ReachMahjong.com Celebrates its First Birthday and Reopens its Doors
On December 3rd, 2007, Reach Mahjong: The Only Way to Play reopened at http://reachmahjong.com/ with a brand new design, content management system and new columns and articles for the thousands of regular readers already loyal to the site.
Reach Mahjong (RM) first opened in December of 2006 as a website devoted to the Japanese style of Riichi Mahjong. Upon opening, RM had 3 regular columns written by professional Mahjong players Jenn Barr and Garthe Nelson and the third written by Jenn’s student of the game, Gemma Collinge. The site included rules explanations, articles about newsworthy events in Japan and beyond, links to important Mahjong websites and interviews with professional players. Some important coverage included this year’s World Series of Mahjong and Open European Mahjong Championship. In its inaugural year, RM is already known worldwide as the best English source for Reach/Riichi strategy and many new players that have emerged this year have admitted to learning all they know from RM.
The new Reach Mahjong: The Only Way to Play has kept all the great columns from the first year and has added a great new line-up for the second year. Jenn Barr has maintained her leading role overseeing everything that goes on the site while Yakitori Online forums founder Andy Barzhagi has joined the team as the IT specialist and official blogger. In addition to Andy’s blog which is expected to start within a few days of opening, RM has added a weekly “What would you discard” question updated by Gemma Collinge which provides space for readers to leave comments and discuss discards of certain hands and a section for book reviews. An official Ron2 tutorial (the online game endorsed by the Japan Professional Mahjong League), the world’s first Mahjong Podcasts and a new glossary, more comprehensive than before will be added later this month. With the new content management system, RM updates are expected to be much more timely than before, bringing the world not only the best English strategic information on the game, but bringing it to you fast.
The new design of RM is pleasing to the eye and makes navigation quick and easy. “Reach Mahjong has always prided itself on content and now we have the beauty to go with the brains,” says Jenn Barr. The green background meant to represent the felt of the Mahjong table and the token 1,000 point scoring stick at the bottom never lets the reader forget why they came to this site. The bar menu now includes drop-downs for easy navigation, each page features a “Navigator” so that users can glide from subject to subject, and there is now space for rotating banners and RM is looking for banner-exchange opportunities with other Mahjong sites. The tab menu at the top of the screen gives viewers easy access to RM’s partner sites: MahjongMart and Yakitori Online. MahjongMart (http://mahjongmart.com/) was founded in October, 2007 by Jenn Barr and Andy Barzhagi to provide authentic Japanese Mahjong sets to locations outside of Japan. Yakitori Online (http://yakitorionline.com/) is the busiest online forum founded by Andy Barzhagi in June, 2007, dedicated solely to the Japanese version of Reach/Riichi Mahjong. RM plans to continue partnership with these 2 sites and lead the way in spreading the play of Japanese Reach/Riichi Mahjong throughout the English-speaking world.
All inquiries and content submissions (including tournament information, links and banner exchange) should be directed to Jenn Barr
