The Problem with Googling Mahjong

There's been a trend by a few websites aggregating news relating to mahjong simply by saying "dear google, mahjong me my website, me love you longtime". Now, I'm not writing this out of a spiteful feeling towards a specific website, as I've seen it in a few places, so I'll put my disclaimer at the end of the article. But here we go: Why is some suicide in the backwater of Hong Kong relevant to mahjong?
(kid to mom): 'Goodbye, daddy and mummy. Mum, don't play mahjong again,'

This isn't going to foster growth, generate real content, or entice people to play, no matter if you intend to promote riichi, MCR (whatever that is) or mahjong in a general touchy-feely way. It relives horror stories to the Asian player base about someone's uncle's cousin's (insert relative here) that lost his restaurant or plays her senior time away 17 hours a day, 17 days at a time, gives stereotypes to non-Asian people that mahjong is a game that is even "worse" than poker's wild wild west days (just think Clint Eastwood without a gun, replaced by a rocket launcher), and turns the game into a source for gossip rather than a tactical and intellectual game.
I'm not going to say that people have a moral obligation to generate content with a plus-value attached. I'm not pulling the best weight around here, but then again, there isn't a site that does related to mahjong. (IF you want to raise one exception, it's Sloperama, Tom's been putting up with a lot of crap from people missing basic skills, like the ability to read and understand for well over a decade). We try our best and do what we can. I just don't think that you can replace not posting with crap talking about solitaire, or how mahjong ruins society, or believe it or not, creating false impressions comparing people from region A with people from region B alluding that they're equal at game A trying to rub off some of their glory at game B.
P.S.: There's also the concept of an individual googling for mahjong information, a topic not discussed here at this time, but will be soon after writing about a different topic.
P.S.2: This article may have warranted a slight review, but we've got content to generate now!
Disclaimer: Yes, we saw this on www.mahjongnews.com - I've seen it elsewhere, and this is by far, not the only article to come up in the newsfeed of that or any other site I frequent. There's no prejudice here, I wanted to talk about the article and its implications, not its source or the most prominent place the article was displayed.

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Pechorin Style Doctrine

Do you ever feel like Tenhou is designed just to hold you back and that this game sucks, you have bad luck, you must be weak and you will never progress to the next dan (or kyuu) level? Then there is something wrong with your soul. You should read this.

-Mahjong is not luck. It is skill.
According to your skill, your stats will improve accordingly.
If you play long enough, your skill will begin to be reflected.
Skillful people will win, unskillful people will lose,
mahjong is that kind of game.
If you think mahjong is about luck, your growth/improvement will stop.
-Constantly aim for the next dan level.
Playing without a direction you won't become strong.
By constantly aiming to reach the next dan level,
you will be able to see the gap and the obstacle will become obvious.
If you lose the motivation of "leveling up" you won't improve.
[I'm taking a little liberty in the next one. 確変 is not that common of a term in the English speaking community]
-Don't use expressions like "I'm in a bad run."
With words like "bad streak,"
you are losing your independence.
You can say "I'm in a bad streak" only as a joke.
Just select the best discard one time after another.
Good results will prevail after that.
-Have pride as a player.
The moment you think about yourself as "weak," you lost.
Even if right now you're not doing well,
just think "one day I'll be able to become phoenix rank! (or 9th-10th dan)."
-Have a player to be your target or your "rival."
That becomes a big motivation.
Especially, the best would be
a rival that you think "I don't wanna lose against this guy!"
-In any case, play frequently.
If you don't play frequently, you don't know if you are improving.
Even if you decide to use a PDCA Cycle or a hypothetical thinking,
if you don't play then you won't get it going.
If you have time, you should play.
-Don't be afraid to go down in rank.
It is normal to hit a wall in your results,
no matter how skilled someone can be they may go down in rank.
Even if you temporarily go down, if you have skill you will certainly get back.
There is no need to fear going down several ranks.
-You should actively participate in research assemblings.
In these study sessions, you can encounter people,
and you will be able to clearly see your convictions.
First, what is your policy on point situations and round situation,
and also discard by discard explaining what your theory is.
That becomes a great experience and practice.
When you appear, you should explain your intention clearly.
If you don't state your opinion when you appear, then you are just wasting everyone's time.
[Well, too bad only Japan has these regular sessions of mahjong players coming out and commenting discards and strategy in a group-friendly environment]
-Don't espectate games.
To express it better, don't just focus on watching a lot of games.
If you have to do it, then think ing"I would play like this..."
is what you should do.
Rather than watching 100 games,
I recommend just attending one study session (research assembling/etc).
-Leave aside the notion of "aim for first place."
In Tenhou, first place is no big deal.
Not being last is a great deal.
However, even though "last place avoidance" is well known and said,
there are a surprising number of players who ignore it.
In order to be conscious about last place avoidance,
you must repeat it to yourself.
As long as you think "I don't like Tenhou because it's about last place avoidance"
then you will never become top-class.
-Do not cry about things like "I instantly dealt in... (i.e. ippatsu)"*2
These are not rare things.
The opposite pattern happens many times.
So long as you didn't declare riichi, you are completely able to fold.
Rather than the other person getting his ippatsu tsumo, this is better.
You have the option to fold right there.
If you discard it right there, then you just pay for your mistake.
If you got caught because you had declared riichi,
then think if your opponent's riichi was pertinent.
Contemplate if there was no need to declare riichi,
and if it was indeed a riichi that had to be declared,
then it's okay to think it was an unavoidable deal-in.
-When you get to tenpai and you deal into someone else, don't cry things like "I lost to him" or "I'm out of luck..."
If you look at the replay/log, you will understand but
there are many cases where the winning tile was at the end
or where there were only 2 tiles remaining.
Furthermore, in phoenix room (鳳凰),
there are many cases where multiple players are waiting on the same tiles.
It is the winning chances that are slim.
Realize that it was lucky that you had been winning up until now.

