Singapore Sparrows

Drama in the Mahjong Time–EMA saga

2009-11-11T00:45:00.000+08:00

The whole Mahjong Time saga is turning out to be quite dramatic. In a report that was deleted just hours after being published by Mahjong News, the two main actors in this little turbulent episode, President of Mahjong Time, Slava Novozhenya, and President of the European Mahjong Association (EMA) and the Dutch Mahjong Association, Robert Rijnders, claimed that the breakdown in communication between the two presidents because of unhappiness over inappropriate responses (to work proposals and correspondence) led to the unfortunate cancellation of partnerships between Mahjong Time and the EMA. It was earlier speculated that Mahjong Time may be in some form of trouble, perhaps financial (see Mahjong News' earlier report). But Mr. Novozhenya insists that Mahjong Time is not having financial problems in an official response (see Comment 8 under the Mahjong News' article MahjongTime does a lot more than just making money). The original report was deleted for reasons explained in a replacement article.

Well, it does seem that this saga may just be a small hiccup for the developing international mahjong scene. If what Mr. Novozhenya says is true, then perhaps international online tournaments for MCR will continue. With the bad blood between Mahjong Time and EMA now, however, there will be some uncertainty with regard to the status of tournaments being hosted by Mahjong Time, the only online mahjong platform suitable for tournament play.

For now, there is an unofficial European ranking for online tournaments, following the successful alternative German Mahjong Open that was organised in place of the official one cancelled by Mahjong Time "for technical reasons". An emerging view is that such do-it-yourself tournaments may be the way to go, but these are only possible on gaming platforms that have features that allow for DIY tournaments, which is apparently only Mahjong Time, ironically.

It does seem that we still have to adopt a wait-and-see approach for now, to see how all the various parties resolve these problems. It could be that there will be no more proper online tournaments; or if there will still be such tournaments, they may be hosted by other platforms (for example, the new Mahjong Logic), or they may be small-scale and organised with sanction and without technical assistance from a host gaming platform, such as the just-concluded alternative German Mahjong Open was.

[Editor: Updated at 03:30 hrs, 11 November 2009]

Mahjong Time in trouble?

2009-11-07T23:30:00.002+08:00

The world's only online portal for MCR mahjong, Mahjong Time, seems to be in trouble (see Mahjong News' report). The Second German Mahjong Open (GMO), an online tournament that was to be hosted by Mahjong Time was cancelled just two days ago, before its scheduled occurrence this weekend. This was supposed due to technical difficulties on Mahjong Time's side. This has led the European Mahjong Association (EMA), the Dutch Mahjong Association, and the German national mahjong association DJML to cancel their partnerships with Mahjong Time, although this cancellation is not the main cause, but the final straw that broke the camel's back. Apparently, EMA and the other mahjong organisations were disappointed by Mahjong Time's inability to keep promises.

Many regular players and registered participants for the GMO tournament were left disappointed, although an alternative tournament is being organised by Janco Onnink, a Dutch player who was supposed to play in the cancelled GMO. Since EMA cancelled its partnership with Mahjong Time, this probably means there will not be any sanctioned online tournaments for the time being, not with Mahjong Time. So, there will be fewer chances for players around the world to participate in MCR tournaments (albeit the online ones).

More troubling is the implication that Mahjong Time may be in some sort of trouble, perhaps financial. This raises a question of whether online mahjong play is profitable for companies like Mahjong Time. If not, does this mean that online MCR play may come to an end? There are many portals offering online mahjong play but none offer the MCR variant in English, a crucial element in allowing international participation. There will be alternatives and solutions eventually though; already, there is a new mahjong software (offering MCR as one of the variants) developed by Mahjong Logic that would be licensed out to a few portals once some legal requirements are cleared. The question is whether Mahjong Logic will be able to take out the role of Mahjong Time, at least in the minds of the faithful users of Mahjong Time.

I had introduced Mahjong Time to several friends in my semi-regular play group as an alternative to live MCR play (something that is quite difficult to achieve these days, with all our conflicting schedules). AJ and JT were particularly keen to play more on Mahjong Time. I wonder how this development would affect all of us. Hopefully, Mahjong Time will resolve its problems.

Blog Update

2009-07-03T23:30:00.005+08:00

It has been quite a while since my last post — some sixteen months in fact! I am guilty of being too busy with too many things in my life, thus leading to the neglect of this blog. Mahjong, however, does remain an important and essential part: I continue to play mahjong, if infrequently, and continue to keep track of mahjong news (for example, the Mahjong News website is a good source of news on developments in Europe!). However, I just have not kept up with the blogging.

Now, I am trying to make more time for this blog just so this blog does not die a long, slow death by neglect! I will not be able to blog much on my Mahjong Competition Rules play sessions, since I rarely get to play mahjong with my MCR group. However, to make up for lack of opportunities to play MCR with people in the flesh, I have been spending a little bit more time on MahjongTime. Yes, I got myself a subscription! So, more online mahjong, less "real-life" mahjong. I will have to be content with that, as long as there is mahjong for me to play!

So, what is in store for this blog then, for the future? I will continue to post my thoughts on mahjong in general, with little bits of history, culture, analysis and other things thrown in. If I get to play some proper MCR games with my MCR group, I might also post some interesting titbits gleaned from these sessions.

Online MCR Tournaments

2008-03-09T18:00:00.004+08:00

With my MCR (Mahjong Competition Rules) group failing miserably to play regularly (or rather, it is really half-dead), my thoughts turn to whether online play would be a more sustainable way of playing MCR mahjong in a place like Singapore where it is really difficult to find interested players (whether for casual fun or for competition).

There are several online mahjong servers, but few offer MCR, most notably Mahjong Time. Mahjong Time has teamed up with the European Mahjong Association (EMA) to offer online tournaments, such as the Open European Mahjong Championship–Online (OEMC-Online) and several national online championships such as the recent Online Hungarian Mahjong Championship (OHMC). Incidentally, Mahjong Time is also teaming up with World Mahjong Limited to bring the US$1,000,000 World Series of Mahjong (WSoM) online, offering the Zung Jung ruleset to online players and organising some online qualifying events for the finals in Macau in September this year.

Online mahjong may not have the atmosphere and authentic feel that some mahjong players like, but it does offer the convenience of playing whenever one feels like playing, without having to find three other players for a game. Moreover, it offers the intrepid mahjong player a chance to play variants not usually played with friends. It is thus the case with MCR mahjong. In Singapore, it is not a common variant, with most Singaporeans playing Singapore Style, or less commonly, Hong Kong Old Style, Taiwanese mahjong, or Malaysian mahjong. Since MCR mahjong has so many patterns to learn, it is also daunting for beginners. It would come as no surprise that the take-up rate is probably quite low. Online mahjong may perhaps then offer interested players a chance to learn, play, and advance in skill, variants not common in their home regions.

As I looked at the recent reports on OHMC [1], I was surprised to find ranked third in the tournament, a Singaporean player! No doubt, there are Singaporean players interested in playing MCR mahjong. However, since it would be difficult to find like-minded players to play face-to-face/offline games, online mahjong is a solution. This is probably the same for fans of other mahjong variants, most notably riichi maajan. There are at least two well-known Japanese servers providing quality online riichi maajan: Ron2 and Tenhou.

Singaporeans are not the only ones not able to find opponents and friends to play in face-to-face environments. The winner of OHMC, JulJul (her online moniker), also could not find friends to play 'real' games with her, and she had to turn to the Internet, since MCR mahjong is not commonly played in the United States. One participant of OHMC is from India, a country where mahjong is probably not very common either, much less the MCR variant!

Considering this, I am most tempted to give Mahjong Time a try, especially with regard to the online tournaments! If I am not able to compete in real offline tournaments, at least I could try competing in online ones. The pioneering success of my Singaporean compatriot is certainly inspiring!

Notes:
1. Mahjong News had a brief report on the results of the online tournament, as well as an interview with the OHMC champion. The Online Ranking System (MORSE) on the same website revealed the nationalities of the participants of the online tournaments organised so far.

Singapore Style Mahjong: Pinghu

2008-03-02T23:00:00.008+08:00

I had earlier discussed some features of Singapore Style mahjong in the previous post Mahjong, Singapore Style, namely, the use of animal tiles and immediate payouts in some situations. A third feature I consider to be important in Singapore Style mahjong is the pinghu hand (平和 Mandarin: pínghú, Cantonese: pengwoo, Japanese: pinfu). This pinghu hand is somewhat different from pinghu hands in other variants, such as Japanese riichi maajan and Cantonese/Hong Kong Old Style mahjong (HKOS), and this feature of Singapore Style mahjong will be discussed in some detail in this post, with reference to the other variants, and with some speculation on the development of this hand.

