A note from Jenn:
Let me introduce Gemma.
She is going to yell at me for using this picture (I am on the right, Gemma is on the left) because she likes to look precocious.
I asked her to write this Journal because when I taught her how to play Reach Mahjong this year (yes, she is my very first student! and I am very protective, so be careful!), I realized that it is tough to teach someone mahjong once it becomes routine for you. It is much easier if someone who is learning themselves explains it, because they know the exact questions that you will be asking as well. So, Gemma is responsible for telling you things that she has noticed, learned and is worried about.
Here is a brief background so you don't feel like strangers. She is from Tavistock, Devon, United Kingdom (don't worry, I never heard of it either). She already has 2 degrees: a BA in Japanese studies at the University of Sheffield and an MS in Chinese Language/Business and International Relations. That means she is way smarter than me (and probably Garthe too). She is very well-travelled, well-read and enjoys languages. One of her most favorite things to eat is Natto (just kidding, she apparantely can't stand it). She likes Pearl Tea, is a wine drinker and likes mochi. When she isnt playing mahjong, she said she likes to "wind up my brother" and kill cockroaches, which she hates.
So enjoy!
December 23, 2006
Gemma's Journal #1
Well my first time playing Mahjong and it doesn't seem so difficult - well at least not as difficult as Amy Tan made it out to be! Reminds me mostly of Rummi, having to make sets or runs to create a hand, just with lots of pieces of plastic rather than fifty two cards!
So far I've learnt that to create a hand you have to make a hand that consists of four groups or runs, plus one pair. (Groups are three of a kind; runs are three tiles of sequential numbers of the same suits.)
Maybe to make my point clearer it would be best to use some examples:
That would be a hand of all runs and one pair.
That would be a hand of all groups and one pair.
That's a hand with a mix of runs and groups.
However, I have been warned that not all these hands are necessarily worth hand points and therefore won't win you a game! This is just the basic rule you need to follow to create a hand. All of us are beginners so we haven't been worrying too much about hand points this time, but Jenn threatens next week to start teaching us the hands. I'm suspecting that this initial feeling of understanding is going to be quickly undermined with hands to learn and scoring systems. (I have an absolutely terrible memory!)
Apart from that building the wall is also not half as bad as I anticipated (blame Amy Tan again!) although I do keep knocking down parts of the wall as I pull tiles for my go, so if nothing else at least this game might improve my hand-eye coordination!
It was really enjoyable though and I'm looking forward to next week even if mixed with a little apprehension that my brain won't be able to cope!
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January 1, 2007
Gemma's Journal #2
So after learning the basic shape of a hand last week, this week we went on to learning simple hands.
The simplest hand point I've been taught so far is a group of dragons. I.e. Three white/red/green dragons. So for example:
These would all be worth one hand point. So far so good!
Would be worth two hand points. One for each set of dragons. 1 + 1 = 2. And who said the British education system was in crisis!
Next hand point I wasn't so keen on, because it requires you remembering something for more than a few minutes and having a vague idea of geography.
Little explanation first. In Reach Mahjong there are two rounds played, East round and South round. Similar to the dragon group hand point, for the second hand point I want to describe you just have to get a set of East tiles if the round is East for one hand point or if the round is the South round, then a group of the South wind. Examples being;
Round Wind ex.1 |
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|---|---|
| Round | East |
Round Wind ex.2 |
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|---|---|
| Round | South |
Both worth one point each. Again not too hard! The third point starts to get a little difficult.
Each seat is also assigned a directional wind depending on who is the dealer. Now I was useless at geography but I do remember
Never Eat Shredded Wheat
Now the dealer is always East, and your seat wind is decided by that, in the order going anti-clockwise - East, South, West, North. (So the new mahjong mnemonic is Eat Shredded Wheat? Never!) Now getting a set of your wind tile is also worth one hand point.
So if I were sitting in the South seat then getting three South tiles would give me a hand point. If I were sitting in the West seat then getting three west tiles would give me a hand point and so on for East and North.
