Tournament Evolution?
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.
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. 😉