This hand is a difficult hand to learn for beginners to Singapore Style mahjong, despite its usefulness in the Singaporean game. The English name of All Sequences, or All Chows, suggests all that is needed to complete this hand is complete of four three-tile sequences and a matching pair. However, this is not the case, and the English name is just a convenient term to describe the general application of this hand. There are certain conditions required before the hand can counted as a pinghu hand in Singapore Style mahjong.

Making a pinghu hand in Singapore Style mahjong
Basically, the hand is composed of four three-tile sets of sequences or runs (顺子 Mandarin: shùnzĭ). Such sequences can be exposed or concealed; there is no requirement to have all sequences concealed like in Japanese riichi maajan. In order to declare a win with the pinghu hand, there are two main conditions: the hand has to have a multiple wait, and the eyes have to be tiles that are not a potential double.

The multiple wait refers to the number of different tiles that the hand is waiting for. This multiple wait has to be for tiles from the same suit, and can only be for two or three different tiles due to the nature of this hand. If the hand is only waiting for a unique tile (that is, only one tile can complete the hand, whether this is a closed wait, an edge wait, or a single wait), and the player wins on a discard, the hand would not be counted as pinghu. The exception to this is if the winning tile is self-drawn. However, this is not applicable to a situation where the player has a hand where he had melded four sequences leaving a concealed single tile, since this clearly does not allow a multiple wait. The reason why a player can win a self-drawn pinghu when waiting for a single tile, and not when he has only one tile left in the concealed portion of his hand, is that there are no specific rules about checking the winning tile, to see if it completes a unique wait or a multiple wait.

The eyes are the remaining pair in the hand, and have to be tiles that are not potential doubles. If these tiles can be melded as a pung, this pung should not give the player a double; this typically means that among the Honour tiles, only tiles of winds that are not the seat wind or the round wind can be used as the eyes in the pinghu hand.

Given that the pinghu hand has to be completed in a particular way, players of Singapore Style mahjong have to learn the rules correctly, although many beginners do not learn the pinghu hand correctly. These players are then most like to commit fouls when playing, a supposed one-double pinghu hand turning out to be a no-double chicken hand (the Singaporean game is usually played with a one-double minimum for winning), often an expensive mistake since the errant player has to pay the other players as a penalty.

Origin of the Singapore Style pinghu (with some speculation)
The pinghu hand is not simply a hand that has four sequences and any pair. There are certain conditions required while making the hand for it to be considered as pinghu and not any chicken hand. The Chinese term for this hand, 平和 (Mandarin: pínghé but usually pronounced as pínghú; literally a "flat or even" win), seems to indicate that this hand is very ordinary and has no value. This may seem strange to Singaporean players since the pinghu hand is worth at least one double in Singapore Style mahjong! However, we have to look at the history of mahjong development.

The style of play which predominated at the turn of the 20th century is known as Chinese Classical, and the point-scoring is more complicated than in most modern variants. Essentially, points were awarded pungs, kongs and bonus tiles (flowers etc.) as well as to pairs of certain tiles, as well as for declaring a win, or winning with a unique wait, and this counts as the basic score. Doubles are used to progressively multiply the basic score to obtain the final score. Riichi maajan retains this scoring of basic points (fu in riichi maajan) to some extent whereas variants such as HKOS and Singapore Style removed the need for such point-scoring, keeping only the doubling.

Thus, in Chinese Classical mahjong, a 'No-Score' hand can score one double for pinghu. This hand does not have any pungs or kongs, or pairs that can score basic points. This can be viewed as some form of consolation, since there are hardly any basic points to double (except for points scored for winning, and for points for bonus tiles, and a few other situations), unlike hands with pungs and kongs. The pinghu hand in Singapore Style mahjong can be analysed as a development of this Chinese Classical pinghu hand. This is the reason why the eyes cannot have tiles that are a potential double, since in Chinese Classical, such pairs (of tiles such as Dragons, Round Wind, and/or Seat Wind) score basic points.

Why the hand has to have a multiple wait is more of a mystery. According to Millington's description [1], his pinghu hand allows single waits ("filling the only place"). Of course, this may not be a standardised way to play a pinghu hand. Perhaps some players have a different view of what 'no-score' means, and this could mean points for 'filling the only place' should have been excluded as well and players therefore did not allow single waits for pinghu. In riichi maajan, this is taken even further: the winning tile cannot be for completing a pair, even if there is a multiple wait. Thus, in a sequence of 1d-2d-3d-4d, 1d and 4d can be valid waits for Singapore Style pinghu, but not for riichi maajan, as this counted as a single wait (nobetan "stretched single"). Completing the pair ("fishing the eyes") does earn some basic points according to Millington, and is considered a different situation from 'filling the only place'. The Singapore Style pinghu hand is likely to be a development from Chinese Classical, but in a way that is not exactly faithful to Millington's version.

Interestingly, the Singapore Style pinghu hand differs from other pinghu hands. In Chinese Classical mahjong, the pinghu hand is awarded one double. The pinghu hand is also awarded one double in riichi maajan and in HKOS. The Singapore Style pinghu scores one double only if the player has bonus tiles, and four if there are no bonus tiles (both flowers and animals). Given that the usual limit in Singapore Style mahjong is five doubles, a four-double pinghu hand is thus quite high-scoring. However, it is usually not easy to win a pinghu hand without drawing a bonus tile, and since there are twelve such bonus tiles in Singapore Style mahjong, the chances of drawing a bonus tile are higher.

As the structure of the pinghu hand in modern play has some precedents in Chinese Classical mahjong, the scoring for pinghu in Singapore Style mahjong could perhaps be attributed to the 'no-score' principle as well. The 'no-score' of the pinghu hand in Chinese Classical only encompasses points for pungs, kongs, and pairs of certain tiles; points for self-draw, "filling the only place", "fishing the eyes", "drawing the final tile", and bonus tiles, are allowed. The pinghu in Singapore Style mahjong seems to have gone one extra step: disallowing bonus tiles, thus reducing the basic points (that would have been counted in Chinese Classical), and in turn allow this hand to score more doubles.

Four-double pinghu and its consequence on play
The pinghu hand is generally easy to make, and a pinghu-based strategy is rather viable in Singapore Style mahjong. Players usually assess their hands at the start, to see if their hands has a good chance with a four-double pinghu, provided they do not already have drawn bonus tiles. If they did not draw any bonus tiles, and quite a few have already been exposed by the other players, they have a good chance at completing the pinghu without any bonus tiles. Once such a decision is made, players may break up pairs of Honour tiles with potential for doubles (such as Dragon tiles) and give up the chance to obtain doubles through making pungs of such tiles, since there is a more valuable hand if they pursue the four-double pinghu.

Even if they did draw a bonus tile, there is a good chance that the bonus tile carries some double (one-third of bonus tiles are animal tiles, which are worth one double for any player). This is why pinghu hands are quite common in the Singaporean game.

Players pursuing four-double pinghu are considered dangerous, and players sitting above them may play defensive, by discarding carefully to prevent chows (there is no restriction of exposed chows in Singapore Style, unlike in Japanese riichi maajan), that is, until the four-double pinghu player draws a bonus tile which reduces the danger immediately (a four-double hand to a one- or two-double hand).

The pinghu hand can be seen as a basic hand, yet it is one of the more difficult hands to learn for beginners. In the typical Singaporean game, where there is a one-double minimum for winning, the pinghu hand is commonly used to obtain the minimum, especially for players who dislike to depend on luck to obtain doubles through drawing bonus tiles. Moreover, the high score of pinghu when a player has no bonus tiles is an incentive to attempt this hand, despite the possibility of drawing a bonus tile later in the game that will reduce the score.

I hope that I have thrown some light on the pinghu hand in the context of Singapore Style mahjong through this discussion. Does this pique your interest in Singapore Style mahjong?

Notes:
1. A.D. Millington, 1993, The Complete Book of Mah-Jongg, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Mahjong, Singapore Style

2008-02-24T22:15:00.004+08:00

For the past few months, I have not been able to organise MCR mahjong sessions due to the lack of available players. Yes, the player pool is small. Still, I managed to play some mahjong during the Chinese New Year, albeit in the Singapore Style. So, this presents me an opportunity to write a little about the Singapore variant of mahjong.