This starts to get complicated, for me at least, because remembering what seat I'm in for more than a minute seems far beyond my capabilities! Especially as the order is opposite to that of the compass! There are some perks to these points though. For example, if I was sitting in the East seat and it was the East round then:
Would be worth two hand points one for having the round wind and one for having my seat wind! So look out for that!
To be honest though at the moment I haven't been worrying too much about hand points and still been practicing just making a hand in the first place. Small steps! But at least I've started learning the hands and writing it down I hope will let me remember it easier too.
So to summarize the points I have to remember this week are:
Set of dragons
Set of round wind
Set of seat wind
Not too hard, but ask me again next week if I still remember!
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January 12, 2007
Gemma's Journal #3
So quick recap on what I've learnt so far:
- A basic hand is four sets or runs, plus one pair.
- An example of a hand worth points would be:
- A set of dragons
- A set of round wind
- A set of seat wind
Just a reminder of the table set up:
East is the always the dealer and play proceeds anti-clockwise from there. Which means that after East (dealer) South will then pull his tile and so on...
Now the trick which I've now learnt to help me create these sets of tiles is Bump (Pon in Japanese). For example I'm sitting there with this hand:
and one of the other players discards the White Dragon, I can steal this off him by interrupting play. I have to shout BUMP or PON then I can take that tile he discarded. Giving me my set of three dragons and my point!
To finish it I have to discard one of my own tiles and then display my set of three tiles to my right with the tile that I stole point towards the player that I took it from. Which means turned to its side and placed on the left of the set if I stole from the player on my left; placed on its side to the right if stolen from the player on my right; and in the middle on its side if stolen from the player opposite me.
Play then resumes anti-clockwise from the person who said Bump (and not from the person who discarded the tile).
I can see I might be using this trick quite a bit to be winning myself some hand points until I can learn some more hands.
Next week, I'm going to be taught Chow which sounds suspiciously similar to Bump but I'm sure I'm misleading myself!
In other news, I'm proving myself to be totally inept at pulling tiles from the wall without throwing them all over the place as you all promised! But when it comes to building the wall - that whole trick where you place a whole line of seventeen tiles on top of another row of seventeen tiles in one swift double pinky move. I'm not enjoying that. This is often what happens:
How do those central tiles turn themselves around like that?! It's almost a special move in its own right! ARGH!
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January 21, 2007
Gemma's Journal #4
So last week was Bump. This week is Chow!
Chow is very similar to Bump although instead of groups this is for runs. There is one limitation to Chow when compared to Bump is that instead of being able to Chow off anyone else on the table you can only Chow off the player to your left.
Back to the table set up!
Letfs imagine I was sitting in the West seat and I have this hand.
I would ideally like a 9 to finish off that run! North then discards the 9, however I canft Chow that because, obviously, hefs to my right. Finally, South discards a 9 -@Nowfs my chance!
So, just as I did with Bump I say Chow! Show my tiles. Discard one tile and then pick up the 9. Play would then continue to my right, again just the same as Bump. Simple!
>Jennfs Note: Place the tile you took perpendicular to the left of the two tiles it goes with and put the set to your right just like you did with bump! Here are some examples:
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 |
 |
One last point to clarify is; what to do if the situation arises when one player declares Bump and another Chow. In this instance Bump is stronger and that player takes the tile. However if the third player declares Mahjong, then neither of the Chow or Bump players can take the tile.
To be honest itfs that simple! My entry for this week is already at an end!
I should fill this entry up a bit more perhapsc Ok you lot can advise me then we can ask Jenn or Garthe to give us their answers!
Which tile should I discard?
PS: If any Brits are reading- I hope you weathered the storms all right and your roofs and cars are still intact!
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February 2, 2007
Gemma's Journal #5
Hey again everyone!
Thank you everyone for commenting on my last entry! That was fantastic! It's great to have everyone discussing and sharing their views, especially for a beginner like myself - getting advice from you all is going to be great way for me to learn. I'm going to do something similar again for this one, so if you're already more than familiar with the rules of Mahjong skip to the bottom!
If we've all grasped the concept of Bump then this next one isn't going to prove a problem at all.
