos (lunch boxes) and have a fine selection of souvenirs and coffee to keep me awake. I took a short nap, then took Luna for a romp in the park before setting off to our next break.

After about 2 hours we got off the freeway in a place called Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture. The only thing I could say about this place is yuppy golf town. I’ve never played golf and I realize it is quite affordable in many places, including Japan in recent years, but during the bubble prices were ridiculous (I’m talking $100,000 or more for 1 person’s yearly membership to the course) and although the prices now are not like that, the courses looked well-kept and the nearby residences looked like summer homes. Around the station the shops were full of novelties and there was a nice fountain in front of Karuizawa train station.

We stopped in a chain store called 3 Dog Bakery for some lunch, ordering Luna the doggy meatloaf and a bagel sandwich for myself. After that it was time for Luna to try on some clothes and get a cookie with her name on it. Then it was back on the road for the second half of the trip.

We finally arrived in Ishikawa prefecture and at my friend from my Seattle days house. She was nice enough to let me, Luna and all of Luna’s stuff stay in her living room for 2 nights and even take care of Luna while I was working.

The next morning I showed up at Nankuru, a parlor in Kanazawa city for games with their customers. Another pro from Osaka, Yui Ueda. We joined in the games all day and I did horrible. Ueda-pro walked away with a win, but I had the hardest time putting together a hand and went back home to Luna with my tail between my legs. The rules at this parlor are a bit hard to get used to too.

The rules are called “Sakae rules” and are used at a number of parlors throughout Japan, usually at the Three-Five and Sakae parlors. There are 3 red 5’s, one for each suit and the red-dot is good enough for a winning hand point all by itself. That means a hand like this:

Can be won on, and is worth 1300 points for a non-dealer. Plus one chip bonus.

This parlor also had a gold South tile. I never saw it used in the 2 days I played these rules, but if you make a concealed quad of South, then you get one chip bonus from each of the other players right then and there. Also, if the gold South is the Hidden Lucky Tile Indicator (meaning it shows up underneath the Dora Indicator) then it’s another one chip bonus. Although I didn’t get the chance to collect on any of these, I had plenty of chances to pay the 1 chip bonus to lots of my adoring fans (*just a tiny hint of sarcasm there).

It was a really fun day, however, and it was great to see a parlor outside of Tokyo. There were lots of great mahjong players, but I was also surprised at the mix of inexperienced players even though the rate at this parlor is a bit on the higher side. At my first table I was the resident scorer because none of the 3 customers knew how. At first the guy to my right wasn’t sure even I knew how to score, so he asked a staff member about the first hand I scored, but by the 2^nd one he was trusting me and also kicking my ass. There I was telling him how much I owed him for the hand he just won on. Aiya~.

In part 2 you can read all about the next day and my tournament with the Kanazawa members of JPML.

Jenn’s Corner #31: Getting Sleep

jenn — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:40:43 +0000

I feel like I’m in high school again, but without the stamina.

In high school I had activities like gymnastics, cheer and baseball, part-time jobs (yes, plural), a car and the internet at home. That left little time for sleep and I lived my days up and lived my nights up too. After graduating I came to Japan for college and I learned how to sleep. In Hawaii I never went out so sleep came easy. After graduating I had a job that took up 12 hours or so each day but that left 8 hours for sleep.

Now with a Mahjong parlor, a book in the works, a website with the best readers ever (with forums and a store! Yay!), tournaments almost every weekend, the cutest puppy ever invented and Mahjong Fight Club, I’m finding how much I enjoyed sleep and am missing it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m absolutely loving what I’m doing too and I’m slowly getting more organized, but boy what I would give for a full day off. Just one.

Getting organized involves making priorities. For the time being I’ve made my book my very first priority. Every time I have a spare minute I check e-mails from my publisher and get to work on those things. Once I’ve sent everything off I can work on something else. Since editing a book takes a lo-ot of time I’ve been leaving the site content up to Gem. Now I’m through pretty much everything in my book I’m working on the site a lot more.

My next priority is ReachMahjong.com content and MahjongMart items. I’ve finally got everything stocked or ordered and we’re ready for business again. All MahjongMart e-mails are in line right after my publisher and the items are always sent within 2 days of receipt of the order.

Of course ReachMahjong.com content comes next and I try to stay a few days ahead of the game so that if I have to work at the parlor late or squeeze in a few extra games of MFC, the new article will be there waiting for you guys.

Once I’m all caught up with all of that I’ll be posting on the forums at great speed so just wait another week or 2 and you’ll see me on there all the time! You’ll also start to see some of the JPML pro’s slowly starting to join the community from now on. There are a few pro’s that speak English and RM.com has asked them to join our discussions, so get your questions ready!

Konno’s Kolumn #5: Early Stage Play

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:00:29 +0000

Hello to Mahjong players of the world. I am Shintaro Konno. Last time I talked about Reach. This time I want to talk about “early stages.”

In Mahjong, the early stage is from the deal to the 6th or 7th discard. On average someone is usually ready by the 8th or 9th discard so we consider the “early stage” to be before that.

Lucky Tile:
Say you had the hand above in the first hand of the East round as the Dealer. What would you discard first? South? The Red Dragon? The 1 of bams? Probably one of those. But if you ask me, that question, I only have one answer. That’s 1c.
It may seem like a waste when you have the 1-crak and 2-crak there already, but if you think about the future, it proves to be an appropriate discard.
So, why is that? I’ll explain.
Once the hand is dealt, every player thinks about how to make their hand a winner, but in reality out of the 4 players, only one will win. On top of that if you include hands that end in draws, the chances of winning a hand are only about 20%. Given that fact, this hand doesn’t look good at all. Let’s say you discard the Honors first and your opponent calls one of them. Just by doing that you’ve given your opponent a big advantage.
How about the 1b standing alone far away from everything? There is nothing wrong with discarding this 1-bam. However, if you take another look at the hand, you’ll notice you have a 5b there. If you draw a 3b then you’ll have 1-3-5, which is just as good as an open-ended wait (in Japanese this is called a “ryan-kan” wait. In English Jenn calls it a double-gut-shot, like in poker).
So if you don’t discard Honors and you don’t discard 1-bam then the only thing left to drop is the 1-2 side wait.
When you drop a side wait, the order to discard them should be determined by the stateof the inside tile. If you have 1-2-4, then of course you will drop the 1 first. If you have 1-2-5 then you should drop the 2 first. If you drop the 1 first from 1-2-5, the you’ll be left with 2-5, holding octaves that you can’t use and increasing the danger of your future discards. If you have 1-2-6, then drop the 1 first. This is in case you draw a 4 so you can make the double-gutty.
Let’s get back to the hand at hand. You have 1c-2c-6c-8c and let’s say you discard the 1c. You’ve discarded the 1c first, but at this point your first 4 discards are pretty much decided. Generally you will discard 1b next, then 2c and then 5b. But, if you draw a 4c or a 3b, then depending on the board you may discard South or the Red Dragon instead.
Let’s say that next you get this hand on the deal:

　
Lucky Tile:

We’ll say it is the first hand of the East round and you are Dealer again. What would you discard? 3d? 3b? Nope. Naturally you should discard the Red Dragon. This hand is much different than the one before. If you discard the Red Dragon and someone pons, you still have a fast hand to fight with. You can go for an Inside Hand, Three-Colored Runs and get plenty of points. If you have a hand worth going for, then you should go for it.