There are many varieties of mahjong in Asia, each with their own local flavours and developments. Singapore, despite being a small city-state, has its own variety. There are enough techno-savvy mahjong enthusiasts of Singapore-styled mahjong to have a Wikipedia article on its scoring, Singaporean Mahjong scoring rules! Despite being quite similar to Hong Kong Old Style (HKOS) mahjong (also known as Cantonese mahjong), Singapore Style mahjong has some salient differences: the use of four animal tiles; immediate payouts for kongs, flower/animals tile pairings and some special limit hands; and a high-scoring All Chows (All Sequences) hand. There are some other differences, but these are minor details. However, since there is no central authority governing the rules of Singapore Style mahjong, some of these features discussed here may not actually be played by some groups who profess to play Singapore Style mahjong, and these groups may include rules more consistent with HKOS mahjong.

Animal Tiles
People observing a game of Singapore Style mahjong would be immediately struck by the presence of the animal tiles. These animal tiles are the cat (猫 māo), rat (老鼠 láoshŭ), cockerel (公鸡 gōngjī), and centipede (蜈蚣 wúgōng). Animal tiles are used in the same way as flower and season tiles, that is, as bonus tiles. Each animal tile obtained counts as a tai (台 Mandarin: tái) [1], and a set of all four counts as five tai, with each animal tile counting as one tai and one bonus tai given for having a full set of bonus tiles. This means that it is easy to get tai (doubles) in the Singapore variant. Often, players with poor hands and no doubles in sight would hope to obtain an animal tile, and thus able to win, albeit with a minimal score.

The animal tiles are divided into prey (rat and centipede), and predators (cat and cockerel). The situation when a prey tile and its corresponding predator tile comes together is called a bite or biting (咬 Mandarin: yăo, Hokkien POJ: kā, 'to bite'). If a player obtains a corresponding pair of prey and predator, he can collect some payment from all the other players. Strauser and Evans (1964) [2] describes a different way of using animal tiles — players with predator tiles can capture prey tiles exposed by other players. This rule as described by Strauser and Evans is not used in Singapore Style mahjong.

Immediate Payouts
Singapore Style mahjong, like many other mahjong variants, is used for small-stakes gambling, and there are immediate payouts for some situations when they occur in the game. These situations include special combination of bonus tiles (such as flower pairings, animal bitings, bonus tile kongs), kongs of suit and honour tiles, and some special limit hands. Players need not win a hand in order to collect payment, and depending on the stakes decided at the table/house, such payouts can be more profitable than hands with low scores (i.e. few tai/doubles). Typically, immediate payouts for pairings/bites/kongs is set at 2× the rate of one tai.

Singapore Style mahjong usually use flower tiles in two sets. Usually, this is depicted by numbers in two colours (red and blue) or as words (the Four Noble Plants, 梅兰菊竹 méi lán jú zhú; and the Four Seasons, 春夏秋冬 chūn xià qiū dōng), often with both numbers (one set in Arabic numerals, the other in Chinese characters) and the words for the flowers and seasons. Each player will have flower tiles corresponding to his seat. A player obtaining both is said to get a flower pairing. This is colloquially known as kau'in (from Malay kahwin 'wedding'); sometimes, players say yao or ka ('bite' in Mandarin and Hokkien respectively) instead, following the practice for animal tiles.

For animal tiles, bites occur when a player obtains a corresponding pair of prey and predator (explained above).

Kongs are situations when a player obtains four of a kind, whether for normal suit and honour tiles, or for bonus tiles. Thus a player can get payment for collecting all four tiles of a flower or animal set, in addition to the bonus double for such a lucky feat.

All flower pairings, bites, and kongs can come as exposed or concealed. The payment earned for a concealed pairing/bite/kong is double that for an exposed one. Flower pairings and bites are considered concealed when a player obtains such tile combinations in his starting hand, before any replacement of tiles; and considered exposed in all other situations. Flower and animal kongs are always considered concealed, since it is statistically difficult to obtain all four in the set in a starting hand.

Besides bonus tile combinations and kongs, there are two situations where immediate payment occurs: for the special limit hands of Big Three Dragons (大三元 dà sān yuán, often translated as Three Great Scholars) and Big Four Winds (大四喜 dà sì xĭ, often translated as Four Great Blessings).

Any player obtaining the triplet combinations defining these two special hands can declare a win, which is scores the limit (usually set at five or six doubles), without having to have the rest of the hand complete. The uncompleted portion has to be kept concealed though, since there is an option to complete the hand for a higher-scoring win (provided the players agree to play above the set limit of five or six doubles). Although this is a common rule, it is by no means universally applied in Singapore, and some players prefer that the hand is completed in order to claim the win.

The Dead Wall
Besides the use of the animal tiles, immediate payouts, and the special All Chows hand (more on this in another post), there are some other differences in the details of the rules of the gameplay. One such difference is the number of tiles in the dead wall.

The dead wall is the portion of the walls where replacements for kongs and bonus tiles are obtained. In the Chinese Classical rules, exactly sixteen tiles is counted and separate from the live wall. This dead wall is not replenishable, and used only for replacement of kongs. However, in HKOS mahjong and Singapore Style mahjong, the dead wall is replenished whenever a player draws replacement tiles after declaring flowers and kongs, such that a certain number of tiles is kept in the dead wall. For HKOS, there are fourteen tiles in the dead wall, but for Singapore Style, there are fifteen tiles (seven and a half stacks) in the dead wall.

The one extra tile in the dead wall for Singapore Style mahjong could be attributed to the inclusion of the four animal tiles, which are not found in HKOS. Thus, an increased number of playable tiles could have led to a larger dead wall, to keep the random and surprise factor more proportionate.

Do note that the actual rationale for the dead wall in the original game is not known at all, and the mahjong variants found today have different number of tiles in the dead wall (if the dead wall is played). As mentioned earlier, in Chinese Classical mahjong, exactly sixteen tiles are reserved for kong replacements only, which is the total possible number of kongs in a hand of mahjong (four per player), rare but possible! In Japanese riichi maajan, fourteen tiles are set aside for the dead wall, but there are no flowers to replace, and there is no replenishment of tiles. Moreover, only four kongs per hand are allowed, which results in a draw unless the four kongs are made by the same player. (Edit: There is indeed replenishment of the dead wall after kongs are made! Many thanks to Tina Christensen for the correction.) In other variants, there is no dead wall, and play continues until all the tiles have been drawn. The variety of rules regarding the dead wall, or the lack of a dead wall, show that the function of the dead wall is not conserved amongst the descendant variants of mahjong. There is also no consistent explanation for the function of the dead wall by authors of mahjong books.

So, in this post, two features of Singapore Style mahjong have been discussed. The All Chows hand, pinghu (平和 Mandarin: pínghú), as played in the Singaporean game, will be discussed in the next post. Hopefully, this post has not been too dry and boring!

Notes:
1. Tai is the common term for 'double', used in Singapore Style mahjong, and probably derives from Taiwanese mahjong, although the actual usage in Taiwanese mahjong is different from that in Singapore Style mahjong. The general Chinese and Cantonese equivalent is fan (番 Mandarin: fān).
2. Kitty Strauser and Lucille Evans, 1964, "Mah Jong, Anyone? A Manual of Modern Play", Tuttle Publishing. A more up-to-date and revised version with additional material by Tom Sloper was published in 2006 as "Mah Jong, Anyone?: A Manual of Western Play".

World Mahjong Championship 2007

2007-12-31T23:30:00.000+08:00

The 'first' World Mahjong Championship (WMC) was held earlier this year in Chengdu, China, and featured the best players of MCR in the world, bringing together mahjong enthusiasts from America, China, Europe, and Japan.

The WMC was meant to be the culmination of a World Series of Mahjong, coordinated by the World Mahjong Organisation. However, there was very little news (in English) about this World Series of Mahjong (not to be confused with the other World Series of Mahjong held in Macau, with a prize purse of US$1 million). Of the five proposed stops in this World Series of Mahjong, I could only find coverage of the European stop, that is the Open European Mahjong Championship, in Denmark. The proposed American tournament was apparently cancelled, as there is a lack of interest in MCR in the United States, where American mah-jongg is the most popular form of mahjong (although some would argue American mah-jongg is not mahjong at all, not anymore!) amongst the non-Asian players living in the United States, while the Asian players there are probably more familiar with Hong Kong style mahjong or Japanese riichi mājan.

