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 me
I 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 (^.^)
7 comments:
Way to go! First getting into the event and then even making it to next rounds in a game you've never played before. Sort of.
Sounds like the organizers did a pretty good job. Sure wish I had been able to participate. From my vantage point on the outside, one thing I have to say I really like about this tournament was the lack of seeding. Japanese tournaments tend to use seeding (actually something of a misnomer as it's really just a ticket to the finals if you've managed to play well in one tournament in the last year.) I've griped about it before and I'll probably gripe about it again. If I ever have the gall to just send myself to the finals in a tournament I'm running in the future just because I'm making the rules, someone please shoot me.
Great job Jenn! MORE TOURNAMENTS!!
Hey Jenn. Nice analysis of the chicken hand problem as well as no incentive for defense. Alan Kwan, the author of the rules, is a genius for coming up with a good ruleset by himself but it seems he didn't see a lot of these problems coming.
On his website he says that in his experience, "Chicken hands do not occur too often." (http://home.netvigator.com/~tarot/Mahjong/reasons.html The section is "why no minimum hand limit") I wonder if he'll be updating that now... (^_^)
Thanks for joining our talks benjamin!
Yes, after reading the website, I am even more convinced that these rules are great for beginners, but lack some excitement and, like you mentioned, lack of a defensive option, which all good sports tend to have.
I imagine among a gangle of very experienced players, chicken hands might not happen too often, but I think there are a lot of inexperienced players that have been and will be playing and after playing the rules, the chicken hands did occur, a lot! Sometimes in 5 hands out of a 8-hand round.
I really hope they will consider a Reach tournament. I know many people in the neighborhood that would be willing to put up $1,000 or more for a chance to win a big cash prize and many that could get sponsors as well!
p.s. the comment at the top by "anonymous" is Garthe, everyone~
Hmm... hopefully you'll have more fun next time.
I strongly recomend you talk about this on the rec.games.mahjong newsgroup, maybe Alan can hear your thoughts!
I am a huge fan of both riichi and WSOM mahjong. Strats can differ widely and you might not even know what works because of the luck factor. You can lose to these chicken idiots when the tiles go the wrong way and a single tournament doesn't resemble the long run. That being said No Terminals+ All sequences/or just value honor only are pretty fast hands too and is worth 10 chicken hands. But I guess Riichi and WSOM are just very, very different games.
I think you were just unlucky, or perhaps it wasn't your style. But do post on the newsgroup. Maybe you can get some things changed. I looked at the prize pool structure, and that's definitely something to be dealt with.
Hi Jenn, thanks for your insight and views on the WSOM competition! I haven't actually played Zung Jung rules with anyone before, but your comments give me your basic impression on it.
In regards to Alan Kwan's "no point limit", he basically says on his site (I think) that if there's a 1 fan/point limit like in Japanese mahjong and many other rules, people who want to win fast will aim for a quick cheap hand "Tokkyuu ken".
But by allowing chicken hands, even if they are still worth very little compared to others, people can still aim for it just to prevent others from winning (more expensive hands perhaps). That is my prediction/view.
And I also dislike the fact that Zung Jung has no sacred discard rule, because I'm bad at reading discards. But then again, most rules don't, especially those which don't have neat discards.
Btw, I would love to participate in a $1000 Riichi tournament in the far future! If only I had a stable job and money in the far future though (still studying at uni, too busy for a part time job :S).
thanks for so many comments!
archon_wing,
Although I do like most of the rules, my opinions are not based on my own performance. I consider myself to be a very inexperienced player because of the crowd I am surrounded by.
I think that Sayaka Yokoyama's performance would be a better measurement than my own and she didn't even last as long as me, despite winning a huge amount in the first round.
The fact is that the WSOM rules as they stand now are directed towards beginners. Even on Alan's website he says that. Of course, having a tournament with these rules is not a problem, but the fact is that they do not measure strength in play, only luck in how quickly you can get a finished hand. The strength and value of your hand ends up being almost pure luck.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time! I would love to play again! But, I cannot see very many good players from Japan paying $5,000 for the rules the way they are now. Although I think there are some very good points to these rules, they definitely need some refinement.
john,
Yes, I understand how the chicken hand can become your only line of defense, but if it were gone, there would be many other chances for defense including folding hands and getting the quick no terminals or all sequences. In my experience, including other forms of rules, the chicken hand has only encouraged weak play and created a luck-based game.
To me, Alan's explanation for having the chicken hand doesn't make sense and is contradictory. A player wanting to win fast could just win the chicken hand and no one could stop them except with another chicken hand, right? So how is it better to have it than both players going for no-terminals/honors to win quickly?
Like I said before, there's no problem have a heavily luck-based set of rules for tournaments, but in my opinion it will just be hard to get very skilled players to fork out the cash for it unless it becomes a bit more skill-based.
Also, the biggest point is that the payout scheme for the hands does not work for skill level either. Like I said before, the 30pt min that each player must pay, makes allowing the chicken hand even worse since only very lucky people win the expensive hands and all players must pay for those with no chance of defense except maybe the chicken hand, if they're lucky enough to have such a fast hand.
The comment about style by archon is interesting. It is true that many pro's in Japan aim for hands. That is where the term 役作り麻雀 (yaku-tsukuri mahjong) comes from. When I spoke with Alan before, he said that the WSOM rules encourage that, but I found the opposite. In the WSOM rules, the players who won more practically ignored the Hands (yaku). The fastest and/or luckiest was always the winner.
I want to make sure that everyone knows I thought the WSOM was great and I had an amazing time. I just can't agree that these rules are good the way they are.
Well, that's much better to hear. I'm usually imagining hair pulling when confronted with an adverse situation, but I'm a nervous wreck and a poor sport. :)
But it's why I recommend you to post on the rec.games.mahjong news group where Alan does read. It's important that input is sent ^^ After all, if something does not satisfy you, it doesn't hurt to offer your opinion to those that can change things.
It'd be nice if the WSOM would pick up from the WSOP and have smaller "circuit" events as 5k is a large sum for a lot of people. In addition, they could include different variations of mahjong and give out bracelets. Also I noticed quite a disparity between the total buyins and the actual prizes being paid. Usually when you have a guaranteed prize pool and the total amount of buyin $ exceeds it, you'd get bigger than the guaranteed prize money. With over 1.3 mil of buyins and only 1 mil of prizes, that seems to be an awful lot of juice (I guess I can call this "rake") But I must admit it was well promoted.
But of course it's the first time, so we can hope for improvement.
I'll be participating in the Yakitori game this weekend, so hope to see you and other members of the community there. I'm not very good in any form of mahjong, so I can probaly learn. :D
Good luck!
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