Mahjong is a battle of winning hands. When you get a hand that is worth going for, you should go with it and aim for the win. However, when you can’t go for a win, you should not help your opponents win. In Japan we have a saying, “If pushing won’t work, try pulling.” Mahjong is not only a game of offense.

See you next time

Shintaro Konno is Grade 5 in the Japan Professional Mahjong League and runs mahjong lessons in the Kanto region. You can find him as a pro on Ron2 and Konami’s Mahjong Fight Club.

Mahjong Fairy Report: April

jenn — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:20:35 +0000

It’s Golden Week in Japan and that means everyone is off work (except for the Mahjong pro’s, who are working harder than ever) and for many people that means they are playing Mahjong. Our parlor is no different and we’re running events for Golden Week.

From April 29-May 10, the player that wins the most games, loses the most games, gets the most Limit Hands, plays the most games and the student with the most wins all get a prize. That’s 5 winners total and each winner will get a Mahjong Fairy Gold Card.

The gold card is good for a free game every day for 6 months. At 300yen a pop for a game that’s not a bad deal.

In addition we have our normal point race for the month with 20,000G going to the winner. The point race is based on the number of games played and the results of those games.

We’ve gotten rid of the mission lottery that we were running before and instead are offering an e-mail magazine with special deals for the members. If you register you not only get 5 points on your card (100 points = 3000G), you also get extra points for coming in before 1pm, or staying until midnight as well as a free game to go along with it. Since most of winners’ profits are eaten up in the rake, these free games are huge for the players!

Last week founder of the popular Austrian club, Kasu, Paul Beneder visited the parlor and we got to play a few games. The picture is Paul at Mahjong Fairy and one of my favorite customers, Mr. Takahashi. Paul did great with a win and no last places. I can’t wait til he comes back!

Paul said, “Good atmosphere, friendly staff, good tables and everything in perfect order.
I especially liked that it was well illuminated, which is a rare find and in my opinion helps the atmosphere a lot.
Also a great plus it is non smoking.”

Also in April, 2 RM.com readers came to visit but unfortunately it was a day that I wasn’t here. I’m usually around 4 times a week so if you want to know my schedule and come play a game then e-mail me using the contact link on this website.

See you soon!

Shin’s Eye #4: Manners (part 3)

admin — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:00:49 +0000

I’m Shintaro Kamimura from the Japan Professional Mahjong League.
Last week we started a discussion about manners. Next I want to talk about the idea of bluffing.

In games other than Mahjong, bluffs that use words or mannerisms are considered to be part of the game. The idea is to get in your opponents’ head and mislead them.

But in Japan, mahjong is not considered to be that kind of game.

For example things like saying, “This hand is gonna be so cheap,” and causes their opponent to be careless and then winning with a big hand or thinking for a long time before discarding a bam even though they are Ready with a crak-flush are forbidden.

There may be arguments for both sides in cases like these.

In Japan many people thing that mahjong is a game of reason and logic.

I believe that is why bluffs based on behavior that affect the competition are banned.

Also, Japan has a strong sense of being a “Culture of Shame.” The idea is that going this far to win is pointless and instead is shameful.

Of course when you play with your friends, having a good time and including “behavioral bluffs” is no problem. But, when playing in a parlor with other people it’s bad manners to do those things.

I am not saying that bluffing is forbidden in Japanese Mahjong.

That’s because in Mahjong there are other ways to bluff, such as the order of discards and called tiles. It’s a game with deep bluffs. I believe that using your tiles to create “quite bluffs” and peacefully play with an understanding of each others’ tactics without ruining the balance of the game with “behavioral bluffs,” is the most interesting part of mahjong and that is why it is a gentlemen’s game.

Everyone, when you want to have a loud crazy game, include behavioral bluffs and when you want to play a game of reason and logic, try to leaving them out.

Comment on this column using our RM.com Forums!

Shin’s Eye #3: Manners (part 2)

admin — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:00:08 +0000

I’m Shintaro Kamimura from the Japan Professional Mahjong League.
Last time I wrote about manners and morals linked in with Mahjong in Japan.

This time I want to go into more specifics about them.
First of all, don’t forget about the greetings at the beginning and end of a match and the feeling that goes with those greetings.
Next, when the game starts, move your mountain towards the middle. The right side of the mountain should be a bit more forward than the left side. This is so that all players can draw easily and quickly. It’s based on the idea that every player should try to create a fairly and comfortable environment for each other.

After you have moved the mountain forward a bit, the top tile on the very last tier of the deck (the ones used as supplementary draws for quads) should be place on the table next to the last tile. This is a very important tile, so it should be in a place where it can’t accidentally fall and be shown to everyone.

For example, if the end tile accidentally fell off and it is a player’s winning tile, they may do an abnormal quad so that they can win on that King’s tile. The player that does this and the other players don’t feel good about this. Even if that player would have done this quad whether they saw the tile or not, it leaves a bad aftertaste.

After the game begins, discards should be lined up in rows of 6. The 7^th discard should begin a new row and the 13^th discard should begin a 3^rd row. This way it will be easy to tell which turn each tile was discarded by each player and helps to prevent players from cheating.

As the game continues someone will win a hand and someone might discard a winner and players will have to exchange bones. When this happens you absolutely should not throw the bones when you are passing them. Even tossing them a little bit is forbidden.

People with bad manners will throw bones, click their tongue and make complaints when they lose a hand or discard another player’s winner.

These behaviors are the minimum requirements required for play in Japan.

When someone loses in a competition they show their true colors.

If you played your best and gave everything you had and still lost, it’s important to accept that defeat gracefully. Accepting the result is the basis of calm analysis, will strengthen your spirit and become the foundation of the battles to come.

Discuss Manners on the ReachMahjong.com Forums!

Mahjong Travel Journal: North-Kanto League ( NOW WITH IMAGES!!)

jenn — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:45:34 +0000

Last week marked the opening of the Japan Professional Mahjong League’s brand new North-Kanto League. While JPML has leagues throughout the entire country, this is the first chance I have ever had to not only witness, but actually participate in the opening of a new regional league.