World Series of Mahjong aside, this WMC was to feature the best from the various mahjong-playing 'areas': China; Japan; Europe; and America and others. The best players from each area were to be chosen via qualifying tournaments organised by their national associations. Of course, not all areas could send their best players: due to the lack of interest in MCR in America, there is thus only a small contingent from the United States. Instead, the player quota for 'Area D' (i.e. America and others) was filled up by extra teams from the other three areas. The players from the same area would not play against each other during the tournament. Instead, each table would comprise a player from each of the four areas. Players therefore meet a whole variety of opponents, including all the formidable players from China and Japan (who indeed dominate the top end of the WMC 2007 standings).

This tournament was billed as the "first" World Mahjong Championship, but there was actually an earlier First World Mahjong Championship held in 2002, in Tokyo, Japan. This was before the founding of the World Mahjong Organisation in 2006; the 2002 tournament was jointly organised by the Takeshobo Mahjong Museum, the Japanese Mahjong Organising Committee (JMOC) and the city council of Ningbo. However, since the first actual world championship in Tokyo was more of an ad hoc event, and this tournament in Chengdu marks the start of a regular world championship, the WMO and JMOC had agreed to call this tournament the real 'First World Mahjong Championship'.

There are differences between the two tournaments, of course. In the course of time since the 2002 World Championship, there has been some changes to the mahjong ruleset. The WMO issued the updated official rules in 2006, and this new ruleset is called 'Mahjong Competition Rules' (MCR) in the English edition (the previous English edition is called 'Competition Mahjong Official International Rulebook', often abbreviated as OIRB). The tournament format has also become more structured, with the division of players into four areas, and is more international in outlook. The 2002 tournament had 100 participants of which 24 represented four non-Asian countries. This year's WMC saw the participation of 55 players from ten European countries and the United States. It really does seem more of a world championship with the increased participation of players from the rest of the world (apart from the host country and birthplace of mahjong, China, as well as traditional mahjong powerhouse Japan).

The WMC 2007 has a tournament system where all players get to play against opponents from other 'areas' for eight ju 局 (game/session). The top 16 players after the completion of the eight ju then go on to compete for one final ju, where they are drawn to face each other Swiss-style (i.e. the top four players face each other at one table for the final ju, the next four at another table and so on).

Each ju lasts for two hours, or the sixteen hands of a complete game, whichever is faster. As this Chengdu tournament utilised automatic mahjong tables, the players probably saved some time in not having to shuffle and stack the tiles, and the chances of cheating by manipulating the tiles while shuffling are also reduced.

After the first eight ju, the sixteen finalists included five Japanese players, and one European player from the Netherlands. This meant that there were ten Chinese players. This showed the dominance the Chinese (as well as the Japanese, to a smaller extent) had on mahjong. Laurent Mahé, a French player, had narrowly missed out on the final, being ranked at 17th with 20 table points, just one point off the next higher-ranked player. (Laurent Mahé can, however, boast of having set a tournament record of the highest-scoring hand of +303, after self-drawing a Thirteen Orphans hand. Also, a special prize was awarded to any 88-point fan made.)

At Table 1 (where the top four players were drawn to play each other), the Japanese player Imaeda Minoru 今枝実 was in the lead with 29 table points out of 32 possible after eight ju, while his three Chinese opponents all had 28 table points. However, he was outplayed, and third-ranked Li Li 李立 (pinyin: Lĭ Lì) won the game with a convincing +256. Imaeda Minoru only managed to obtain 1 table point with a score of -76 giving him third place. His overall ranking was thus also third place, just edged out of second place by Zhang Zhangfei 张章飞 (pinyin: Zhāng Zhāngfēi). At Table 2, ranked fifth with 26 table points, Zhang Zhangfei managed to win at his table during the last ju and earn 4 table points to tie with Imaeda Minoru, each with a final 30 tables points, but he had a better competition point score of +1143 to Imaeda Minoru's +752.

So, the final individual standings: Li Li in first place, Zhang Zhangfei in second, and Imaeda Minoru in third. Désirée Heemskerk, the only European in the final, managed to improve her ranking from 12th to 10th. The full final results can be found here on the China Majiang website 中国麻将网.

The team results: China Shanxi Jiexiu team 中国山西介休队 in first place, China Shanghai Zhangjiang team 中国上海张江队 in second place, and the Japan Mahjong Sport Association Osaka team 日本麻將體育協會大阪隊 in third place. The winning team was really strong, with three of its members in the top sixteen (after eight ju): in 2nd, 4th, and 15th places. The second-placed team also had three team members in the top sixteen: in 5th, 6th, and 16th places.

News, information and photographs of WMC 2007 can be found at the following websites: Mahjong Danmark (photos), Sloperama's Mah-Jong Zone (photos), and Mahjong News (photos).

To mahjong enthusiasts, WMC 2007 is truly exciting in some ways. Mahjong may not be a very well-regarded game (perhaps due to its negative image as a gambling game, especially in Asia), and is probably not very exciting to watch (unlike many sports). However, it is a source of great pleasure for many people who play the game. It is a fascinating game, with its elements of randomness and strategy. It is certainly not an easy game, especially in rule-heavy variants like MCR and Japanese riichi mahjong. WMC 2007 affirms that mahjong can be played seriously and legitimately as a sport, especially since it does not have a hefty registration fee to justify a big prize structure like the Macau World Series of Mahjong (this was discussed in an earlier post).

No doubt most Singaporeans who play mahjong now, play it with small-stake gambling in mind. Yet, moving on to play mahjong at a gambling-free competitive level is not so big a leap. I believe MCR as a ruleset is interesting and complex enough to entice players to play without the excitement of gambling. With a goal like a world championship to work towards, it can be possible to build a culture of mahjong-playing Singaporeans aiming to be the best, yet not losing the pleasure in playing a intellectually stimulating and mentally rewarding game.

With the next WMC planned for 2010, there is time for preparation. Who knows, there might just be a Singaporean team participating at WMC 2010!

Mahjong Magic (A Straits Times Article)

2007-12-25T23:45:00.000+08:00

This Straits Times (ST) article appeared almost a month back, on December 2nd 2007. As some of you may have noticed, the writer of the article, Sandra Leong, left a comment on an earlier post. Following that, JT and I decided to do an interview with Sandra because we were intrigued by the direction the proposed ST article could take. Although the interview and the newspaper article came at a bad time, I am glad that we participated in the writing of this article.

The article Mahjong Magic explores the state of mahjong in Singapore now. Mahjong is predominantly regarded as a gambling activity and is thus banned from being played in public places. Alas, due to this, mahjong tournaments (of whatever variant/style) are also banned. Even mahjong using Mahjong Competition Rules (MCR) would be suspect. Mahjong is thus typically played in the privacy of one's home, and is a highly popular pastime among the Chinese, whether for small stakes or for more high-stake hardcore gambling.

There has been a renewed interest in mahjong, and this may be attributed to the buzz created by the Integrated Resorts (IRs) slated to open in 2009. The building of the IRs marks the relaxation of gambling restrictions in the form of legalised casinos in Singapore (well-known for its clean and boring image). No doubt, the recent World Series of Mahjong held in Macau contributed to the buzz. Since this increased interest is due to the gambling aspect of mahjong, it is unlikely to improve the image of mahjong as a serious game.

However, there are positive developments as well. There is a greater interest in mahjong not as a tool for gambling but as a tool for mental stimulation, especially among the elderly, with support from medical research. There is a possibility that mahjong will be allowed to be played publicly (in community centres, for example) as a means to let senior citizens keep mentally active (see Mind Games to While Time Away in an NTUC article on wellness). Across different demographics, interest in mahjong is rising. Non-Chinese are learning how to play this interesting game; more young people are picking up because of the mental challenges, association with gambling notwithstanding; and we (JT and I) represent those who are taking it as a serious mindsport. Mahjong is good for things other than gambling after all, and there are people who recognise this!

Anyway, the ST article was basically a chance for us to advertise MCR in Singapore. We are passionate about mahjong, and we want to show the rest of Singaporeans how fun and challenging mahjong can be, without the stigma of gambling. Well, we are still trying to assess the impact of the article on this particular aspect, but JT is already a little miffed that people apparently did not read the article carefully or at all, judging from their uninformed comments. She had written about her thoughts and reactions in Mahjong Article on ST Life and Further Reactions on the ST Article on her blog JT's Life Snippets.

Although we have received some rather snide and uninformed comments, there are some perhaps positive outcomes. There have been some tentative requests to know about the game, and we are most glad to share more about MCR. It will be good to spread the MCR ruleset as an alternative to the local variant ("Singapore Style"), and to meet fellow mahjong enthusiasts and make some new friends in the process. The long-term impact is harder to gauge, but at least we have moved one step, albeit a tiny one, closer towards our goals of seeing mahjong tournaments and serious participation in mahjong as a mental sport in Singapore.

