Jenn’s Corner: It’s All Over
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.
