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...

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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...

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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...

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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 progr...

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Austrian Open Riichi Tournament in Vienna report

Austrian Open Riichi Tournament in Vienna reportNovember 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...

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