December Update

2007-12-23T23:40:00.000+08:00

Some interesting things have happened since the previous blog entry, such as the World Mahjong Championships in Chengdu and the ST article on mahjong, and I will be trying to catch up with posts on these things. Work had been tiring and hectic, and had left me little time for blogging, but this will be rectified.

On the playing front, things have been a little slow as well. We had few games in the past two months, due to players having scheduling problems, but hopefully, the new year will bring some better opportunities for playing.

*Player Standings* (current as of 23 Dec 2007)
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Games Played
EP	71	+2415	28
JT	69.5	+2687	27
WJ	22	-1296	18
AJ	21	-877	16
KP	11	-209	8
AW	6.5	-831	8
SJ	2	-1319	8
EL	0	-570	3

Rankings Update for October 2007

2007-10-28T02:00:00.000+08:00

It has been a while since this blog has been updated. However, that does not mean there has been no activity. Mahjong is still being played. In fact, we have one new member in our little group! Welcome, SJ!

*Current Standings* (current as of 27 Oct 2007)
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Games Played
EP	62	+2259	24
JT	57.5	+2028	23
WJ	22	-956	16
AJ	16	-807	13
KP	11	-209	8
AW	6.5	-831	8
EL	0	-570	3
SJ	0	-914	5

Life Snippets of a Mahjong Player

2007-09-17T20:30:00.000+08:00

JT has set up her own blog JT's Life Snippets to blog about her mahjong play in MCR and other snippets of her life! She has already posted some blogs about her recent big wins and analysed her approach.

As JT's blog focuses on the details (especially of her own winning hands), it is most complementary to this blog, which is more of an overview of the MCR games we play. Like Benjamin Boas' blog, JT's blog will help fill the gap in viewpoints and information on mahjong playing (albeit MCR), with some serious analysis of hand development and defence.

Here's wishing JT all the best in her blogging and mahjong playing (as well as the analysis that follows)!

Big Wins Continued

2007-08-31T22:30:00.000+08:00

After all the excitement in the preceding few weeks, it seems as if the streak of high-scoring hands was continuing, as there were two big wins in the 25th August session. Still, there were no major changes to the rankings, as everyone remains firmly in their positions. While JT obtained 6 table points from two games to advance her position, EP also took 6 table points to stay tantalisingly ahead!

*Current Standings* (current as of 25 Aug 2007)
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Games Played
EP	41	+1585	16
JT	36.5	+1451	15
AJ	15	-699	12
WJ	14	-1179	12
KP	9	-8	5
AW	3.5	-580	5
EL	0	-570	3

Session Report for 25 August 2007

The first game was full of interesting starting hands. For EP, these most unlikely hands turned into winning ones. From many unpromising-looking hands, he managed to fashion several winning hands to win the first game. AJ was most unfortunate, for not only did she almost not win any hand, she discarded the winning tiles six times, four of which went to EP, letting EP amass so many contest points!

One of the more interesting hands won by EP happened early in Game 1. He was basically attempting to make an All Fives hand, but it seemed that hand was going to end in a draw. On the very last tile, WJ discarded a 2d (2 Dot) which appeared to be a safe discard, especially since it was the last 2d. EP took one look and quickly claimed it for a Last Tile Claim win coupled to a Last Tile. Together with a few other fan, it turned out to be a sizeable 19-point hand! No All Fives, but still a good win!

The lesson: the last tile discard is always a potential winning tile for ready hands, since the Last Tile Claim fan has enough points for any ready hand to win, whatever the composition of that hand. So, it would be best to scrutinise the discards to see which tile is really safe. In this case, 2d was not truly safe. Although there were three 2d tiles already discarded, the tiles adjacent to 2d were not all discarded, meaning that there were players still holding onto nearby dot tiles (most probably as sequences). EP did and indeed won with the 2d, which completed a sequence of 2d-3d-4d.

Besides interesting starting hands, the kinds of hands won were also interesting to observe. For example, there was a string of Lower Four hands won by three different players. There was also a string of Pure Straight hands, but this is not as surprising as the players are all rather oriented towards chow-based hands.

The second game started out well for WJ, who won three of the first five hands. The sixth hand, South 2, was a turning-point, for JT. JT had received a very good starting hand.

The fan was obvious: go for Triple Pung of the nines, and All Terminals and Honours was also possible. However, the hand was very drawn-out. JT managed to draw a GD, and melded that when one was discarded. Almost to the end of the hand, she had not managed to meld any other sets, but she was actually ready. On JT's right was WJ, striving to make a Melded Hand. She had come to a point when she was ready, with a single concealed tile, with the rest melded on the table. When she had to discard one of the two tiles after drawing, she decided to discard the 9d as she figured she had more chance of winning with the other tile. 9d had not been discarded at all, so she figured someone else was keeping all the others (which was true). JT melded the 9d for a melded kong, then drew a replacement tile, which turned out to be a winning tile for her. The results: All Terminals and Honours, Triple Pung, Out with Replacement Tile and a few others for a total of 64 points. It was heavy damage, considering this was a self-drawn win. With this, JT overtook everyone else comfortably by collecting 216 points, and she maintained the lead all the way to the end of the game.

For this hand, WJ's Melded Hand basically left her with little defensive alternatives. As JT's hand was mainly concealed, it was hard to predict the dangerous tiles to discard, although the lack of discards of the nines was a good clue. Discarding a terminal tile so late in the hand was therefore very dangerous! WJ admitted she did not read the discards carefully, and it was a painful lesson for her, since she was in the lead initially. If JT had directly won with the 9d discard, she still would not have made such a big gain, but it turned out to be an Out with Replacement Tile win instead.

As a consolation, WJ managed to win with a hand including an All Terminals and Honours fan, worth a total of 38 points, in the very last hand (North 4), but was not able to get enough points to get 2nd place. WJ at least managed to take back 2 table points for this session, while AJ had none at all!

**Results of Game 1, 25 August 2007**
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Wins (SD)	Discards
EP	4	+331	9 (2)	2
JT	2	+109	4 (2)	1
WJ	1	-153	2 (0)	3
AJ	0	-287	1 (0)	6

**Results of Game 2, 25 August 2007**
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Wins (SD)	Discards
JT	4	+191	4 (2)	4
EP	2	+68	5 (1)	2
WJ	1	-67	5 (0)	4
AJ	0	-192	2 (0)	3

Big Wins Galore!

2007-08-24T23:45:00.000+08:00

Everyone seems to be doing well at the mahjong table recently, more or less. JT obtained her highest ever score in a single game, +567 points, although EP holds the group record of +596. We have also seen a few high scoring hands (details below). With such interesting hands, some discussion about strategy had surfaced, and we all learnt more as we played.

*Current Standings* (current as of 18 Aug 2007)
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Games Played
EP	35	+1186	14
JT	30.5	+1151	13
AJ	15	-220	10
WJ	12	-959	10
KP	9	-8	5
AW	3.5	-580	5
EL	0	-570	3

Session Report for 04 August 2007

It has been a while since KP and AW played. With KP and AW, the overall game strategy changes. There are usually very few chow-based hands due to KP's playing style (he favours pung-based and semi-pure hands). With pungs happening everywhere, chow-based hands get affected, and players (especially players who favour chow-based hands like JT) are sometimes forced to abandon such hands.

In fact, for this game, there were fewer chow-based winning hands compared to other occasions. There were only four hands with All Chows, and none with Mixed Triple Chows or Mixed Shifted Chows, although there were five hands with Pure Straight, one Pure Shifted Chows and one Mixed Straight. The fact that there are chow-based hands not in combination with All Chows showed that pungs were made very often to complete hands.

KP was rather unlucky in this game as he did not win many hands. He was also Robbed of a Win in one hand, because JT happened to be sitting above him. JT herself was Robbed by EP in a later hand. Such was the turn of fortune.

Early in the game, AW managed to make a beautiful hand, consisting of Three Concealed Pungs, Mixed Shifted Pungs, All Pungs, All Simples, Concealed Hand and a Double Pung, worth a total of 36 points. Had AW drawn the winning tile herself, she would have gotten Four Concealed Pungs. Because of her wait, her hand was potentially worth a Triple Pung (instead of the Mixed Shifted Pungs).