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BakaBT Mahjong Tournament Announced

The Slowpoke Express has just arrived bearing news - the 1st BakaBT Mahjong Tournament is a go.
As the participants have just been sorted into groups, the tournament kicks off with a league format, probably with a cutoff into further rounds. We're still rather unclear about the particulars. The tournament organizers should have their hands full handling game reports and matching up the 98 participants confirmed thus far, as almost all of them can only play at 5pm on odd-numbered Tuesdays in their respective time zones. BakaBT has always had one of the more active anime-based communities for as long as I can remember, so it's no surprise that the signup thread had almost 100 posts within a few days before it was slammed shut in a panic. We shall see who among the pantsu pundits shall prevail against their peers.

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Tournament in St. Petersburg

A major Russian tournament was held on the 23rd, containing players from Peter, Moscow, and Samara. This is a notable event because not many people realize there is a large Japanese Mahjong community in Russia.


Many of their members also play on Toupaiou or Tenhou (L7994) and maintain some active mahjong sites like tenhou.ru. They also host the Officially Sanctioned Russian translation of our glossary.
Other cool things: Haibane translated some posts, and votan made an enterprise scoring program.

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Austrian Open Riichi Tournament in Vienna report

Austrian Open Riichi Tournament in Vienna report

November 10th, 2010 by harph The Austrian Open Riichi Tournament is a riichi mahjong event that takes place in Vienna, Austria (doh). This year it was the third time the KASU club organised it with great success - it was the first time it filled up all 32 available seats. Me and my fellow mahjong players from neighbouring Slovakia have had it in sight for some time, and decided to take part. From 32 participants, we took 7 seats, which made us the second largest country by attendance (nothing special, with only 2 other people from some other country - Britain's Gemma Collinge and Italy's Paolo Silvestri).
It was a first time for all of us to attend a mahjong tournament. We regularly meet and play together, but it really doesn’t compare to this. We also play using a bit different rules (open tanyao, classical scoring etc.), so we had to adapt our style of play to these circumstances. I’ll try to describe the tournament as we saw it, with emphasis on how I played. Prepare for a wall of text.

Einstein and a vertical Go table.

Talking about open tanyao is like beating a dead horse, so I won’t go there. But what made me a bit uncomfortable were the scoring rules applied in the games. Every hanchan all players start at 0 points. You play and win / lose as usual, but going under 0 doesn’t end the game. You play till the end of the hanchan, or till 90 minutes pass. After four hanchans at the end of the day, your score gets counted (with uma applied - the fourth player pays the first player 9000 and the third player pays the second one 3000) and the player with the highest score wins. This of course rules out using the scoring sticks, and all scores were written on a piece of paper during the play - not really fun.
What does this mean for playing? I pondered that the best bet would be to get high valued hands, so you can accumulate a lot of points. Since the winners had over 90k points at the end, some smaller 10-20k wins wouldn’t be enough, even if you finished first in all hanchans. But one needs to put them together fast - especially against the better players, who are damn quick. On one hand it opens some chances for tactical thinking, but on the other hand it removes the other aspects of standard riichi. But in the end, it was pretty fun to see some of the monster wins that a few players managed to pull off (including me).
Upon arrival to the venue of the Go7 club, located on the famous Mariahilferstrasse, we got greeted by the friendly local folk. There were 8 tables to play on (32 / 4 of course) plus tables with water, tea, juice and other stuff. We registered, got our numbers and checked out our seating order. First hanchan was funny for four of us, since they registered after each other and ended up playing at the same table.

Players playing mahjong. You wouldn't guess.

Organisers counting scores.