What if you have four of a kind in your hand? Apart from being quite excited, what should you do? This is where we can shout Quad! It's almost exactly the same as Bump, so when someone discards a tile that you could use to your advantage and create a set of four then you can shout Quad and upon showing your group of three take the final tile to create a Quad. However, you would be one tile short to make a full hand if it was left at that. Therefore, to rectify this, you have to take one tile from the far end of the dead wall (or king's tiles) before you choose a discard. Then your Quad gets put to your right side with the tile turned appropriately just as before.
If you are not taking from someone else's discard and instead have pulled the tile yourself then you can still Quad. This is called Concealed Quad; on your go you just say Quad, show the tiles, then pull another tile from the dead wall (or king's tiles) and discard. You then have to place your tiles, as if you had barked them, on your right but turning the outside tiles over to indicate that you drew it yourself.
One last Quad option is; what if you Bumped a set from another player and then pulled the final fourth tile? You can add this and create a Quad! We're calling this Add-a-Quad and then you take an extra tile and discard as above.
Apart from being quite satisfying to collect all of one tile the other exciting aspect to Quadding (It sounds a bit like some game in Harry Potter!) in all of it's varied forms, is that you can then turn over an extra lucky tile indicator - thus increasing your chances of getting a lucky tile in your hand!
There is one last rule for Quads is that if 4 Quads are declared in a single hand by any of the players (i.e. four lucky tile indicators have been turned over) then the hand is replayed.
Ok, following on from last week's popularity I have another puzzle you can advise me on. Walter kindly emailed me one that he created and I'd like to see what everyone has to say about it. I love the way he phrased it as well! It's quite a lot like a school maths (and Americans please note - math-S not mathc hehe!) textbook.
Bob got extremely lucky. He managed to make Reach with a Full Flush.
But, now he realizes it's not easy to be so lucky. There are too many choices. Too many similar tiles. So he asks his wife, Margaret, who is a far better player than he is : "I'm waiting for a 2 or a 5 Bamboo. But it feels like there may be other ways to finish this hand. Am I missing something?"
Thank you Walter!!!
If anyone else has some more puzzles that they think might be fun and interesting, please email them to me! Or maybe you had a really exciting hand last week and want to share it with us? I know I always get confused whilst playing as to what I might be waiting on, so I jot down my hand and then look at it at my leisure later. Anything like that then email me!
Or just send me fanmail! I like to feel loved! heehee
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February 12, 2007
Gemma's Journal #6
I got an email from Walter this week with evidence that the puzzle that we had last week can occur in real life!
This was a picture from the Mahjong Montreal Winter Tournament:
An amazing wait of 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 bamboo. (He quaded the 8 because it was a Drag (Lucky Tile)!)
However, if he wasn't careful and had previously discarded one of these tiles then his hand would have become a lost hand. It's this Missed Win (or Lost Hand, a.k.a. Sacred Discard) rule that I wanted to look at in this entry. Mostly because it's really upsetting me and catching me out A LOT recently. (If you're not understanding the terms I just used because you know the Japanese one etc, you clearly have not checked out Jenn's great new glossary! Made lovingly for you! http://reachmahjong.com/en/rules/glossary.html)
So Missed Win means that if I've already discarded a tile that could have completed my hand, even if that's not the tile I eventually want to win on, then I can't Mahjong on it. Unless I pull it myself. Woah, that's a complicated sentence! To make it a little clearer I'll use some pictures!
My hand is this:
My discards look like this:
My wait is ‡E‡H... But oh no! There's the ‡E in my discard pile! That's a Lost Hand for me...
That's quite a simple one to see but that's when those horrible waits start to catch you out. When you (more specifically me) don't calculate correctly your wait and then realise to your horror after you've reached that unless you pull it yourself you're lost - it's really annoying!
That's why these puzzles are so good! So that we can get used to the patterns that come up and see what we're waiting on better. Certainly something that I need more practice on if my recent performance is anything to go by!
And with that here's my puzzle for you! Actually I have two this week. Perhaps they may be a little too easy for the more experienced but I hope they'll be fun nonetheless.