Just a couple of hands later, EP managed to win with an All Terminals and Honours hand, courtesy of JT's discard. EP had melded pungs of 1D, WW and EW when JT discarded a WD (rather uneasily, seeing EP's threatening melds on the table). AW soon followed with a discard of WD, and then she threw out NW, which EP prompted melded. So, on the table, there was four melded pungs indicating a possible All Terminals and Honours hand, as well as a possible Melded Hand. Unluckily for JT, she thought WD was safe because there were already two discards on the table, so she discarded WD, only for EP to win with that very discard. The crucial point was the melding of NW which made EP's hand ready with a single wait (a cunning or desperate WD, depending on your viewpoint), which JT did not realise. Sadly for EP, the hand was undervalued because he forgot to count in Big Three Winds. Nonetheless, he made enough points to obtain 4 table points for this game.

**Results of Game 1, 04 August 2007**
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Wins (SD)	Discards
EP	4	+210	5 (2)	3
AW	2	-24	3 (1)	1
JT	1	-53	4 (2)	3
KP	0	-133	2 (1)	1

Session Report for 18 August 2007

This was an exciting session, where many high-scoring hands were attempted, and several hands were drawn-out affairs, almost ending in draws. Ultimately, JT emerged most triumphant, with an emphatic win of +567 points in Game 1. Although she did not do as well in Game 2, the results of Game 2 is not consequential as it was incomplete, with only 12 hands played due to lack of time.

Interestingly, this session also saw many self-drawn wins — 14 hands out of a total of 27 winning hands were self-drawn! JT made 5 self-drawn wins out of a total of 8 wins in Game 1 alone, which contributed greatly to her high score. The other players were simply no match for her in Game 1. In Game 2, all the hands in the entire West round were won with self-drawn tiles (two each by EP and JT).

Now, to the high-scoring hands made in this session. The first was made by JT in the middle of the West round. By this point in time, JT was already leading with +282 points to the second-placed EP's +31. JT managed to self-draw a winning tile to obtain Four Pure Shifted Pungs with Full Flush and a few other small fan to win some 255 points from the rest of the players, putting her in an unstoppable lead!

The second high-scoring hand was made by WJ in Game 2. Earlier in Game 1, WJ had a potential Little Three Dragons, having two tiles each of RD and GD. For some reason, she discarded WD when she drew it, even though no dragons had been discarded at this time. So, later, WJ melded RD. EP then gave her the GD, as there was already no danger that she would win with a Little Three Dragons since she discarded the WD herself. Unfortunately for WJ, she drew WD again, and saw the wasted Little Three Dragons. The consensus during the discussion after the hand was that WD should have been kept in hand, since no dragons had been discarded yet, meaning there was a good chance of completing a Three Dragons fan, Big or Little.

Well, WJ had a second chance in Game 2! Again, she got a starting hand with two pairs of dragons. She had a complete triplet of RD and she melded a kong with it. Up to this point, there was no other indication that she was attempting another Three Dragons fan, although there were no other dragons discarded at all. WJ continued to meld a WW and then a bamboo sequence. After some time, WJ managed to self-draw a WD to complete a Little Three Dragons! Having missed one earlier, WJ refused to let go of her single WD this time round (she had a concealed triplet of GD). This winning hand was worth some 79 points for the basic score, and she jumped into the lead with the 261 points she collected from the other players.

Unfortunately, the next few hands saw her lose ground, and she dropped to second place overall. It is a pity this game was not completed and thus did not count towards the group rankings. All in all, there was plenty of excitement and fun this session. Big wins sure are fun!

**Results of Game 1, 18 August 2007**
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Wins (SD)	Discards
JT	4	+567	8 (5)	1
EP	2	-137	3 (1)	3
AJ	1	-161	3 (2)	3
WJ	0	-269	1 (0)	0

**Results of Game 2, 18 August 2007**
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Wins (SD)	Discards
EP	(4)	+167	5 (2)	0
WJ	(2)	+141	3 (2)	3
JT	(1)	-108	3 (2)	2
AJ	(0)	-200	1 (0)	1

Terminology Troubles

2007-08-08T23:20:00.000+08:00

Reach Mahjong Columns' Garthe was writing about the Japanese mahjong hand pinfu (平和 Mandarin pínghé, usually pronounced pínghú, at least here in Singapore) when the use of the term Peace was questioned by Tina Christensen of Mahjong Denmark. The Chinese term 平和 means "peace" but few people would think of it as peace literally. Tina's comment basically released an avalanche of opinions regarding the creation and use of new (but non-standard) terms in English. It also prompted this blog entry about terminology.

Mahjong terminology has always been a thorny issue for mahjong players, new or veteran. Most casual players really just want to play mahjong and not care about whether the terms they use are accurate, or what they really mean.

For experienced players teaching new players mahjong, which terminology should they use? If the new player does not have any background in Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese or other major dialects) or Japanese, does it make sense to use terminology of Chinese/Japanese origin?

The good folks at Reach Mahjong Columns have taken the approach of using new English terms as substitutes for the original Sino-Japanese and Japanese terminology. An example would be bump instead of pung (碰 Mandarin pèng, Japanese pon).

Now, pung (like chow and kong) are considered standard mahjong terms in English. Standard in the sense that many mahjong books published have used these spellings (for example, Millington's The Complete Book of Mah-Jongg, 1977), and these terms should be quite familiar to most mahjong players all over the world. Also, these 'standard' terms still bear resemblance to their Asian counterparts, and when playing with Asian mahjong players, there would be little confusion over the use of these terms during actual play.

However, are new terms like bump a good idea? It is hard to say. On one hand, new players may find it easier to learn the game without having to learn new terms in a different language. On the other hand, once these new terms are learnt, players may be resistant to unlearn them and learn the 'correct' original terms. This poses the problem of communicability in a globalised environment. It is no longer so difficult to find websites about obscure topics. Websites about different variants of mahjong are now available. If all sorts of different terms are invented for common concepts in mahjong, will there be confusion where none should exist in the first place?

Rankings Update

2007-08-03T20:00:00.000+08:00

Results at the mahjong table have been a little unpredictable of late. Despite JT's open declaration to overtake EP in the rankings, she has been unable to replicate her previous form and win enough table points to beat EP and take top spot. On the other hand, WJ, who has been doing poorly of late, managed to win the last two games to climb up to fourth place.

*Current Standings* (current as of 28 Jul 2007)
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Games Played
EP	29	+1113	12
JT	25.5	+637	11
AJ	14	-59	9
WJ	12	-690	9
KP	9	+125	4
AW	1.5	-556	4
EL	0	-570	3

Session Report for 28 July 2007
The first game was a close fight. The players all seemed to be evenly-matched, with no one getting a clear lead on the rest. In the beginning of the 4th round, it seems as if EP was going to win the game, as he had a 79 point lead on the second-placed WJ. However, WJ managed to surge to the top by taking the last three hands.

AJ, who did rather poorly in the first game, led most of the way in the second game, with a very strong lead of 266 points by the middle of the 3rd round. WJ managed to win three of the next five hands to overtake AJ, to obtain her second 1st placing for the day! EL had replaced EP for the second game and did not do very well, not managing to win a single hand.

Results of Game 1, 28 July 2007
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Wins (SD)	Discards
WJ	4	+129	6 (1)	0
EP	2	+48	4 (2)	5
JT	1	-55	4 (0)	2
AJ	0	-122	1 (1)	4

Results of Game 2, 28 July 2007
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Wins (SD)	Discards
WJ	4	+134	5 (1)	5
AJ	2	+103	6 (1)	3
JT	1	-37	4 (0)	3
EL	0	-200	0 (0)	1

International Cultures of Mahjong

2007-07-19T23:50:00.000+08:00

Besides the various websites and pages on mahjong I have mentioned in earlier posts, there is one other website I should highlight: International Cultures of Mahjong. This is a blog by Benjamin Boas, a researcher of mahjong culture (hence the title of his blog). Currently on a Fulbright Fellowship, he will be studying the mahjong culture of Japan. This sounds like an ideal job for a mahjong enthusiast, and Ben is certainly one!

Mainly a riichi mahjong player, Ben has made his first foray into Mahjong Competition Rules (MCR), with the recent Open European Mahjong Championship (OEMC) 2007, and in fact emerged the second runner-up in his very first MCR tournament!

Ben's blog, like this blog, is quite new, but it already has some interesting entries as well as comments on various aspects of mahjong, especially on his participation and experiences at OEMC 2007 as well as some controversies over some rules used in the tournament.

Although the posts on some rules of the MCR ruleset may sound boring and dry, they are actually actually not. Ben's posts highlight the fact that cultural differences affect perspectives on mahjong and its rules. Thus, players of different nationalities would react differently to certain rules, practices and conventions, their mahjong cultural backgrounds playing a considerable part in such reactions.