After remembering my first hanchan, I have to laugh a bit, because the 3 tournament winners were sitting at that table. It was tight, lots of ryuukyoku and riichi sticks in pot. Unfortunately I had a bad run, dealt in twice into 2 / 3 han hands and got tsumoed / 3k noten’d all the time. That brought me into fourth place with a -20k final score. Not a positive start. Anyway, I didn’t let my spirit go down, since my mates started off really well - one of them got to 1. overall place after the first hanchan.
We got some sausages, bread and cakes for lunch, had a break and discussed our further progress / aspirations. We could already see that it’s not that bad and we can play on par with the players there. At 13:00, the second hanchan began.
In the second hanchan, my play improved a bit. It was still very balanced, the guys at my table (including Paolo Silvestri from Italy, who was an older guy with different mahjong roots, but still a very calm and good style) were playing pretty well. I even tried a kokushi, got to 2-shanten pretty fast, but alas it didn’t work out. In the end I won the table, after a lucky houtei dealer’s mangan. The win was very small though, and didn’t even erase my minus points. But I still got a pretty good feeling from the game and was looking forward to the next one. Also, another one of my friends, Juraj Jerguš, got the lead this time, winning a table with +50900 points.

This is how the scores were counted at each table. Ew.

Third hanchan? I think I liked this one the best. And not just because Botond Kis was singing Look at my horse. I have no idea what the tiles were thinking at the time, but they just jumped into my hand so nicely. Riichi pinfu all the time, with unreadable discards, which left my opponents totally clueless and in defense. I won the table without any problems, which catapulted me to 10th place overall. I was pretty happy, but the leader of the previous round was not. He got a table with Alexander Doppelhofer and Chang Xue, where he only sat and observed their tsumo-fest. During this hanchan someone also scored a double yakuman (allegedly, nobody from us saw it, but it was some variation on daisangen).
It was already dark outside when the final hanchan of the tournament began. Everyone was pretty tired at this point and it could be seen in their expressions and playing. I got Chang Xue, Lena Weinguny and my Slovakian mate, the first round leader, Michal Marko as my final opponents. From what I knew about the two Austrians, I had my doubts about this game. They played fast, precise, good defense and offense. But once again, the tiles smiled. I don’t know how those san-shoku came all the time. I didn’t riichi much in this game, seeing that defending is not a problem for these players, and I got a few small damaten rons, but also 4-40 / 4-30 hands. We got to south 4 very fast, still having around 30 minutes till the end. I was the final dealer, in the lead, and I could’ve ended the game if I threw away my tenpai. But I didn’t, I don’t know why, it just didn’t cross my mind. I just kept getting renchan. On the 3rd one, I think I wasted my luck for the next 100 years with tsumoing a kanchan hell wait on a dora (with the other three of them in my pon), with a dealer’s baiman (thanks to Michal, who kanned 2 times to go for a rinshan suu-ankou, opening 4 more dora for me). In the 5th renchan, Chang finally ronned Lena, which ended the game after the 90 minute limit.
This last win gave me 72k points and it started to look I could place in the top 3. We didn’t know how well Birgitt Rupp played (the current leader after 3rd hanchan) - we only knew she won her table too. Yeah, we could’ve asked around, but we’re all antisocial and can’t speak much german. Still, the award ceremony came (~1 hour earlier than planned). They went through all 32 participants, gave out diplomas and handshakes, plus special prizes for the top 3 and the 31st place (some strange Japanese custom). All in all, I won, Birgitt Rupp was second and my mate Tomáš Široň ended third. We got awesome glasses with engraved symbols - 2 glasses with Rii-chi Mah-jong for the 3rd place, 3 glasses with the dragons for 2nd place and four glasses with the winds for the 1st place.

In during 3rd hanchan.

So, what have we learned today? Clearly, playing a tournament can turn many ways. Even newcomers can have a good day and surprise. Sometimes I just made really bad decisions in my games and I have no idea why haven’t I been punished for them. Another thing we learned was that playing online really helps - from 7 of us, the 3 guys that ended in top10 are all active tenhou.net players, while the other 4 are not playing online at all or just once in a while. It mostly helps with speed - some of our non-tenhou players had a feeling that everything was really really fast and they had no time to think. It was a bit true, while the Austrians really did play nice and fast, but for a trained tenhou fast mode player it was nothing to sweat about. Also, dora and red dora are priceless, especially in a tournament where score matters the most. And finally, having fun is the most important factor. When you get stressed, your decisions can destroy everything.
The KASU people have also announced some upcoming events: an EMA open tournament in Baden, Austria, that should take place in February 2011, and their own special thing at the end of 2011 - a tournament with Japanese rules. They also asked us, if we would like to make something in Slovakia - well, there are things planned, we just need to make them move. After this, I think many players would be happy to come and play with us, and we would love to have them here.
Finally, thanks goes to the organizers and to all the players, especially my Slovakian mahjong comrades, for this enjoyable day. Final results are up, also more photos.

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