Saturday morning, April 11th I got up at the usually 8:00 or so, did my make-up and dressed for a magazine interview I had in the morning. I took Luna with me and when it was over we rushed home to get her ready for her Pet Hotel debut. Since I would be staying the night in Gunma prefecture I couldn’t bring my baby along. The traffic was horrific but somehow I got Luna checked in and made my way to the hot springs we would be staying at.When I got there, Kaori Shimizu, Tomo Fujizaki, Yoshifumi Matsuzaki, and the new North-Kanto League president, Yukio Yoshida were waiting for me with drinks. With the tournament the next day and my exhaustion from the full day I already had, I chose not to drink and instead waited for the dinner of dancing clams (Literally! They were still alive!) and rice cooked right by our trays. Aren’t the boys cute? We spent the evening in the spa and getting massaged.The next morning I woke before the masses so I could get to the internet café (our lodge didn’t have internet) and run the Ron2 meet-up at 7am. We had 2 tables and I got to play (even though I didn’t make it to the final table) with Tom Sloper and some other great players. After the meet-up (it ended about 9:00) I had 2 hours to kill so I took a nap in that internet café and then headed to the parlor, picking up a Starbucks on the way (I love my iced soy chai latte!).The parlor was full of higher-ups in my league that I love. Yuko Ito, our vice-president that joined us in Macau for the Mahjong SuperCup was there, along with the president of our league, Asataro Nada and grade 8 Makoto Sawazaki. We were all guests and there were a number of other members of our league there to play too. The tournament wasn’t the first of the league but rather a celebratory exhibition match to mark the beginning of the North-Kanto league. There was a guest-pro at each table and in most cases another member of JPML. The rest of the players were amateurs, eager to be a part of this new development in their hometown. We played 4 games, all with A-rules and the winner would be the player with the highest aggregate score. I started off good with a win for the first game. After the game everyone was off in the smoking corner but I stayed put and to myself. To be honest I really thought that bragging about or even discussing my score would jinx me for the rest of the tournament so even when people talked to me I kept my mouth shut about the game.The second game went good too, but this time I couldn’t keep the secret in. Being the only person at that point to win 2 games, I was in first place and the tournament organizers announced to everyone who was in the lead. Talk about pressure! Now all the players at my table wanted me out and I wanted in. That’s 3 against 1! It looked like they were going to win too. In the 2nd to last hand of the game I was in last place with less than 20,000 points. With A-rules we all start with 30,000 and any score above that gives you positive points while any score below brings you down. I had a long way to go on my deal and the 50-minute time limit was running out. I somehow won a hand to continue my deal and right after they announced that the time was up and we were to finish the hand we were on, I won 7,700 from the 1st place player to put me back in the black and add to my leading score. The final game was a nail-biter and I was in 2nd place most of the time. In the 2nd to last hand I finally pulled ahead to first place and just needed a 1000 point hand to seal the game and my score as the winner of the tournament. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be and the 2nd place player won a hand to pull ahead of me. I ended up as the runner-up of the tournament and only lost to 1st place by 2000 points! But my taste of almost-victory was sweet and I have to say I am looking forward to the rest of the league. We will be playing the North-Kanto league once a month, running parallel to the Tokyo Pro league. Each set will happen on a Sunday and the pro’s will play in the morning for the North-Kanto Professional league. For the evening set amateurs will join the pro’s and we’ll play the North-Kanto league. This is the first time I’ve ever been involved in a new development in the Japan Professional Mahjong League and I’m so grateful to be invited to play in this. The drive up there is lovely (even though the Sunday traffic on the way back is awful) and the hot springs are choice. Look forward to future updates on the league and my results too! You can see more pictures from the tournament on JPML’s website.

Still Drawing? Time to Fold?

garthe — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:11:02 +0000

I’ve been playing a lot of Badugi lately in my ongoing quest to be a better gambler. Of course, that could also be read as my just trying to find a game, some game, any game, that I can win. Sometimes I write notes to myself and hope that you guys will find them interesting. How about one of those notes today?

Quick introduction to Badugi, the object is to get the 4 lowest cards with all different suits and different ranks within 3 draws. Any 4 cards of all different suits and ranks is called a Badugi, and any Badugi beats any 3 cards of different suits and ranks no matter how good they may be. There’s also a round of betting between each round of drawing.

The key here that has gotten me thinking about Mahjong is the fact that it’s a drawing game like all of our favorite game too. And I happen to know that the one thing I’m good at is drawing. If I do say so myself. And I do. But when another player or even two has stopped drawing (and probably started betting), perhaps it’s time to stop and think about the message he/they are sending.

YOU ARE LOSING!!!!

A lot of people think these games are all about posturing and trying to find the right time to bluff. Bluffing is certainly part of the game, but the real art of the game is in deciding when to make your stand. It’s called “shoubu” in Japanese and good players wait for their “shoubu-te” (hands to take a stand) if they don’t come right away.

If the other players are standing pat, betting, and I’m still drawing, I’m behind. I better have something pretty worthwhile to try to outdraw them and catch up. And what if I DO even have Ace, Deuce, Three so I’m drawing to the nuts, but then I draw a Jack? I’ve made my hand and there’s STILL a good chance I’m losing.

OK, let’s look at something closer to home. It’s the 3rd hand of the East round and we’re in the North seat with 27,900 points after the jerkoff who is dealer now just ended our turn as dealer with a stupid 1,000 point hand. First place in the South seat has 33,000. Seething with vengeful desire, things are looking ok as we manage to put a hand like this together by the 5th draw:

Lucky Dragon is , and look, 3 Colored Runs is soooo close. But then that jerkoff dealer declares reach and what’s worse, his discards are all letters, 1’s and 9’s except for an early which the South seat discards safely but then the player to our left throws a very dangerous . Of course our draw is a very dangerous right next to the Lucky Dragon. Do we just discard it as if the dealer hasn’t just proclaimed to us in big capital letters that we’re behind? Some players might, but lately, I’m not one of them. We’re still in second place and there are at least 5 more hands to play this game. Sure this is a potential monster, but we have two bad waits, and our one good wait is almost meaningless as we’re only really happy about drawing one end of it anyway. Add to that the fact that the tiles we don’t need that are still in our hand are not safe by a long shot and it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. We are behind! We’d need a small miracle to win this hand. There will almost certainly be better chances. I start by dropping the and probably continue by throwing the keeping an eye on that guy to the left who doesn’t seem phased by the reach, sometimes even scarier than the reach itself. Incidentally, there are many small parts of the above situation that were they a little different, I might be tempted to continue going for the hand: if I had none or only 1 tile that I knew for certain was safe; if it were later in the game; if I know he always reaches with any ready hand; if I were only 1 tile away from ready. But as the picture is painted above, I think it’s a pretty good time to fold. OK it’s probably something I should have been able to realize without starting to play Badugi. Unfortunately I’ve been too confident in my ability to see potential in hands and actually get there too. But now I’m a lot choosier about the draws I’m willing to play; when another player has declared he’s ready and drawing for the win, I need something a lot more than that hand above to keep drawing just to get ready. And it’s definitely saved me from some big losses like I used to have when I first started playing.

Yes, I have become much better. I’ve gotten so good I hardly win at all anymore, but maybe that’s another column.

