USPML Thoughts: The Excitement of Mahjong
“What a Rush – taking a look at the mahjong high”
by Charlyn Gee, USPML
I can’t deny it ・mahjong gets my heart rate up. Playing makes me feel excited. It feels like a runner’s high, or like the excitement of stage nerves right before your opening night. I love games in general ・board games, card games, video games, you name it ・and many games are interesting, fun, and engaging, just like mahjong. But few others give me the edge-of-my-seat thrill that mahjong does.
So why is that? What makes it so exciting?
For me, it’s this: The closer you are to winning, the closer you are to losing.
Riichi is a clear example: You’re ready to win, just one tile away. You go into riichi. Your triumph is nigh! But now, you’re stuck – you can’t change your hand. Not even if you draw a dangerous tile, one you just know could be your opponent’s wait. Your every draw could be an awesome win… or it could be a crushing loss.
But it’s not just riichi that puts you in this tough position. Let’s say your hand is progressing towards a nice limit hand. You draw a dangerous tile, but one you can’t use. Now you’ve in the same kind of risk-reward situation. You aren’t locked in the way you are in riichi, but if you want the big win, you have to take the risk too.
In fact, you don’t even need to draw the dangerous tile to tug the risk-reward heartstrings. As you get closer to ready, you essentially “commit” more and more tiles to completed melds. You have fewer and fewer “free” tiles to discard ・ fewer safe choices. So each time you draw, it could be great, or it could be terrible. For me, especially when my hand could become high-value, I get a little surge of adrenaline every time I reach for a tile: Is it going to be my lucky draw? Or is it going to be the one that makes me fold?
It’s exciting to win. It’s exciting to risk loss. Mahjong forces you into both situations at once. When I win, it’s like I’ve snatched my victory from the jaws of defeat.
What a rush.
