July 11, 2007
Jenn's Corner #14: Playing in the World Series of Mahjong
I went to Macau last month as a member of the press, planning to cover this inaugural event for ReachMahjong.com and ended up the only American female to play in the competition. I didn't know until the night before that I would be able to compete, so I had not learned the rules as thoroughly as I would have liked to. I had read a brief summary on WSOM's website before going, so I knew that many of the hands were the same as in Reach Mahjong, but the scoring was quite different. I spent the entire night before the first round memorizing the hands and scoring, grateful that we would be allowed to keep a card of hands on the table while playing.
There were a few differences to get used to. For example, the traditional pattern of the Peace Hand (All Sequences) is ignored for simplicity. The Peace Hand in Reach Mahjong has no Base Points. That is why it must be an open-wait with no Value Tiles. If the pair was a Value Tile or the wait was closed, the hand would be worth 2 Base Points, and therefore not qualify as the Peace Hand. Differences like this are easily adaptable, so I woke with a tad bit of confidence and a lot of excitement.
Scanning in for the first session with Sayaka Yokoyama behind meI arrived at the Wynn on the first day, armed with my official WSOM bag containing a calculator, pen, rule book, set of scorecards and stick for straightening the tiles. It would be the first tournament I would ever play without automatic tables.
My first game went slowly at first. The WSOM used Alan Kwan's Zung Jung Mahjong Scoring System. At first glance on the WSOM website, I thought it looked like a good combination of Reach and Chinese Official rules. However, in the first game, it was obvious that the rules as they were relied more on luck than both of the others and are very rewarding to beginning players and lucky players while penalizing experienced players.
The first thing I noticed is that most players go for the fastest hand. While this may be a good strategy, it becomes nearly impossible for players to aim for large hands. The only way players may get high-scoring hands is if they are very lucky with their starting tiles or lucky enough that the players going for the chicken hand (pointless hand) can't find their last tile. I ended up getting lucky in the first game by drawing the final 6-grand to finish my Full Straight, a huge win in these rules (40p each for 120p) and getting first place in the game. After that, I couldn't get lucky anymore and my points slowly dwindled down. By the end of the first round, with the afternoon session still to come, I figured I had to get a big hand or have no chance and I just couldn't get lucky. I ended with close to negative 300 points.
Miraculously, there were few enough players that I somehow made it to the second round the next morning. We each carried 1/4 of our total score to the next round, which meant if I could win just one big hand, I could stay in the game. I got lucky again and made it to the 3rd round. With only 16 hands in each round and people constantly winning with very cheap hands, only luck would save me in the 3rd round and it just wasn't in the tiles. I lost 2 games in a row and ended in 114th place.
One of the biggest advantages for inexperienced players in these rules is the payout scheme. To give you an idea of what I mean, here is a summary: All Sequences is worth 15 points, a set of Value Tiles is worth 30 points and a Full Straight is worth 120 points. All points are divided equally among players for self-draws, so All Sequences would be 5 points from each player. Here is where weak players are saved: A player who discards a winning tile is only responsible for other players' prices over 30 points. That means that if I discard the Red Dragon and a player wins on that, with the Red Dragon, each player must still pay 10 points. It doesn't sound like much, but most winning hands are only 10-15 points and there are a lot of hands won with zero points (chicken hand) so players that can read the board well ended up paying for others mistakes more often than not. This also increases the luck factor since it no longer makes sense to try to read the board and keep your opponents from winning. The option to “Fold” your hand is lost and so is a powerful tool for players that can read others' hands.
The lack of the Missed Win rule is another thing that is hard to get used to. While it can be a powerful tool in a game where players fold their hands, with the payout scheme in this system, it is almost impossible to justify folding your hand (although I tried a lot) and therefore makes the missing Missed Win rule another big advantage for weak players. A player that cannot envision the future of their own hand or plan for certain draws may get lucky and be able to win off of others' discards, even if he has thrown the discarded tile himself.
My final gripe was the prize structure. While most poker tournaments give 1st place 30% or less of the prize pool, this tournament awarded 50% to 1st place and skewing each prize dramatically down to 32nd place. I would have liked to see the players that made it to 32nd place get a bit more than just their buy-in returned.
I know it sounds like I'm just complaining about the rules as they stand now, but the event was a great success overall. It is because it was a success and I hope that it continues and gets better every year that I state my opinions here. There were nearly 300 competitors fighting for the $500,000 first prize! The games were played by the hand (8 hands for each game) and no bonuses were given for placing higher at the table. I liked this system a lot because it was based on points earned instead of lucky timing. The scorecards made for simple calculations and help the games move along very quickly. The media coverage was amazing with news teams from all over the world and representatives from newspapers, magazines and websites.
I had an amazing time and the team that made this event happen is an incredible group of people. They put on a great tournament and boy did they have guts to be the first to actually pull of a big cash Mahjong tournament like this! I think we can expect great things for next year's tournament and the years to come after that. Personally, I hope that they will consider adding events, like maybe a $1,000 buy-in Reach event added to the agenda? Maybe our buddies at Yakitori Online can help us send some persuasive messages (^.^)