As there are few websites and/or blogs out there on MCR, Ben's blog certainly fills in a gap. Since Ben is a globe-trotting researcher/competitor as well as a riichi mahjong player, there should be a lot of interesting posts on all things mahjong that we can look forward to.

World-Class Mahjong

2007-07-11T19:20:00.000+08:00

World-Class Mahjong with World Champion Mai Hatsune (世界チャンピオン初音舞の世界に勝つ—麻雀国際公式ルール戦術本) is a book on the concepts and strategies in Chinese Official mahjong (COMJ) and is published by Hatsune Mai and Kajimoto Takunori. Hatsune Mai is the winner of the World Championship in Mahjong held in Tokyo, Japan, in 2002.

This book is the first and only book with an emphasis on COMJ strategy so far but it is in the Japanese language, which means many players around the world are unable to read it for its contents. Hence, an English translation of the content on strategy was made by Ryan Morris and is available online for everyone to read (link above).

This website on COMJ strategy will be most useful to beginners to COMJ. Due to the 8-point minimum for a win, beginners often have difficulties completing their hands. There are many helpful pointers on what to do when playing COMJ. There are detailed explanations of how to complete hands for a particular fan, such as Mixed Triple Chows or Mixed Shifted Chows; and advice on when to go for a higher-scoring fan like Pure Straight.

This website is definitely a good starting point for beginners, but even more experienced mahjong players can make use of the strategies, especially if they are not used to a pattern-oriented game like COMJ. For example, most Singaporeans are used to playing Singapore Style mahjong, which makes use of much fewer special hands and hand combinations than COMJ, and are thus unfamiliar with the various sequence-based combinations found in COMJ. Winning hands may be missed because of the player's failure to recognise valid winning combinations!

So, start reading!

Player Rankings

2007-07-10T09:30:00.000+08:00

The player ranking for our group is finally complete! I will probably update the current standings after every session, together with the session results.

There may be some problems with the way the ranking is constructed, due to a lack of an established system to calculate long-term performance in Chinese Official mahjong (COMJ). Since we are more or less casual players, there is also no real need to have a complicated system.

I have opted to use table points as an overall indicator of performance, rather than contest points (the points earned within the game). This is because each game of COMJ is self-contained, having only 16 hands, with seat rotation every round. Players also aim for a specific table rank to earn the corresponding table points, which necessitates some form of strategy for each game, dependent on who the players are. That means table points are more important than contest points because earning the most table points (i.e. 4 table points) is the most important goal. Having a large positive score but not taking the top position at the table is not helpful in the long run.

Although the players may not play the same number of games, I have decided against averaging the table point totals by the number of games played by each player. This is because I view the current standings as a combined measure of performance and experience. This is akin to the way masterpoints are awarded for contract bridge duplicates.

However, this is not set in stone, and the way the player ranking is calculated may change.

*Current Standings* (current as of 10 Jul 2007)
Player Name	Table Points	Contest Points	Games Played
EP	21	+856	9
JT	17.5	+460	7
AJ	11	-41	6
KP	9	+125	4
WJ	3	-742	5
AW	1.5	-556	4
EL	0	-102	1

Mahjong on the Internet

2007-07-07T23:45:00.000+08:00

Information about mahjong is so easily available now on the Internet. Anyone who wants to learn mahjong can find a lot of materials online, although not every major style or variant is well represented.

For a good general website on mahjong, there is Sloperama's Mah-Jong Zone, run by Tom Sloper, a game designer and mahjong teacher/writer. In fact, Tom Sloper has just published a book on mahjong, The Red Dragon and the West Wind, which is on both Chinese Official/Mahjong Competition Rules (the Red Dragon) and American Mah-jongg (the West Wind). There are FAQs on every aspect of mahjong; a column with tips on strategy and practice questions on scoring; and a bulletin board for readers with questions. It is a very good resource, with lots of information and links.

Mahjong News is a European-centric website with frequent updates on mahjong tournaments and developments in Europe. For example, the European ranking list of Chinese Official mahjong players can be found here.

The much talked-about Mahjong Competition Rules (which is actually the most recent version of the Chinese Official ruleset) can be downloaded in PDF form from the World Mahjong Organisation's website. Recent tournaments such as OEMC 2007 follow this version where some early problems and inconsistencies were corrected.

Alan Kwan's webpage has some articles on mahjong playing and mathematical analyses of tile combinations used in (various variants of) mahjong. Alan Kwan is the designer of the Zung Jung system which was used in the recent Macau World Series of Mahjong competition.

For riichi mahjong, the most common form of mahjong played in Japan, there were little information on the rules and strategy in English, but two recent websites are remedying this. Reach Mahjong Columns is a blog written by English-speakers to get more non-Japanese to play riichi mahjong. Two of the three contributors are young Americans who are professional mahjong players in Japan. There are some interesting tidbits about the professional mahjong leagues and tournaments in Japan, and plenty of information and tips on playing riichi mahjong. Yakitori Online is a new portal devoted to riichi mahjong, including a forum for mahjong enthusiasts to discuss strategy and other mahjong-related issues.

It does seem that the riichi scene world-wide is getting more exciting. There will be a European riichi mahjong tournament held next year, due to much interest from Dutch and Danish players. Too bad riichi mahjong is almost unknown in Singapore, save for arcade and computer games from Japan. It would be certainly difficult to get a proper Japanese mahjong set with the red dora tiles in Singapore!

Last but not least, for Singapore Style mahjong, there is a good Wikipedia article on Singaporean Mahjong scoring rules. All the well-known patterns and special hands are found here, as well as descriptions of special situations and danger scenarios.

OEMC 2007

2007-06-23T03:00:00.000+08:00

After last weekend's World Series of Mahjong (WSoM), there is another mahjong tournament to watch out for, and that is the Open European Mahjong Championship (OEMC) 2007, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, this weekend.

In contrast to the WSoM, the OEMC is a more modest affair. There are no big cash prizes, and the registration fee is only €170. Now, this is only about one-twentieth of the WSoM's registration fee of US$5000! All contestants get to play eight sessions, making the most of their registration fees! This is unlike WSoM's knockout format where only the best half of the field progresses to the next round.

There are 136 registered players representing twenty countries: sixteen are European countries; the others are China (including Hong Kong), Chinese Taipei (i.e. Taiwan), Japan and the U.S. For a regional tournament, the OEMC has more diversity than the WSoM in Macau where the contestants come from only eight countries, which are China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Denmark, the U.K. and the U.S.

As for the ruleset, the OEMC uses the Mahjong Competition Rules, the official ruleset of the World Mahjong Organisation (WMO).

Coincidentally enough, the WMO is also organising a "World Series of Mahjong" which will culminate in the first World Mahjong Championship, to be held end of this year in Sichuan, China. The similarity of the name "World Series of Mahjong" will no doubt cause some confusion to many people. The WMO's World Series of Mahjong has five tournaments which includes the OEMC, while the recent WSoM held in Macau was organised by World Mahjong Limited and consisted only of the one event.

World Series of Mahjong

2007-06-21T02:05:00.000+08:00

The first World Series of Mahjong (WSoM) competition was held at the Wynn Macau, a resort in Macau. This is promised to be an annual event, similar to the World Series of Poker which is hugely popular in the U.S. While there have already been some international mahjong competitions held, this new event is different that it offers a total cash prize of US$1,000,000!

However, to participate in the WSoM, one has to pay a registration fee of $5000! For most international tournaments, the entry fees are much lower. The prizes are, of course, much less attractive at such tournaments. The high entry fee has appeared to keep some European players away from participating. This has apparently not deterred Asian players from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan and elsewhere though.

The ruleset of this WSoM is not based on any of the usual variants, but it is a tournament version of Zung Jung (romanised Cantonese for 中庸, Zhōng Yōng, meaning "Middle Way"). Zung Jung was designed by Alan Kwan for international tournament play, like Mahjong Competition Rules (MCR). However, Zung Jung in general has fewer 'patterns' (44 in total) compared to MCR (81 fan). Zung Jung emphasises logical patterns and thus contain much fewer irregular patterns that arose from regional variants. In contrast, MCR has more irregular hands than Zung Jung while having the same logically-consistent patterns as Zung Jung. There are also many differences in point values. One significant difference about Zung Jung is that there is no reward for self-drawing a winning tile.