Mahjong Fairy Report: March

jenn — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:40:30 +0000

It’s a slow day in the parlor as I write this. Opening a parlor in the middle of spring break in Japan is a tough task in itself. Add in the non-smoking aspect of Mahjong Fairy and you’re looking at a slow start but a lot of loyalty from those that come. But we’re getting more games and tables in everyday and I’m learning a lot about running a parlor instead of just playing like I have been in the past.

In April we’re running 2 campaigns to call on the masses. First, we’re having a contest for all players: Who can come to Fairy the most days in one month? The top 5 people who come the most days (they must play 3 games to count as 1 day) gets 500yen back for each day they came at the end of the month.

Our other new campaign is for students. Any university student can buy a pack of discount coupons: 2000 yen for 10 games. That’s a 100yen discount off each game. They can buy as many coupons as they want until the end of May. This is a great deal since the rake eats up most of the profits. 100yen for each game is huge!

I’m thinking of running a few more specials. Our food menu is currently Yakisoba, Cup Noodles and Pizza Toast. These run from 200-300 yen. I want to sell a morning pack: Anyone who comes to the parlor before 1:00pm can buy a pack of 3 games and a free breakfast for 900-1000yen. This hasn’t started yet, but what do you guys think? It copies a service that they have at a parlor Garthe works at and it’s a great way to get tables going early in the day.

I also want to start lessons in the mornings. I’m thinking to aim at the older crowd, the retired group that has time and wants to use their mind. Any feedback on this? I’ll set up a topic in the forums and I’d love to hear some ideas!

I’ll report again next month.

Please post on the forums here.

Konno’s Kolumn #4

admin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 12:00:36 +0000

Easter treat for everyone today. I’m sure most of you have scoffed far too much chocolate by now. Here’s the perfect way to distract yourself from your over-full tummy… Over to Konno…

Hi, Mahjong players of the world! It’s Shintaro Konno again. Last time I wrote about attending the Mahjong Supercup in Macao. My time in Macao wasn’t limited to Mahjong though; I also played poker.

Due to legal restrictions, there are no casinos or poker rooms in Japan. There are some places where you can physically play, but not for money. Most poker is played online.

I played Texas Hold-em in Macau. It is actually surprising how similar to Mahjong Hold-em is. The two cards that you’re dealt in the beginning is very similar to your starting hand in Mahjong. The next five card, flop, turn and river, are like your discard pile.
My favorite part of poker is “all in.” It doesn’t get called all that much in games, but when it does and you push your chips into the center, it’s a thrilling moment.

So what does “all in” correspond to in Mahjong? I think that riichi is its closest counterpart.

Riichi is the similar to “all in” in that once you’ve called it, there’s no going back and you can’t change anything. All you can do is wait for the outcome.

It’s a drastic, uncompromising move and thus requires preparation. When you go “all in” you’re thinking of the end result. You can’t just riichi every time you hit tempai. You have to think of when you can get the best results from riiching. You have to consider your pot odds…

You have to decide when it’s best to riichi. Perhaps the best way to start this discussion is first considering when you shouldn’t riichi.

Review these examples:

A Dora:

B Dora:

Neither hand A or B has a yaku. You may be tempted to riichi because otherwise you won’t be able to win. However, you should wait. If you do riichi and win, it’ll only be 1300 points (in the case of non-dealer).

While you’re reached and unable to affect the game anymore, your opponents may catch up with a great hand. Then your riichi stick is like a loaded gun to your head. (This is similar to poker when you have been the first player to push all-in. You are in a dangerous position as you are no longer able to fold your hand. I think anyone who has player poker will understand my meaning.)

So, back to hands A and B. What should you do in situations like these?

Let’s look at A first. When you’re in a position like the player of hand A is in, you should first wait to form a yaku. Now you could win with a 7 but you instead you should wait and see if you pull a 2, 4 or 5. Then you could discard the 8 and have pinfu (peace hand). (If you self-draw the 7 before, then of course you should declare your win.)

What if you do pull a 2, 4 or 5? Should you riichi then? No, you shouldn’t. Riiching here will make 1000 points, 2000 points (in the case of non-dealer). This is the time that you start to consider your pot odds.

Now we know when to not riichi… When should we be riiching?

Consider these examples:

A-1 Dora:

A-2 Dora:

I think everyone should be able to see how these two examples are different from hand A. A-1 and A-2 both have a dora tile and the potential for sanshoku (three- colored run). Now, because we could push this hand all the way up to a haneman (12000 points), we should reach.

In Japan, we call hands in play which have attained the highest potential points it could be expected to achieve the “final shape.” Japanese Mahjong professionals often say that when you’ve reached this “final shape”, you should riichi.

So what happens if before you read your “final shape”, your winning tile is discarded or you self-draw? I would recommend that you declare your win. It is probably not the hand to push in the game. When the hand that could win the game does appear, I recommend you riichi.

I’ve explained A now. That leaves B. I think that I should make B my quiz to you. Think about what would make B into its “final shape”. It should be easy looking at A!

Next time, I’ll have the answer to this quiz and I would like to continue this discussion with “reading a reach”. Until next time!

Konno

Note from Gem: I’ll put this question into the forums so please answer away! We’ll pass comments onto Konno. Thanks for reading!

Double Runs

garthe — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:00:02 +0000

We need a new campaign to liven things up around here. I vote for 2 Double Runs. It needs a makeover. First of all, it needs a better name. For a hand that’s already rarer than some limit hands, what could be less inspiring than that crappy name? We could go with the Japanese name I suppose but that’s only interesting because the words don’t mean anything to us anyway. But on to the real problem: it’s too damn cheap! In case anyone’s forgotten, 2 Double Runs is just like one Double Run except twice! Each double can be different suits of course, and also different numbers. Like its little brother little old Double Run, it must be concealed. It’s called Ryanpeiko in Japanese and despite its near impossibility, it’s worth a paltry 3 hand points.

Part of the problem I think is that the hand points were decided a long time ago before anyone ever did any combinatorial analysis to actually determine which hands are more likely to occur than others and then assign point values accordingly. There was a similar problem in poker in the olden days when a flush was ranked higher than a full house. Even new players seem naturally inclined to think flushes are stronger and it wasn’t until fairly recently that the hand rankings were fixed to reflect their probability.

The reason I think about it now is because of a hand I had in a tournament last weekend. It was the last hand of the game and I needed a barnburner to win, at least 24,000 points. Well, it started coming and before I knew it I had arrived at this crossroads:

　

Counting up the hand points: Reach, Simples, Peace, Self Draw, Lucky Dragon and 2 red five Lucky Dragons and then my dilemma, 2 Double Runs or 3 Colored Runs? Then the obvious hit me, I was forgetting my one Double Run and it plus 3 Colored Runs is worth the same 3 hand points that 2 Double Runs would be. And yet obviously, 2 Double Runs is a much more difficult hand as 3 of my outs are already being used in my hand. Obviously I went for 3 colored runs drew my 4 of bamboos, and then what should come later but the and never a . What a disappointment.

