Dutch Red 5 Tournament

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Tina
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Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by Tina » Wed Feb 03, 2010 9:51 am

In her report from the Red 5 Tournament Gemma has this remark:

\"The dealership bonus is so strong that it can really swing results, so it can be very frustrating if you don’t get both. Perhaps the next step in this trial would be to see how the game mechanics would work without dealer continuances.\"

Indeed this is one of the things that is hard to make fair in tournaments. In DK, earlier, we have experimented with various ways of fixing this unfairness:

- every table plays a full game (soon abandoned due to waiting time; the time difference between the first and last tables to finish makes it very inconvenient for tournaments)

- no dealer repeat (we did this only one year, in 2004, after that we adopted the timed sessions, inspired by Dutch tournaments)

- when making the who-meets-who schemes, we optimize it so that you (to the extent possible) begin one table as East, one as South, one as West and one as North. This cannot of course always be made fair, particularly not if there are 5 or 6 sessions, but at least it can even things out a bit.

I would like to ask if the solution Gemma suggests, no dealer repeat, is used commonly in Japan?

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by deJENNerate » Wed Feb 03, 2010 4:59 pm

One idea that is often used in Japan would be to only allow continuances for Dealer wins. That is very common for cash games here and for some tournaments.

So if the hand ends in a draw, the Dealer will change no matter who is Ready (tempai) or not. If the Dealer wins the hand, they get to continue as usual.

WorTeX
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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by WorTeX » Wed Feb 03, 2010 11:24 pm

Renchan should stay, but in order to make use of all the available round time, things like scoring should be faster by removing the subtotals except for 1 after east round(Everyone is aiming for win and big score anyways), and introduce etiquette/strategy about the discarding. I see people picking up a tile, arranging their tiles, thinking and discarding, while it \"should\" be picking up a tile, discarding, arranging the tiles, this costs alot of time in the long run.

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by Fat Dragon » Thu Feb 04, 2010 10:18 pm

I don\'t know about tournaments and stuff but have you ever considered using chess game clocks for speeding up things? I haven\'t seen something like this with Mahjong but it is widely used in other mind sports.

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by WorTeX » Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:03 am

Fat Dragon wrote:I don\'t know about tournaments and stuff but have you ever considered using chess game clocks for speeding up things? I haven\'t seen something like this with Mahjong but it is widely used in other mind sports.
That would be quite expensive solution, since tournament organisers would have to buy 10+ chess clocks, also mahjong tables dont have any reasonable place to position the clock, and you\'d probably spend more time reseting the clock than just playing if I\'m correct. I like the idea but quite hard to accomplish.

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by Fat Dragon » Fri Feb 05, 2010 7:18 am

I see. You are right in all points.

But I found a multiplayer game clock which might be of reasonable pricing (the product aims for gamers) and shouldn\'t take too much room on a gaming table.

http://www.dgtcube.com/dgtcube/

At least it\'s something to speed up home games.

Tina
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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by Tina » Fri Feb 05, 2010 1:32 pm

Timing clocks are not needed and not practical at all for mahjong. A normal turn takes 1-3 seconds; having to deal with a clock would make the game go considerably slower. I\'m afraid it would be a disturbance rather than a helping tool.

Benjamin
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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by Benjamin » Tue Feb 09, 2010 2:00 am

I second Jenn\'s idea. If the new \"final round\" rules aren\'t enough to fix the timing issue, making renchan dependant on an actual win should solve the problem. If not, I think resources are better spent on player education than making fundamental changes to the rules.

Eliminating renchan is something I have never seen in Japan. Personally, I think it would weaken gameplay significantly because it weakens the contrast between dealer and non-dealer. If this topic goes on further I could probably write a couple of pages about this.

While a multiplayer clock is an interesting idea, I don\'t think it\'s very suited to Mahjong. For one thing, Wortex is right in pointing out that improvements in etiquette would solve much of the problem. For example, if all players always discarded before putting the drawn tile in their hand I bet it would shave 5min off of every table. It\'s too bad much of commonly-accepted etiquette in Japan isn\'t very enforceable, but I do hope that eventually people take more of an interest. Hanchans (E-S game) here take 50min tops!

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by Benjamin » Tue Feb 09, 2010 2:03 am

Another idea for enforcing timing rules would be to allow each player 3 seconds per move with the option of thinking an extra 7 seconds for two moves each round. I think a system like this would reflect decision making in riichi much more realistically since most decisions can be made in about a second (tsumogiri). With the exception of a chinitsu wait, there should be no situation where a player thinks the full 10 seconds more than three times in a round. I wish there were a clearer way of codifying this.

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by WorTeX » Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:48 pm

in European Mahjong Championship 2010 (ECR2010) in Hannover, the time issue isn\'t a problem, theres 2 hours reserved for each hanchan (there will be 7 total), this is good to know, everyone will surely get their both east turns.

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by WorTeX » Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:41 pm

lets say shuffling and building the wall takes a minute, the dice roll and breaking the wall another minute, everyone has 5 seconds time to make their move, and scoring would take a minute, this would make an exhaustive draw hand 9 minutes long.

(5 seconds times 18 discards times four people divided by sixty to get minutes)

considering that the red5\'s had 75min time limit+1hand, thats 9 hands. Quite small number, though in the example every hand is played to the point of draw, but we all know that if someone gets a good streak going they can be dealer for 3 or even 7 times in a row.

Since mahjong is unpredictable game about the time spent on one hanchan, this issue should be solved somehow, faster players or more time, or start importing the automatic shuffling tables :D

I like Benjamins idea about 3 second rule

Tina
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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by Tina » Tue Feb 16, 2010 12:34 pm

Benjamin wrote:Hanchans (E-S game) here take 50min tops!
Player experience is probably the most important factor in how long time it takes to play one hand, but in Europe there are other factors which are non-existent in Japan, I guess. Mixing of tiles is quite time consuming, and even more so with less experienced players. Players have to do the score keeping on paper between hands. We do not have the means to invest in automatic tables in Europe nor the human resources to have score keepers at each table, so this adds to the time to complete a full game.

Regarding the Riichi EC I hope they will reduce the session time to 100 or 105 mins because 120 minutes will give a lot of waiting time for the vast majority of players.

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by WorTeX » Tue Feb 16, 2010 1:05 pm

I must say I\'d rather have more waiting between the games instead of not being able to play the game to the end if I end up in a slow table.

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Re:Dutch Red 5 Tournament

Post by silent observer » Tue Feb 16, 2010 2:16 pm

Player experience is probably the most important factor in how long time it takes to play one hand,
I\'d say the lack of fast yaku are a major part as well - removing open tanyao means that a lot of hands will see a draw, which prolongs the games something fierce. But yes, player experience - which you\'d think should be pretty high since we\'re talking tournaments here - is probably the main cause. Not trying to convince you to change your stance regarding open tanyao, just saying.
the dice roll and breaking the wall another minute
Please, any kid can do that - it shouldn\'t take more than 10 seconds, tops.

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