What's my wait?
And this is a hand I actually got playing ron2 this week. Can you see what my wait is? Also try and guess which tile I'd discarded that made this hand fall foul of the Missed Win rule!
If anyone else has some more puzzles that they think might be fun and interesting, please email them to me! Or maybe you had a really exciting hand last week and want to share it with us? I know I always get confused whilst playing as to what I might be waiting on, so I jot down my hand and then look at it at my leisure later. Anything like that then email me!
Or just send me fanmail! I like to feel loved! heehee
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February 24, 2007
Gemma's Journal #7
So I've been wondering what I should write about this week. Jenn suggested that I write about scoring, and I started trying to but then I realised I was still completely lost! It's the thing I'm currently working on but there are still quite a few holes in my understanding of it all. To be honest there doesn't seem to be much logic behind it at all! Well I shall persevere and you can expect an entry explaining the basics of scoring from me soon!
Hence I thought I would use this entry instead to clear up a few little loose ends in what I looked at already and then give you some puzzles to look at!
Apart from scoring this week I've also been trying to introduce Mahjong to some of my classmates. (blind leading the blind perhaps!) I think/hope that they had a good time and certainly a few of them seem quite enthusiastic to play more which must be a good sign.
Look at their confusion! I'm clearly a brilliant teacher!
Anyway, I'm hoping some of them will start reading and using this site so we can expand our community more!
Second thing I want to look at is a combination question of reach and quad. This was something I didn't consider when I was first writing my entries about these two but whilst I was playing ron2 the issue came up. I might not have mentioned explicitly that once you had reached it was possible to still declare a Concealed Quad because in most instances it wouldn't change your wait. But take a look at this hand:
The wait for this is 5 6 8 of Bams.@However if you declare a Concealed Quad with the 7 of Bams, then your wait would become a 6 of bams only. Because reach rules mean you can't change your wait you wouldn't be able to do this. Just something to watch for!
I also received an email from David who asked this question:
"One last question on the sacred discard/Missed Win, if you have a ready hand and you haven't Reach-ed, the only concern is for your own discards, you can pass up other discards from other players and it won't effect your hand (say you're waiting for a hand worth more points), However if you declare Reach you HAVE to take the first discard that will complete your hand, correct? The "sacred discard" doesn't expand into the other players' ENTIRE discards, only the tiles they discard AFTER you've declared Reach?"
This is something I want to pass onto Jenn. (sorry! Help us!)
>Jenn's Note: David has it right here! I'm going to use the term eMissed Win' for Sacred Discard and eLost Hand' for hands that have fallen into the category. First of all, if ANY of your winning tiles are in your own discard pile, your hand is considered to be Lost Hand no matter what and your only winning option is by drawing the winning tile yourself. The following explanation will be regarding the times when your hand is not yet Lost.
When you have a Ready Hand and you have not Reached, you only have to worry about your own discards and any discards in the same turn that include your winning tile. If I discard a tile, then Gemma discards my winning tile and I let it go (don't win on it), then the Missed Win rule applies to me until after I have had another turn. Me having another turn means me discarding a tile (the taken tile can be drawn, Chowed, Bumped or quaded). If my turn gets skipped because of someone else Bumping or Chowing, I still cannot win on the river until after I have had a turn.
After Reaching, your own entire discard and all other players' discards after the Reach was declared determine your Missed Win. If any of your winning tiles are in those places, you have Missed your Win. You must win on the first winning tile that has come out on the river. If you don't, you have a Lost Hand until the end of the game and can only win on a Self-Drawn tile.
It is a confusing rule. If anyone can think of a simpler way to explain it, please comment! Back to Gem!
I haven't been able to find any other odd situations or peculiarities yet but email me if you can think of anything for me to add!
Right, this entry is going to be a little puzzle heavy. But I expect you to all be ready to learn/revise the scoring rules for next time! Especially so you can all help me!
I had some great emails as well with puzzles! (My job gets easier by the day!)
So this week's puzzles were created for me by John. Thank you!
Puzzle One:
What's the wait?