Still, I think I played correctly there. The reward for 2 Double Runs is just not equal to the risk involved of not making it there.

So there it is kids. Poor old 2 Double Runs, not getting the respect it deserves. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. Talk it up amongst your friends. Go down to your local 2 Double Runs dealership and show them some support. Write a letter to Obama. Do SOMEthing! Think Double, act local.

Jenn’s Corner #30: Slump-dog

jenn — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:34:06 +0000

I’m in a slump. I feel good, play good, even win a little bit. Then I give it all back and slump back in my chair…

The past 2 months have been a bit stressful. The parlor just opened, I’m learning how to raise a puppy and for that I had to move on short notice. Because of that I have no internet connection for another week and that makes for a lot of wasted time each day.

These are things I have to block out as a mahjong player. I need to forget about cut little Luna, forget about the edits in my book, forget about the bills I can’t pay if I lose and focus on the board and the tiles in front of me.

In this business your mind is your most important asset and rest is how to keep that asset healthy. Thats something I need to take care of myself. Anyone can learn mahjong, but the ability to focus and concentrate have to be practiced and developed.

During this slump, I have been asked how to become a strong mahjong player. I almost felt bad answering but I realized that I know how to get good at the game and it was a good chance for me to reflect and get my groove back.

I came up with 4 points:

1. Play a lot.
Well, I have that covered. Besides the parlor and MFC I am playing in 3-4 leagues (Pro League, Womens League, North-Kanto League and maybd Champions League) and at least 5 major tournaments this year (Masters, 10-Tier, Pro Queen and OUI). Thats a whole lot of mahjong.

2. Watch the board
While it can be advantageous to read your opponents hands, whats even more important is noticing what theyre doing. If another player is better than you then you should concentrate on what they’re doing and learn from them. Asking questions can work too.

3. Review and Reflect
You should never do this during a game. If you mess up or lose a hand, shut it away in your mind and forget about it. Until the game is over. Then you should go back and remember. Did you lose because you played bad? Or were you unlucky in a race? All players lose hands. Make your losses small and wins big.

4. Have Confidence
There are a lot of players that think they’re the best. It may be true but there are many ways to make a hand in mahjong. If you find something that works for you then keep it up til it stops working. You might have just beat the game. But don’t get cocky about it like them.

It’s a tough road and takes a lot of time to be good at anything but the struggle means you’re improving.

I can’t wait til I’m done being improved.

Nagare, Luck, or whatever you want to call that crap

garthe — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:11:02 +0000

There was an interesting post in one of the forums asking about whether people believe in luck or “nagare” as it’s referred to in Japanese. Actually “nagare” translates more as “flow” I think, than “tide” but I think the nuance in either word is interesting because it seems like a force even stronger than luck, like destiny. What can you do against the inevitable rising and ebbing of the ocean tide or the flow of a mighty river?

I don’t want to make anyone feel stupid or offended. Unfortunately it’s something that seems to come naturally to me. Here goes. Let’s say a believer in luck flips a coin and by some unbelievably 1 in 2 to the tenth power miracle, it comes up heads 10 times in a row! Are you telling me you believe that heads is lucky right now and that you believe, er, I mean, the luck believer believes that heads is more likely to come up an 11th time now also? If such logic makes sense to you, may I suggest that you never go to Las Vegas or at least have a responsible adult hold your money for you.

On the flip side, while in a single 10 flip trial such an occurrence would only happen once in 1024 tries (less than 0.1%), if you flipped the coin a couple hundred times, it’s more likely that you’ll flip heads 10 times in a row somewhere in there than that you won’t! I think it’s a lack of appreciation for statistics and probability that accounts for a lot of people’s belief in luck.

Mahjong is a game that involves luck and is not simply of it. Over the long term, the luck generally evens out, and the players who depend less on luck and depend more on “solid” play will win. I’m sure we’ve all played games where we had to look on in hateful silence as some donkey reached and instantly drew one single tile wait after another. Some of us are better at looking on silently than others. Those times are frustrating and will tend to make us want to believe that it is just a game of luck after all and we might as well play as badly as that guy who (we think) is just getting lucky.

And it is those situations especially in which I think luck has acquired and bolstered its reputation. When someone goes on a run, we may attribute it to just luck, but it can certainly be explained otherwise also. Take the above mentioned coin flipping trial for example; it could just be that crazy streak in the middle of a longer run that in total is fairly average. Another that people may not think about is how winning a game or even just one hand, changes not only the winner’s attitude but also that of the other players. His confidence will be boosted, he will be emboldened to play stronger, attack more, and attacking players generally win more than passive ones. Correspondingly, the players around him will also lose confidence and probably start to play more weakly, anticipating the strength of that “lucky” player and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of his continuing success.

There’s a lot to be said for optimism; study after study confirms that people who believe they are lucky do indeed tend to be “luckier” than others. Optimism allows us to see opportunity where others don’t.

Finally, there are a lot of good quotes about luck. My favorite is Thomas Jefferson’s “I find that the harder I work, the luckier I get.” Another one I like from one of the up and coming young stars in JPML with Jenn and me – though maybe a few leagues above us – Sarukawa told me once, “I create my own luck.” (I know that’s been said by others but he said it specifically about how he plays Mahjong) There are a lot of things you can do to create your own luck but one that I think many don’t think about is table image. Poker players think a lot about how to maintain a strong table image. If that means making people think you’re lucky so be it. The point is that it’s going to be a lot easier to get lucky if the other players aren’t gunning for you because they’re afraid you’re too strong for them. When I’ve played Mahjong with him, Sarukawa maintains a fierce table image and it definitely makes me think twice about declaring reach even with a strong hand, thus increasing his chances of getting lucky and decreasing mine.

So call it what you will, Luck, Flow, Destiny or just plain old Chutzpah, whatever it is, it’s not out of your hands. Take control and get lucky!

Cherry Blossom 2009 Report – Part 2

Gemma — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 12:00:40 +0000

The second part of my report from the Netherlands!

Third round and Lady Luck is still by my side! I make some interesting reaches and won some that possibly I shouldn’t but I’m also happy that there were few moments when I regretted a discard. I win 40500 points in this round. I’m so pleased with myself. I don’t have much time before the final round so I decide to down another coke to keep my blood-sugar levels up. I’m seventh overall at the moment… Here I go!Final game goes awry though. I don’t outright lose but I come third with minus 12800. Not horrific but not how I would have liked to finish off my comeback. Nothing came through for me and when it did, someone won before me. I made a few mistakes as well. I do seem to lose my game towards the end of these tournaments. My brain seems to give up on life after three tables of adrenalin.

My final total works out at 35,700. I’m glad that I’m in the positive. It’s a huge step up from my Hannover results. Still, it falls short of my dreams of being in the top ten in this tournament. I’m getting better though.

