Jenn's Corner #17: New Developments

Reach is becoming bigger and bigger and ReachMahjong.com is helping to lead the way! Coming up on our 1st Birthday (sometime in December), Reach Mahjong: The Only Way to Play has been part of lots of great new plans and is working on more as we speak!

First, I'd like to announce the opening of MahjongMart.com: Your 'jong Experts. Andy from Yakitori Online and I have teamed together to bring you a brand new online store offering Mahjong goods at reasonable prices. We already have a variety of tiles including an affordable version of tiles inspired by the character Washizu in the popular Manga/Anime: Akagi and an easy to use, easy to carry Junk Mat, which includes a place to keep your scoring sticks in plain site. Each tile set purchased on our site comes with a 12-page English rule booklet that covers the basics of the game and explains scoring. The book includes 4 reference cards with tile explanations on the front for your friends who can't read the Chinese characters on the tiles and a list of the Hand Points on the back for quick score-counting and help while you play. A score card is also included with the Dealer's score-chart on one side and Non-Dealer's on the other. Reach Mahjong was never so easy to teach and play!
Check out our Press Release!

Next, ReachMajong.com has been working on a new design and we will be ready to open next month. The new format will make it easier to get news to you faster and update our columns in a more timely manner. We will include an interview link system with our partner-site Yakitori Online as well as a new strategy section to compliment our rules section. There will also be an official Ron2 tutorial to help non-Japanese speakers navigate the site. This is a temporary solution until the full English version is ready to go. We have a million ideas and our excellent staff is growing, so look forward to a fully-functioning Mahjong portal, bringing you all the latest in Reach Mahjong.

In other news, our second season at JPML started this month and we have lots of tournaments going on! Our League tournament happens on the first weekend of each month. I'm happy to report that both Garthe and I did well in the first session (there are 5 sessions in each season) of D2 league and are both ahead in the point count. Garthe currently up 16.7 points in 15th place and I am up 81.7 points in 4th place. Each season the top players in each level move up to the next level, so cheer us on!

A new season of Champions League started as well and Garthe made an appearance the first weekend. Champs League is a league open to all JPML members with no predetermined ranking system. There are 15 sessions of 4 games each and each player must play in at least 5 sessions. The games are timed: 50 minutes for each East/South round. JPML A-Rules are used, so no First-Turn Wins for Reach and no Quad-Drags (Kan-dora) or Hidden Drags (Hidden-dora). All players are matched up against each other regardless of experience, ability or ranking. I'll be joining this season from November, so cheer us on there too!

And finally, one of JPML's biggest tournaments, open to pro's and amateurs alike throughout Japan in its entirety, OUI, has already started. Qualifiers are currently taking plays throughout Japan and Garthe and I will try to qualify the 2nd weekend of November. Unlike the Masters tournament in April (also open to the entire country), OUI uses A-Rules, meaning no first-turn wins or extra drags (dora). The current defending champion is Takki. The year before that, Takaharu Oui (no pun on the name) won the tournament. Wish us luck on that one as well! And if you are in Japan, there may still be time to qualify, so send me an e-mail if you’re interested.

For now, I'm busy, busy, busy! Lots of stuff to work on and I'm running good in poker so trying to make the money while I can. Keep in touch all!

Gemma's Journal #15

October 11, 2007

Gemma's Journal #15

Teaching Week One

Finally, back in Taipei! Unfortunately my last Mahjong buddies all left me for mainland China, however, I now have a whole new group of Canadians who are more than a little keen to learn and enjoy the fantastic game which is Mahjong!

So, now that my journal has taken you through the trials and tribulations of me, as a beginner, learning Mahjong, now you get to hear my experience of teaching it to other beginners. Maybe I can even convince them to write some words on what they thought of the game, and perhaps even an evaluation of my teaching methods!

I suppose the aim of my next entries is to give an example of teaching Mahjong to encourage you all to go and recruit some more players. I'm not sure how good my teaching will be, so advice will be welcome along the way! I do hope that this will be a contribution of sorts to the community and if nothing else at least we will have three more players!