Puzzle Two:
And finally two questions for the more experienced players on the boards:
Question 3: This one is from Jenn.
Which would you discard and why?
Question 4: This was emailed to me from another beginner like myself and I think we'd all like to hear words of wisdom on this one!
"This whole "Missed Win" has always been one of the most confusing parts of the game for me. Besides a self-pick do you just have to give up in a situation like this? Or do you then go about changing your hand until all of your possibilities to go out are tiles you haven't discarded?"
So, if we realise we're foul of the eMissed Win' rule do we just pray that we'll pull it ourselves, or do we try to change our hands?
Well, I'm sorry that that has been a bit of a random entry with lots of added bits of other people's work and questions! Thank you very much everyone who emailed me. Some of the questions were really good which is why I decided to share them with everyone!
Tomorrow I'm off to Japan to spend the week with Jenn so I'll make up for this week with an extra special Japan entry! Wish me luck everyone!
If anyone else has some more puzzles that they think might be fun and interesting, please email them to me! Or maybe you had a really exciting hand last week and want to share it with us? I know I always get confused whilst playing as to what I might be waiting on, so I jot down my hand and then look at it at my leisure later. Anything like that then email me!
Or just send me fanmail! I like to feel loved! heehee
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March 15, 2007
Gemma's Journal #8
A note from Jenn: This entry was supposed to be up a few days ago, but while in Vegas I had some technical difficulties. Stay tuned for more on-time updates!
Hey everyone again. I've just come back from Japan so I'm going to postpone my entry on scoring another week to tell you my experiences of playing and watching Mahjong in Japan. (Convenient yet good excuse! I'm getting there, I promise, especially now with the good emails I've received offering good sites and tips to use. Thank you!)
Mahjong parlours seemed, in the most part to be small, often smoky, ill-ventilated affairs, which I guess was how I had expected. But they were far quieter than I had imagined. Mostly limited to the sound of clicking tiles and concentration!
All the tables were automatic and quite frightening to the uninitiated. It took me a little while to get used to all the buttons and what they did; although it does speed up the process so much. I really appreciated not having to build the wall manually and not having to count the bones (They're counted automatically for you by magnets). So now I've decided that my new aim is to have one in my house (I have to get a house big enough for one first!).
The first time I played was with Jenn and Garthe so that was a nice gentle introduction and allowed me to get to grips with the whirring table, with all its fancy buttons, etc. Despite this though, I still felt unprepared when I played with Masayuki Katayama (author of obaka miiko), another professional and Jenn. I was so tense! You should have seen my hands shake! The game moved so much faster than I'm used it and it took all my mental processing power just to not knock the tiles everywhere! A complete departure from the slower games I had played with other beginners or the faceless Internet games. Saying that, I do think the speed of Ron2 helped me to think quicker, yet I still found it difficult to organise my tiles and work out what my waits were. (My mind has become lazy with Ron2 figuring everything out for me!) Everyone was so kind and patient with me though and I settled into it slowly. Although I didn't win I played to the best of my abilities so I was really happy - managing to pull off a Half Flush and All Triples. I was pretty pleased with myself! Hopefully Jenn wasn't too embarrassed by me either!
Other than playing Mahjong, Jenn also took me to watch several professionals. I'd not really given much thought to watching people play before and I certainly hadn't considered Mahjong to be a spectator sport but I'm completely converted after my trip. Watching professionals play really allows you to see new things that you wouldn't have even considered before. I really feel that it has helped me improve my understanding of the game. One of the games that I watched from the Mahjong Champions League was particularly exciting. I was sat behind JPML's Hiro Yamai (Jenn wrote about him earlier so if you missed her column go and check it out here!) There were some really tense moments. One hand Yamai got really lucky and had in his hand 3 white dragons, 2 red dragons and 1 green dragon. He bumped the first red dragon that came out and then pulled a second green dragon. I think I was more nervous than he was! The final green dragon was discarded and Yamai won the 3 Big Dragons limit hand in only a few discards leaving him an easy win after that.