The most important part of the whole tournament was having fun though! I got to see a new place and meet some new people and share the hobby I love with others. Tournaments are certainly not about winning and losing. It’s about sharing and enjoying life with friends.

Losses are also an important part of Mahjong. Sometimes you learn best and improve your game most when you see your mistakes.

The next tournament in Europe will be in Hannover for the Phoenix Tournament. Again, I’ll be there so I hope to see you there too!

Watch out Europe – Once I have skill to complement my luck, I’ll be undefeatable!

Cherry Blossom 2009 Report – Part 1

Gemma — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:00:40 +0000

The first part of my report from the Cherry Blossom Tournament!I’m pretty sure everyone knows by now that I attended the Cherry Blossom Riichi tournament in Nijmegen last weekend. For those of you who don’t know the details yet, it was a one day event attended by over 50 riichi players from all over Europe.

To give you an on the floor perspective, I’ll give an account of the day from the perspective of an aspiring Mahjong player who sometimes has days of brilliance but on average plays substandard…

I wake up feeling pretty positive. I’m glad that I spent yesterday traveling so I’m well rested for today. I get up, get dressed and head to the ground floor of my hotel for breakfast.

I played some games last night with Martin and his wife as a warm-up. I didn’t play very well though and I’m hoping that last night managed to wash away my bad luck for today. I’m overly superstitious so I’m wearing the same bracelet that I wore when I played at Vienna. I hope that I can pull something similar off today.

Today’s tournament is considerably bigger. There are over 50 players from all over Europe attending today. More than a few of them are excellent players.

I don’t think that I should concern myself too much. I’ve improved a lot over the past year and have been practicing online as much as possible. Playing with real people is always a lot more nerve-racking though. I often play over-defensively when with real people. I tell myself to take the risks I need to win!

I leave my hotel with plenty of time to get to the venue and a good thing too as the road signs are less than helpful! When I do finally find my way there, I’m greeted by some friends standing outside having a smoke.

Some of them have come a long way this morning; Starting out at six in the morning. That’s true Mahjong dedication! I make my way into the venue, where Sjef and Martin are finishing the preparations, and pick up my table assignments for today. This is the moment when I start to realize that my calm exterior was simply fooling myself! I’m against some of the best players in Europe today! Just being able to play with some of them is an honor and of course an amazing challenge! Something I’d like to challenge myself to do anytime but today!

The first game starts. The first round I just hit nothing. I don’t even make it to ready most of the time. I made one or two mistakes. But I do that a lot on my first game in tournaments. It takes my brain a little time to settle down. The second round I do make it to ready but when I go for it or reach, someone always manages to win off me or tsumo. It’s frustrating but my opponents are good so I can’t begrudge them. I end up minus 26,400. Not good by any stretch of the imagination but it could be a lot worse.

The table is finally over and I grab a sandwich. Maybe I need more food! (You can tell that I’m a comfort eater!) I check to see how Bjoern and Tom are doing. Bjoern has first place but Tom fell into a monster of a hand (kokushimusou – sixth/seventh discard) and lost a lot. I start to think that I managed to escape my first table fairly unscathed and go into the next game at least with a glimmer of hope of recovering my deficit!

Second round comes… Finally I bring my game back! Well, I bring my game back with helping hand from Lady Luck! The players I was with were very good but for some reason the tiles favored me. To illustrate this, I was waiting for Lesser Dragons with one red dragon. I’d already stolen the green and the white. Two red dragons were discarded and so my only hope was to draw the single tile myself. No one was going to discard the final one if they drew it and there was still a chance that it could be in the dead wall… Two rounds later, I pull it to everyone’s astonishment. I was lucky. Very lucky. It gives me plus 34,400 so I’ve recovered from my first game!

To be continued…

Mahjong Fairy in February

jenn — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:33:40 +0000

Last month the new Mahjong Fairy parlor opened in Hachioji (West Tokyo). Mahjong Fairy is a non-smoking parlor that was started by Yoko Watanabe. The Hachioji parlor is the first one to use the name Fairy after the original parlor opened in Shinjuku (central Tokyo) in 2006.

I have the privilege of running the Hachioji parlor along with the store manager, Akira Ohara. I’m the resident non-smoking pro and he runs the place. I’m in charge of the online stuff (website, etc.) and Ohara manages the staff and tells me what table to sit at when I play.

We opened on February 6th and I spent the month playing 5-10 games each day (I worked about 20 days out of the month).

After all that time working for an hourly wage, I have very little to show for it. This is the most I have ever played casino-style mahjong in my life. Certainly there will be many hours in the future, but the beginning is a rough road. Not only do I have to get used to the rules, the gambling, the system and the customers, I also have to make sure that the customers are happy playing with me, in my parlor and that they feel happy about the way I play.

At the same time Ohara and I have the staff to run, the phone to answer and the customers to entertain. It’s a tough job and no one will ever tell you differently. It makes it hard to come out ahead in the game itself. And when there’s a rake to play, it’s even harder.

The parlor itself is on the small side, 6 tables, and we accept both sets of 4 and single players. In the one month we’ve been open we’ve gathered a number of regular customers and are in the market for more. The location is great (a 30 second walk from the station) and although the majority of mahjong players smoke, our customers appreciate the clean air in our humble abode.

If you’re in the Tokyo area drop by. I’ll be writing monthly updates about the parlor and I’d be happy to set up a study session for those that aren’t yet comfortable playing “Free” yet in English or Japanese.

Remember the Kong!

WorTeX — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:11:02 +0000

As battle cries go, I guess there have been better. Kong’s are rare enough themselves, and for one of them to help you win is rarer still. That said, it’s amazing how often people forget the Kong and it really costs them. How about a real live example?

First let’s review what the King’s Tile Draw is. It’s the special situation where you happen to be ready when you declare a kong, and win with the replacement tile you draw from the King’s tiles (also known as the dead wall), worth one hand point. These tiles would not normally be available, and from a purist’s don’t-believe-in-magic statistical point of view, there’s no more likelihood that your winning tile is going to be in the King’s tiles than in the rest of the tiles which were normally going to be drawn. And of course, that tile needs to be replaced in the King’s wall by the tile which would have normally been drawn last and that might be your winning tile also. Still it’s another draw, to replace the one which was useless because it only completed your kong, and the more draws the better, yes?

Let’s take a situation from my recent crash and burn at the Mahjong Supercup in Macau. There’s a lot of stealing tiles in Taiwanese Mahjong so I won’t list all the tiles I had stolen up to that point, except for the, which I had ponned 3 of already. The remainder of my hand was my whole wait which looked like this:

So I’m waiting on yes? As I was sitting there waiting, the guy across from me drew a tile which would have completed a kong in one of his already ponned sets and he accidentally discarded it, remembering that he could have konged with it only after it hit the table and it was too late. “Ha ha, rookie!” thought I, “That’s what you guys get for playing so gol’darn fast all the time!” Not being used to the rules and style of Taiwan play, I have to admit I was not totally comfortable with the speed at which they play. I was still chapping that guy in my mind a draw or two later when I drew the last 1 of cracks and discarded it myself committing exactly the same error I was laughing at him about. Had I remembered to add it to my already ponned set of 1’s I would have been allowed to draw from the King’s tiles. The very next draw, the woman to my right threw my 2 of bamboos which I reluctantly won on, and then I did what no self respecting mahjong player should ever do, I checked. While she was getting out the points to pay me, I peeked at the tile I would have drawn had I remembered to kong, and there it was, my winning 2 of characters!

