ReachMahjong Goes Global
On Tuesday, Garthe and I joined our ReachMahjong.com Rules Director, Shintaro Konno for our very first World Series of Mahjong Workshop. With very little notice, 3 new players showed up to hone their skills so they will have the edge on August 10th when trying their shot at a free seat to the 2008 WSOM Main Event.
Reach Mahjong: The Only Way to Play is hosting a WSOM Main Event Satellite in Tokyo on August 10th. The winner will get a seat in the WSOM Main Event and a stipend for travel fees to the tournament. This is only the second year for the WSOM and the first year for a satellite in Japan.
I joined this time as a participant while Garthe and Shintaro ran the session. We started with a brief summary of the rules by Shintaro, a few practice hands with our teachers watching diligently before we got into the games. Everyone had a tough time keeping their tiles facedown until the deal was finished since we are spoiled with automatic tables, little chance of cheating and always look at our tiles right away. The hands and scoring took some getting used to too, but the transition wasn’t too hard. The rules are closer to Reach than the Chinese Official ones are and a bit more interesting than them too. (Of course NOT more interesting than Reach though!).
Since it was the first time and we only had one table, we only got the WSOM Main Event rules in for practice. At future sessions we want to open up tables for both rules depending on what people want to play. I know I’m planning on going to almost all of them and then I’m going to win the WSOM this year! Both events!
If anyone is in the Tokyo or Yokohama area, be sure to stop by one night. We’re there Tuesday (Tokyo) and Thursday (Yokohama) from 7pm-10pm. This time avid ReachMahjong.com and YakitoriOnline.com poster Lolle joined us and we had a great time. The satellite is August 10th at 12pm (registration opens at 11am) and everyone is welcome. See you there!