Apart from exciting moments like that it was a great learning experience. I can see where I've been having a lot of problems in playing Mahjong and where I could think of other alternatives to my style of play. I would highly recommend watching just as much as playing to improve. I'll certainly be watching the proz play on Ron2 more now!
So overall I had an amazing trip! Lots of Mahjong playing and learning. Jenn found time to look after me so well even though she's such a busy person. (She's really not kidding when she says she's always doing something Mahjong related!) Thank you so much for a great week Jenn! You're an amazing teacher! (If you edit that out I'll be angry!)
As soon as I got back I was playing Mahjong again, newly enthused from my trip. As I wrote about in my last column I'm trying to teach some of my school friends here in Taipei Mahjong to share the joys and broaden our English speaking community. It's also helping me quite a lot I feel. After recommending watching more Mahjong I'd also recommend teaching more Mahjong to improve your abilities. Sometimes a complete beginners question can really make you think too! So everyone should get their friends addicted too and we can bring even more Mahjong friends to our site!
On a final, slightly random, note teaching has made me hate the Peace Hand more. It's one of the first hands in the book I was reading but for beginners I still think it's one of the more difficult to understand and remember. I recall being quite frustrated by it in the beginning when I thought I had it and then realised my wait was incorrect just as I tried to Mahjong.
On that note my puzzle-esque thing today is probably quite easy for experienced players but for beginners perhapsc
Is that still a peace hand? Why?
If anyone has any questions on my trip that they want to hear a beginner's point of view feel free to post them up! I'll reply asap!
And as usual every week I love to get emails and now that I'm home I have lots of time! So email me!
April 3, 2007
..
Gemma's Journal #9
Here it is, the first part of the series of entries on scoring that I've been putting off writing! This will probably go quite slowly for those already acquainted with the art of scoring in Japanese Mahjong. As you know, though, my entries have always been aimed for beginners by a complete beginner. I'm expecting that I'll make lots of mistakes over the next few weeks so I'll be expecting you experienced ones out there to be correcting me and cheering all the newbies on!
Scoring... once you've finally managed to commit all the hands to memory (I have to admit having a card in front of you with the hands on like they do in America does sound a little appealing from a beginners point of view!) scoring really is a bit of a kick in the teeth! I'm not going to lie but you're going to have to get memorising some more. There are a lot of points handed out for different things, I think it looks quite daunting but we can make it together! Good Luck everyone!
There are two kinds of points in Mahjong.
Hand points - the points associated with hands that Garthe has been introducing to us
Base points - the points that you gather in other ways for having sets, certain waits, etc.
Base points is where I want to begin explaining. So how do you obtain these base points?
Mahjong
First things first, you get 20 points for going out. You then get an additional 10 points if you Mahjong off someone else's discard if your hand is concealed, to make 30 points. If you draw the winning tile yourself (concealed or not) you get 2 points, for 22.
Sets
32 points for a concealed quad of 1 , 9 or honor tiles
16 points for a concealed quad of 2 - 8
16 points for an open quad of 1-9 or honor tiles
8 points for an open quad of 2-8
8 points for a closed set of 1-9 or honor tiles
4 points for a closed set of 2-8
4 points for an open set of 1-9 or honor tiles
2 points for an open set of 2-8
Head
Head made of value tiles is 2 points
Anything else... 0 points!
Wait
Double sided wait = 0 points
Waiting to complete a set, e.g. 44 88 = 0 points
Middle wait e.g. 57 = 2 points
End wait e.g. 12 = 2 points
Waiting for the head = 2 points
It's not too horrific! I mean, sure, you have to memorise a lot, but at least they're all even! Imagine if it had been multiples of three! (you wouldn't think I had an A-level in Maths!)
Best way to memorise it though is, as always, practice! So with that here are some more puzzles for you. I want you to try and count up the base points. Perhaps I'll post up some more, later in the week, if I can get enough replies.
Self-Drawn |
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River Win (taken from another's discard) |
East-Round | East Seat | |
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River Win (taken from another's discard |
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And as usual every week I love to get emails and now that I'm home I have lots of time! So email me!