Unless you’re in a study situation, looking at what might have been is generally considered bad form and most self respecting players just won’t do it. It’s similar to checking the Hidden Lucky Dragon when you win on a concealed hand that you declined to reach, or in poker, asking to see the river after everyone has already folded the hand. It just doesn’t matter any more, and I’ve actually been swatted by another player for reaching to check what might have been.

One other situation to beware, after reaching, it’s still ok to declare a kong for a triple of tiles that doesn’t change the shape of any of your groups or wait. Many’s the time people are drawing along waiting just for their winners when they draw what could become a kong there too, and discard without konging. Just like the other situation, we’re all so focused on our wait that we forget to notice what else might be happening and miss a chance to improve our hand.

So there I got two ignominies for the price of one: missing my kong, and following up by checking to see if I would have won had I played correctly. That missed kong is surprisingly common, seen twice in that one hand alone, and then, look what it cost me. It might not seem like that big a deal as I did win the hand eventually, but self draws in Taiwan Mahjong are a much bigger deal than in Reach because everyone ends up paying the full value of the hand. With only two more hands to go, that win would have put me in second, in great position to go on to the next round.

So don’t get too caught up in just what you’re waiting for, remember the battle cry, remember the kong!

Mahjong Travel Journal: SNPM Pair Match

jenn — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:54:48 +0000

In the last travel journal Garthe, Konno and Jenn went to Utsunomiya to visit Kaori Shimizu, one of the strongest mahjong players in the world. This time Jenn teamed up with Kaori to play in the Saikoui Japan Pro Mahjong’s pair match. With matching clothes and winning smiles how could they lose?The SNPM Pair Match happens every January and is one of the most exciting tournaments of the year. The big names in Japan mahjong dress up, show up and spend the day catching up with all the other big names. People are there in costumes and this year there were even 2 actresses from the new drama “Mukoubuchi” (based on the popular comic). Two years ago Jenn and Garthe played together and ended up with less than amazing results. This time Jenn joined the former OUI title holder, Kaori Shimizu and two of the most well-known girls in the mahjong community took on 100 other pairs for the title. I (Jenn), started out with a horrible score. I couldn’t get a rhythm going and I ended up with -50.4 points. There is a 30 point penalty for 4^th place, so it was a finish of 9000 points or so, but how embarrassing! I was the one who invited my elder, Kaori to play and then I completely busted us in the first game! I sheepishly went over to Kaori to let her know that I was sorry and watched her win a 12,000 point hand as dealer. I remember thinking, “Man, she’s going to be carrying me today.” And hug my head all the way back to my seat.To my surprise Kaori came over a few minutes later. “Jenn! I’m sorry! I got last place!” she said as she approached me. I breathed a sigh of relief and told her of my defeat too. We both resolved to win the next 3 games to give ourselves a fighting chance. The 2^nd game was worse than the first. This time I busted out in the last hand and had negative 67. I went through the same motions again and was even more surprised when Kaori did too and came to tell me that she had also busted out! What a pair we were. After 4 games Kaori had a first place and I had a 2^nd and a 3^rd. My score was -129.5 and our combined score was around -200. We ended up in 89^th place which means that we were not dead last, we didn’t get the booby prize (2^nd to last) and we didn’t get the cut-off prize for 90^th place. If only I had lost one more hand!Other notable names at this tournament were Masayuki Katayama (author of Obaka Miko), Toshimasa Chou (2^nd place at the WSOMRE qualifier in Japan) and Kozue Miyauchi. We were lucky enough to get permission to cover this event thanks to Toshimasa Chou. He was also the winner of Takeshobo’s Saikyoui tournament, one of the biggest mahjong tournaments in Japan (Ben played in that one too). You’ll see Chou playing in lots of big tournaments in the next few years and we’ll definitely be covering him on ReachMahjong.com too! So we have gone to Utsunomiya to visit Kaori and now she has come to Tokyo to play with us. Starting in the spring Jenn and Kaori are going to continue their adventures together in the new JPML North Kanto League so look for their story from Gunma in April.

Jenn’s Corner #29: The Next Step

jenn — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:34:06 +0000

My path to mahjong stardom is a continuing uphill battle and sometimes it feels like I will never arrive. But every now and again something big happens to give me motivation and push me to the next level. For the past 2 years I have been travelling around the world and making it a point to meet as many people as I can so that we can all work together to make this game great and get information to new players throughout the world.

But meeting all of these people doesn’t give me the experience I want to achieve all of my other future goals as a mahjong player. This year, my 4th year as a pro, is my time to really prove myself as a player and a contributor to JPML and the mahjong community as a whole.

On February 6th I started working in a mahjong parlor that is almost my own. I am working with a group of mahjong parlors and the parlor manager, Akira Ohara, to run the first non-smoking mahjong parlor in Hachioji. I am the resident pro and one of the parlor managers. While most pro’s start out working in parlors, I’ve worked backwards and am taking the first steps to create a brand of myself.

Opening the parlor has sucked up all of my time and proven to be one of the biggest challenges I’ve taken on so far. This website has suffered, my sleep time has decreased, I barely have time to play MFC and my new puppy is lonely at home. But the experience is also extremely rewarding.

Our parlor is non-smoking and has 6 tables, which makes it easier to work the 10-12 hour shifts with the clean air. When I was training at the smoking parlors I would come home feeling nauseous, exhausted and smelly. Now I just feel exhausted. I get (or have) to play mahjong live 5-10 hours each day and win or lose my own money in that time. Each employee’s hourly wage should cover any losses and the pressure is on each member to play in a way that allows all of the customers enjoy their time fully.

If you’re in the Tokyo area be sure to stop by and see me. I’ll explain the rules to you in English or Japanese, whichever you’d like and if you’re lucky maybe I’ll have my puppy in tow.

Let me know what you want to know about the parlor and I’ll start a monthly update on how it’s going and what events we’re running. Maybe some of you can copy the concept and open parlors in your towns someday too!

Konno’s Kolumn #3: Discards and Mahjong SuperCup

admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:00:39 +0000

Hello Mahjong players of the world, this is Shintaro Konno. In my last column I left you with a homework quiz. How did you do? It was a pattern that I didn’t explain in the example so it might have been a bit difficult. Let’s start by reviewing the question.

- – - – (reach)

The question was: With this discard, which tiles are dangerous?