So, yet another mahjong ruleset. I was really curious about the results of this tournament, but it is really difficult to find any news of this, on the Internet or in the mainstream media of Singapore. Lianhe Zaobao and the Straits Times did carry some news articles on this, but I am not able to get my hands on a copy of the Chinese newspaper yet, while the ST article focused only the Taiwanese finalist, Yu Hsiao-Ping, who is the daughter of two entertainers. Alan Kwan (who designed the Zung Jung system and also officiated at WSoM as the head judge) wrote some reports on this at BoardGameGeek (Mah-Jongg » Forum Index » Sessions).

Anyway, Alan Kwan's reports are comprehensive (although the names of the two of the four finalists differed in the ST article). There were apparently many players unfamiliar with the system participating in the WSoM tournament. Despite this, the tournament was rather successful. After eight rounds (of which seven were elimination rounds) and two full days of mahjong-playing, Hui Chung Lai of Hong Kong won this inaugural event (and $500,000) and was crowned the first world champion of the WSOM.

As there was television coverage of this tournament, hopefully the TV show will be broadcasted in Singapore when it is ready, so that we can see what a mahjong tournament is like! Reading and writing about this mahjong tournament has made me even more eager to participate in an international tournament, although the $5000 registration fee will definitely put me off WSoM.

A Quick Introduction to MCR

2007-06-14T01:05:00.000+08:00

In terms of gameplay, Mahjong Competition Rules (MCR) is generally similar to other most varieties of mahjong, in that it uses all three usual suits (bamboos, characters and dots; respectively 索万筒 in Chinese), and the honours tiles consisting of the wind tiles (风牌) and the dragon tiles (三元牌, also known as 箭牌), as well as the usual eight flower tiles, although the flower tiles are less important in MCR compared to some other variants. The main differences between MCR and other variants lie in the scoring and some rules.

Points are calculated using simple addition
Winning hands in MCR are scored in points, where various patterns or score elements achieved are awarded different amounts of points and added up together in a simple sum. In most mahjong variants, particularly more traditional variants (Singapore Style, Chinese Classical, Hong Kong Old Style, Japanese etc.), winning hands are calculated based on doubles or fan (番) achieved. Base points are calculated, then doubled for each doubles scored. Hence, if a winning hand earns five doubles, the base points are multiplied 32 times (i.e. base × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2). Basically, points calculated using doubles increase in a geometric progression, compared to MCR's arithmetric progression, which is much simpler to perform. But this does not mean that high-scoring hands are not possible. They still are; difficult-to-do hands like Thirteen Orphans (十三幺, sometimes better known as the Thirteen Wonders) are inherently worth more points.

8-point mininum in order to win
The conditions for making a winning hand are rather different in MCR. Technically, in most traditional variants of mahjong, as long as the hand has four completed sets of three (either as sequences or groups of idential tiles) and a matching pair, it can win. However, several variants have implemented some minimum requirement for a win. For example, in Singapore Style mahjong, most players prefer to have a one-double minimum. In Hong Kong Old Style (HKOS), some people have a 3-fan minimum.

In MCR, the minimum number of points that would allow a player to hu (胡), to win, is 8 points, which is calculated from a variety of score elements. In MCR, there are 81 patterns/score elements (called fan 番, but without the meaning of doubling here) each with a point value ranging from 1 to 88. This may seem like a lot for the beginner to learn, but many of these are related to each other, so it is not a hopeless task!

Each game has only 16 hands
In MCR, the dealer does not remain dealer even if he wins or if there is a draw. The dealership passes on to the next player. Thus, a full game of four rounds has only 16 hands.

Since scores are tabulated after each game, and scores are not carried over to the next game , players have to think strategically throughout the game to try to earn enough points (relative to each other) in order to obtain a good position. In competitions, table points are awarded to each player at a table: the player with the most points get 4 table points, the player in second place gets 2 table points, the third-placed gets 1 table point, and the last player gets 0.

Flower tiles do not count towards the 8-point minimum
Flowers in MCR are special bonus tiles. For the 8-point minimum required to win, flower tiles are not counted. Instead, flowers are treated as bonus tiles, which contribute one point each after the 8-point minimum is reached. This is meant to reduce the effect of luck.

In addition, flower tiles can be discarded when the going gets tough. In dangerous situations, freshly drawn flowers may be discarded as a safe discard (no one is able to win off a flower!), instead of having to get a replacement tile which may be a tile that some player is waiting for in order to win with a high-scoring hand.

Discards are lined up in an orderly manner
Unlike in Singapore Style and HKOS mahjong, where tiles are haphazardly discarded in the centre of the table, discards in MCR are made orderly. Each player will line up his discards in rows of six, such that everyone can see clearly all the tiles and the order in which they were discarded. This increases the analytical element of mahjong, where players can play defensively by reading the discards of opponents and taking precautions in discarding dangerous tiles.

No tile discard is sacred!
Actually, this refers to the Sacred Discard rules in Japanese mahjong, where players are not allowed to win on tiles they had previously discarded and other details pertaining to discards. In Singapore Style and other similar variants, there are rules that prohibit players from making actions pertaining to fresh discards within one turn, or illegal chows. In MCR, such actions are actually permitted.

In MCR, players have more freedom to chow, pung and win on tiles. A player can discard a tile, then make a pung or win on the exact same tile discarded immediately by the next player! Of course, one would wonder why a player would do that in the first place, but this is evidence of the subtleties of gameplay that can occur in MCR. For example, the player who wins on the tile he just discarded could be trying to win off a particular opponent. Or he may not have enough points (i.e. the 8-point minimum) to win unless he wins off an opponent's discard (a few situations are possible: winning hands that require Last Tile, Melded Hand, Last Tile Claim).

There is no Dead Wall
The Dead Wall refers to the stack of tiles that are not used towards the end of a hand. For example, Singapore Style mahjong typically keeps 15 tiles in the Dead Wall, while most other variants have a Dead Wall of 14 tiles. In MCR, all tiles are used, so players have a chance to win right up to the last tile. If no one wins off the last discard, the hand ends in a draw.

The player to draw the very last tile has to discard a tile too, unless the player can make a Kong, which then leads to a situation where he is supposed to draw a replacement tile, which is not possible since there are no more tiles left to draw upon. It would seem logical that he cannot make both a Kong, not draw a replacement tile and still discard a tile. So, in such a case, discarding a tile is not necessary. In the case of drawing a flower, a player can also display the flower in order to draw a replacement tile (of which is not possible, a situation identical to that of a Kong, as mentioned earlier). However, it would be much easier to just discard this flower, since it is always a safe discard!

So, these are the bare bones of the Mahjong Competition Rules! These rules are rather different from the other variants, are they not? There are some more things to talk about, such as how scores are calculated, but I will leave those for another post.

The Game Begins

2007-06-13T00:15:00.000+08:00

This blog is created to report on the activities of my mahjong group playing Mahjong Competition Rules (MCR, also known as Chinese Official) as well as discuss matters on mahjong (especially Singapore Style mahjong) that may come to mind. Disclaimer: I am not an expert on mahjong, just an enthusiast.

The reason why my mahjong group and this blog are more focused on MCR/CO mahjong (we usually call it COMJ for convenience) is that this variant is more international and is also rather interesting and challenging. There are many tournaments using this ruleset, although none in Singapore as far as I know. If there are going to be tournaments to be held in Singapore using this ruleset, I am sure I (and some members of my group) will participate for sure! Besides this competitive aspect (a good reason for this variant to be called Mahjong Competition Rules), it is also rather challenging in an intellectual way, and downplays the effect of luck. Thus the gambling is also not such an important factor for enjoying this variant of mahjong.

So, some people may be wondering: what exactly is MCR or COMJ? Well, MCR is the ruleset designed for international competition, such that players from different major mahjong traditions/styles in different countries like Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, can meet and play. Of course, this new version does not resemble any of the major styles, but it does incorporate most of the traditional hands as well as many patterns from the various traditions. There are also rules that are meant to reduce the element of luck and promote defensive and deductive play. There are criticisms of this new ruleset, but mahjong players should judge for themselves whether this ruleset is worth playing.

Sadly, this new ruleset is not well known at all in Singapore, but I suppose the local Singapore Style and other regional styles (Taiwanese 16-tile, Hong Kong Old Style, Malaysian Style) are too well-entrenched. Who knows, but my little group may be the only mahjong players in Singapore playing COMJ, but I certainly hope this is not the case!

For the competitive element of COMJ, we keep track of the points (both in-game points and table points), just to see which players are doing well, and which players who are not doing so well. Updates and reports will be posted on this blog.

So, hopefully this blog can help spread the ruleset to others here in Singapore, and there may even be MCR tournaments held here in future! We all have to start somewhere.