My students are a mixed bunch. One has actually played a little Mahjong before with me, one has played some computer Mahjong and the other is a complete beginner. Two do not speak Chinese and one is learning. So I'm expecting that they'll advancing at different rates and this is my main concern at the beginning; to make sure none of them are left behind, yet balancing that out with steady progress.

Lesson One is pretty much decided I suppose. We basically just played with the tiles for half an hour. I gave each of them a suit and got them to find 1 through 9 of that suit to get them used to the tiles and what they looked like. I think it's easy for people who've been playing for a while that it does take a bit of time to get used to the patterns. For example, the one of bamboos is always an issue and even the eight of bamboos was making my students squint at the tiles!

Then we looked at the honor tiles. I tried not to fuss them too much with what each one exactly meant at that point as the non-Chinese speaking were having enough trouble with the numbers on the grands (wans). (I was using a Chinese set with no arabic numbers. I do in fact have a set from the UK with the Arabic numbers written in the corner. That would have been a life-saver this week!)

After that, we looked at what made a basic hand. This seemed to not be too much trouble although I'm not sure I was doing a good job of explaining!

Then, we set up the table and played! We played a first few rounds with our hands open so that we could talk about what we were doing, then when they were confident we played out hands closed. I think overall it went well. All three seemed to have no real problems with the basic progression of play. I think the biggest problem that was encountered was most definitely lack of English on some of the tiles. However, that could have easily been overcome with a different set.

We started talking about hands but, as I didn't want to overload them with information, I avoided it and have saved it all for next week. I mostly wanted everyone comfortable with the feel of Mahjong and accustom people to the tiles.


I can predict there are going to be a lot more problems in the making!


Anyway, have any of you taught Mahjong? Any advice for me? Let me know your thoughts!

Jenn's Corner #16

October 3, 2007

Jenn's Corner #16

Note: There was information that I forgot to add to the final 2 problems in Garthe's last column. I've fixed the problem, so please take a look and write your answers in the comment section.

Now for MY column.

I've spent a large amount of my time lately playing and watching a lot of poker. I have already mentioned how much I think learning poker has helped my mahjong game. Everyday I spend watching tournaments, playing live or online and discussing poker, I find more similarities to the two games. One thing that many poker players have learned is that playing a variety of poker games helps you notice things in your main game that you would never notice before. For example, playing Omaha instead of Texas Hold'em. The same holds true in mahjong.

Besides the A-Rule and B-Rule variations in JPML, the commonly used cash-game rules (similar to JPML's B-Rules) there are also a variety of 3-player and 2-player games.

The easiest way to play a 3-player game is to use the MFC 3-player rules because the Hand Points are all the same as the 4-player game. Take out the numbers 2-8 of the Grands (cracks), making the deck 108 tiles instead of 136. Declaring Chow is not allowed in the 3-player version. If the Drag (dora) Indicator is 1-Grands, then the Drag (dora) will be 9-Grands. Other than that everything will play the same. For self-drawn wins, the score will be split in half by the other 2 players. Hands won on a discard will be pad by the discarder as usual.

The 3-Colored Runs hand will be impossible and since 1/3 of the simples (2-8 tiles) are gone, Inside Hands won't happen as much. You'll find yourself going for bigger hands and lots of Flushes and Half-Flushes. The swings will be much larger than in A-Rule games because people will be going for big hands most of the time. There will be lots of limit hands too.

Slimming down the deck like this is great for looking closer at your game and tendencies. There are less tiles, so less to think about. Try it out and you might find holes in your 4-player game. You'll definitely find yourself playing differently than you did before.

There are other versions of 3-player mahjong. My favorite includes using the White Dragons as jokers. That game is great for training yourself in difficult waits and planning ahead in your hands.

Join in and tell us what your favorite Mahjong variations are. I can't wait to try some of them out!