– - – – (reach)

With this discard you can imagine that the original shape of the hand was and so- would be dangerous, but the question I asked is the opposite discard. That’s the key. Why is discarded later than ? It was because was more necessary than .

If you have even one in your hand then ~ are connected so you don’t need to discard either (except in the rare exception that you have and discard then ) so there is no in the hand.

Let’s think a little bit more. If is less important than then we can assume that the player has a in the hand. So, how many 9’s does he have?

If he only has 1, then hand would have and the player would discard . Then and would both become useless but the player would usually discard first in case they drew a 5. If he has 3 then his hand would have and both and would be unnecessary and again, would be discarded first in case he drew a . With this reasoning, we naturally think the player has 2 ’s.

In case he draws a he can use it with a run, so he keeps the pattern. We’re getting closer to the answer. If we think about the pair in the hand, we can imagine that this player was already 1-away (iishanten) with the so if they draw a this group will not be available for a pair so he must have another pair in his hand (let’s call that a pair of x).

So, with this reach on the there is a very strong chance that the player is waiting for and x and that is the answer.

We’ve come this far and determined that the answer is and x but this is not always the answer. When the hand is 1-away if the player draws a or x then the discards will be the same but the wait will be completely different.

However, there is more information in discards. Reading discards is combining all of this information and trying to solve the puzzle.

Ok, this time I’m going to change the subject and talk about the Mahjong SuperCup that took place in Macau last month.

The Mahjong SuperCup is an international tournament that uses Taiwanese 17-tile rules and you have to make 5 groups or 3 or 4 and 1 pair. The special point is that there are 3 more tiles than in the Japanese rules.

I learnt the rules in Japan, practiced and then went to Macau to play but I was really worried about one thing… The tournament’s common languages were Chinese and English. I can barely speak any English at all let alone Chinese. It might be OK if I’m consumed by the atmosphere of the tournament but I was worried…

At my first table I noticed that the nametags of my opponents showed 2 of them were from China and one was from Hong Kong. Before we started they were talking and laughing among themselves and since I had no idea what they were saying I just smiled and nodded along… Even after the game started it was a small wave I couldn’t ride.

With 2 hands left in the first game I was down to 8500 points (each player started with 10,000) and I would have to draw my winner in both of the next 2 hands to keep from busting out.

Lo and behold I got a hand ready waiting for a - and desperately drew the winner. I planned to let the tile go if someone discarded it but somehow I managed to draw the . In the next hand I had the same wait again and again drew the for the win to take first place at the table. Maybe 6 was my lucky tile at the tournament.

I also made it through the 2^nd game with no problem. At this point I only had to make it past the 3^rd game to advance to day 2 and make the money. This time only the top score at each table and a number of the 2^nd place players made it to the next round so it was much tougher.

This was a strenuous battle. My opponents were strong and it was hard to win hands off of them. But, in the 2^nd hand of the North round I won a big hand as Dealer and got 400 points from each player to take the lead. This time I was waiting for - and drew the . I though “There’s no way I can lose now,” but that thought was burst in a moment’s time. The player across from me drew a hand worth 850 points each, 4 Concealed Triples.

In the last hand I lost any chance of making it through in 1^st place. My only chance was to increase my score a bit to try and make it through as a 2^nd place wild card.

The next thing I knew my hand was ready and I was waiting for a . This tile was supposed to be my lucky tile of the tournament. A few draws later I was able to change it to a - wait. It was between me and the player to my right, both of us aiming for that wild card spot. Both of us were at the point of discarding every draw, waiting for the winner to come.

The winning tile that finally came was . However, the person that drew it was the player to my right, waiting for and . That lucky tile didn’t come to my rescue at the very end. This closed the book on my Mahjong SuperCup experience.

This was the first time I ever played in an international tournament and I learned a lot. I want to improve my game and come back for revenge.

And that ends my column this month. See you next time.

Shintaro Konno is Grade 4 in the Japan Professional Mahjong League and runs mahjong lessons in the Kanto region. You can find him as a pro on Ron2 and Konami’s Mahjong Fight Club.

Pro Interview: Saki Kurosawa (part 2)

admin — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 12:00:29 +0000

We continue our interview with popular pro and this year’s Pro Queen title winner, Saki Kurosawa.

RM: This year you won the Pro Queen title, tell us about that experience.
SK: I was so happy. It wasn’t my first time at a final table because this past January I made it to the finals for Women’s League. Last year in the Pro Queen tournament I made it to the final 16 and I vowed this year to do better. When I made it to the final 8 this year I was determined to go all the way.

RM: What was this final session like?
SK: I didn’t want to have any regrets or play in a way that I would go back later and say, “If only I had…” or “I wish I hadn’t”. I played very straightforward to win.

(Saki is now cooking Yakisoba)

RM: How were your opponents? Do you think your experience at the Women’s League final table helped you?
SK: They were very strong. There are a lot of things that go into Mahjong and there are times when you are lucky and when you’re not. At the end I was really far ahead and as long as I didn’t throw a baiman hand to one player I was in a winning position. I did learn from Women’s League where to push hard and where to back off so it definitely helped me.

RM: During one of the games at the Pro Queen finals there were a lot of Limit Hands. You were sitting out that game (5 players advance at Pro Queen). What did you think of that as the one sitting out?
SK: I wasn’t watching and I didn’t really think about. Afterwards I guess I was happy that I wasn’t in there, but I was really just surprised.

RM: Do you still live with your family?
SK: Yes, my brother and sister do too. We’re all really close and every night is like a party.

RM: On your blog you often write about your dog, Pico, tell us about her.
SK: Yes, I have a miniature dachshund. My family went to get her together and my mom fell in love with a poodle but my dad and I only had eyes for Pico and we ended up winning out. She is our family’s dog but she doesn’t come greet my brother at the door when he comes home.

RM: Do you still go play at Mahjong parlors with Rinka Tamura (JPML)?
SK: Lately we play sets a lot more than free but we still play together.

RM: What rules do you like to play with in your spare time?
SK: When I play with people from JPML we use A-rules. When we’re in a hurry we play East-only games. I don’t really know how to play three-player so it’s always 4 players. I happen to win a lot at MFC 3-player games for some reason though.

RM: How often do you play Mahjong Fight Club each month?
SK: Hardly at all. Usually only between 12 and 20 games.

RM: What is your favorite thing about being a professional Mahjong player?
SK: Guest work. I don’t necessarily like to travel a lot, but I love to play Mahjong so if I can do that then I’m happy. I do guest work about 10 times per month.

RM: You’re so busy, but you look really happy with all of your work. Do you like your job?
SK: I do, but it’s a sales job so when I can get a lot of business it’s good but when I can’t it can be very stressful. I actually would like to quit but it’s tough to make it with only Mahjong.

We’re sure that Saki would have enough guest jobs to do just fine.

You can play against Saki on JPML’s Ron2, Konami’s Mahjong Fight Club and see her on Mondo 21. She is also featured in our “Featured Four” column so follow her progress in JPML’s League.