Mahjong Tournament 2010?

[Kimani]

Since Saki is one of my favorite shows ever now, so much that it inspired me and my friend to start playing Mahjong, we were not only planning on cosplaying Mihoko and Mako but bringing a Mahjong set to Fanime and finding people who would want to play. But maybe... a tournament?

Are there people interested in having a Mahjong tournament? I only have one set, so it would probably need other people with a Mahjong set and counting sticks and what have you. And of course, people to play ( as it's a kinda complicated game, especially Riichi Mahjong... ).

[PyronIkari]

Dunno how much Mahjong you've played... but Mahjong takes a LONG time to play if you're playing a tournament, or even more than one set games. Full games can take upwards to 2-3 hours, and if you're playing a tournament with only say... 16 people, 2 move on... that's 6 hours or so to complete.

I like mahjong and all, but man, it takes so long to play properly, and from the sounds of it, I don't even think you have a firm grasp on the rules yet. It's also complicated because most people that play Mahjong and have been playing don't use the same rule sets. Most people learned one of the Chinese rule sets over the far less popular different Japanese rule sets.

Dunno, I'm not saying it's impossible to have, but it is incredibly time consuming as well, you'd have to have someone that fully knows the rules to also act as judges as well. There are a handful of exception rules, and you'd more importantly, need to know the scoring for every hand, in every position, and special scoring rule sets... based on which rule set you're playing of of. Seems highly unlikely to me. You could probably find people to play in Table Top Gaming to just run a few games, but I doubt you'll get much more than that.

[Kimani]

I'm pretty good at Mahjong... I posted a recap of a game I played recently on tenhou.net.

Since Saki is the inspiration, it would be using Riichi rules... but time is an important factor, yeah. I've only played online so I don't have a good feel yet on how long it takes with actual tiles. If we made it East round only it might go a little quicker? Judges might be a good idea too but it might work out if everyone knows the rules...

[PyronIkari]

I'm pretty good at Mahjong... I posted a recap of a game I played recently on tenhou.net.

Since Saki is the inspiration, it would be using Riichi rules... but time is an important factor, yeah. I've only played online so I don't have a good feel yet on how long it takes with actual tiles. If we made it East round only it might go a little quicker? Judges might be a good idea too but it might work out if everyone knows the rules...

And chances are, they won't. Even Most people that think they know all the rules to mahjong don't really. And even if you know the play rules rather well, you'd need people to know the exact scoring rules, which most people definitely do not know. It's easier with electronic because all the exceptions and special things are included automatically.

Time frame wise, playing with actual tiles takes about 3x longer, and sometimes even more than that, because shuffling the tiles takes a while.

It's not like a mahjong tournament is a bad idea, but it's really unrealistic especially with this crowd. The only way Mahjong tournaments work are when the people that enter are all people that know the game well, and most of the people that would want to enter would not.  Mahjong is too complicated a game, and as I said, Saki's set rules(which don't follow a certain set rule, because even in the series a lot of exception rules are used for the different tournaments and even the inmatches they have) aren't the standard rules that most people that DO know how to play mahjong use.

You're better off setting up small friendly matches amongst people instead of trying to run a tournament.

East only matches... wwwwwwwww If you do that, it's unfair for certain players.  It's not standardized to do that, and sets up for random outcomes a lot.

[Mizuki]

I'm sure games would go faster if everyone cheated like they did in Saki.

[PyronIkari]

I'm sure games would go faster if everyone cheated like they did in Saki.

Only one character "cheats" in Saki. THe rest use magic.

We should all cheat like in Akagi.

[Jun-Watarase]

I think having mahjong at Fanime is a good idea, but not a tournament. There aren't enough people in the community that play much mahjong, and most people that live in this area play in other rules from other regions, outside of Japan. I think the primary issue would not only be time, but finding someone qualified to judge scoring for an actual competition... and I have huge doubts.

However, I support any Saki+Akagi photos that may come out of it.

[Tsubasa]

We should all cheat like in Akagi.

If we stack walls, I call ryuuiisou suuankou!

[PyronIkari]

We should all cheat like in Akagi.

If we stack walls, I call ryuuiisou suuankou!

While you guys cheat like in Akagi, I'd cheat like in Gintama

[pmorrison2588]

Hey, Gintama does not cheat.

[CaptainYossarian]

It might be possible, if you really wanted a tournament, to use the Old-Jewish-Lady... err, National Mah Johng League rules, which are, from my understanding at least, a lot simpler than any of the  other versions and easily picked up by anyone even vaguely familiar with the game. Cards are surprisingly easy to procure. I'm not sure that's exactly what you were aiming for, but still.

I also have a set, if you need extras.

[mDuo13]

I've played mahjong casually in all of the past 3 or so Fanime cons (mostly with people I already know who play mahjong outside of Fanime). It seems there are actually a decent number of people know riichi/Japanese rules because of Tenhou, but there are a lot of things they don't realize they don't know because the computer does it for them, like building walls, knowing when they can legally riichi, counting and scoring hands...

[ewu]

Please read the entire thread before posting and also note that this thread is aptly stale with the last post being in January.