Gemma's Journal #2

January 1, 2007

Gemma's Journal #2

So after learning the basic shape of a hand last week, this week we went on to learning simple hands.

The simplest hand point I've been taught so far is a group of dragons. I.e. Three white/red/green dragons. So for example:

These would all be worth one hand point. So far so good!

Would be worth two hand points. One for each set of dragons. 1 + 1 = 2. And who said the British education system was in crisis!

Next hand point I wasn't so keen on, because it requires you remembering something for more than a few minutes and having a vague idea of geography.

Little explanation first. In Reach Mahjong there are two rounds played, East round and South round. Similar to the dragon group hand point, for the second hand point I want to describe you just have to get a set of East tiles if the round is East for one hand point or if the round is the South round, then a group of the South wind. Examples being;

Round Wind ex.1
Round: East



Round Wind ex.2
Round: South

Both worth one point each. Again not too hard! The third point starts to get a little difficult.

Each seat is also assigned a directional wind depending on who is the dealer. Now I was useless at geography but I do remember

Never Eat Shredded Wheat


Now the dealer is always East, and your seat wind is decided by that, in the order going anti-clockwise - East, South, West, North. (So the new mahjong mnemonic is Eat Shredded Wheat? Never!) Now getting a set of your wind tile is also worth one hand point.

So if I were sitting in the South seat then getting three South tiles would give me a hand point. If I were sitting in the West seat then getting three west tiles would give me a hand point and so on for East and North.

This starts to get complicated, for me at least, because remembering what seat I'm in for more than a minute seems far beyond my capabilities! Especially as the order is opposite to that of the compass! There are some perks to these points though. For example, if I was sitting in the East seat and it was the East round then:

Would be worth two hand points one for having the round wind and one for having my seat wind! So look out for that!

To be honest though at the moment I haven't been worrying too much about hand points and still been practicing just making a hand in the first place. Small steps! But at least I've started learning the hands and writing it down I hope will let me remember it easier too.


So to summarize the points I have to remember this week are:


Set of dragons
Set of round wind
Set of seat wind



Not too hard, but ask me again next week if I still remember!