#3 Haku

A pure tile; untouched by dirty paintbrushes.

#2 1p

It seems like whenever an anime/manga needs an epic win or they need something mahjong related they’ll use a 1p.

#1 Haku Pocchi

While only ever seen in jansous, Haku Pocchi is truly the greatest tile ever. It’s a haku with a bit of paint but If you draw this tile after a riichi it counts as any tile you want!

#10 Jenn Barr

From the Japanese Professional Mahjong League. A blonde girl with blue eyes, crushing you in mahjong? That can be hot. She adds the american flavor in Japanese mahjong, in the good way.

#9 Tezuka Sakiku

Professional of free parlors. She has been a sex symbol in the mahjong world from while back, and she still has her charms. Maybe because we still love gamblers. She is in a Mahjong Idol Group (much like AKB48, except for female pros) called Suzume alongside Ueda Yui, Naruse Akemi and Sakuraba Fumie.

#8 Miyauchi Kozue

Professional at the Japanese Professional Mahjong League. She’s beautiful, talented and a warmhearted pro. Her beauty supports her talent and natural kindness.

#7 Oririn Heart

From the Good Players Club. She’s not only a good player, but she is good. Her true job is that of a gravure idol, but she tries her best to improve at mahjong and she can be seen regularly playing in mahjong broadcasts alongside Babi Hirokazu and Kajimoto Takunori (lucky bastards!).

#6 Oosaki Hatsune

From the Japanese Professional Mahjong Association (NPM). She is known by some to be air-headed or vulgar, even tomboyish, but there is more to this player. She made her way from working into cabarets in Japan to actually winning a title as a professional player and even today continues to tell off her foes, while getting more admiration by her fans.

#5 Ishii Aya

From the Japanese Professional Mahjong Association. Recently she was featured at Saikyousen ’11 as representative for female professionals (after winning that right in the preliminaries). Her slender, small, cute and shy image may give you the wrong impression at the table, where she will kick your butt if she has to. And most of us most likely wouldn’t mind.

#4 Shirakawa Yukina

From the Japanese Professional Mahjong League. Lately featured in Janryuumon broadcasts with Takunori Kajimoto. She’s not afraid to show her body, and her mahjong.

#3 Izumi Yukiko

From the Japanese Professional Mahjong League. Her nickname is “ice doll.” This cold cutie has even made DVDs for our entertainment, and not only mahjong DVDs.

#2 Nikaidou Rumi

From the Japanese Professional Mahjong League. The oldest sister of the mahjong professional “Nikaidou” sisters. Her rank at the league may not be as high as her younger sister’s, but her looks and beauty surely aren’t behind!

#1 Nikaidou Aki

Also from the Japanese Professional Mahjong League. She will probably stay at number one for a while. She is arguably the female player with the most notable results, at least at her league, and her popularity knows of no bounds. If someone knows about mahjong, even if barely, it’s highly likely they’ll know of her. A manga based about her called “Aki” is also published regularly.

—

I wouldn’t mind seeing any of them (I have only personally met #6 and #5) but remember, most of them like people who are skilled at mahjong. So don’t forget to practice! You never know.

If you want to see some of these girls playing, check out the following official (completely legal, FUCK YOU SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/FBI/NAZIS) youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/sangroup3

The top row, is your nickname:  きめず

The next link, is the validity for your account. If you’re a premium user, it will tell you when your premium account expires. (Old screenshot is old. w) This is called 有効期限 (yuukou kigen).

The dropdown list contains the different types of games; if you just play the regular 4 player mahjong, don’t bother touching it. It’s just to view different stats. In this case, should you ever need to reset it manually, ■All Periods of Time/Ranking Matches for 4 players. ■全期間/段位戦　４人打ち　(zenkikan / dan’isen  yonin uchi) (Yes, it’s actually yonin rather than yonnin.)

４級　７５/９０ｐｔ　R1800

This is your rank and rate. I’ve heard players who are third kyu say they are third dan. Don’t make this mistake, it makes you look silly. Kyu grades are written in arabic numbers (987654321) while dan rates are written in kanji (初二三四五六七八九十). Notice you start as 新人 (rookie/shinjin) and you end up as 天鳳位 (tenhoui) after you pass 10th dan. Next is the amount of points you have and need to get to the next rank. Lastly, your rate (how well you play, though it doesn’t mean much for the first 200 or 300 games). 1500 is the average for new players (新人).

１位率 .379 / How much you get first place. (ichi’i ritsu) 37.9%

２位率 .379 / How much you get second place. (ni’i ritsu) 37.9%

３位率 .241 / How much you get third place. (san’i ritsu) 24.1%

４位率 .000 / How much you get fourth place. (yon’i ritsu) 0%

飛び率 .000 / How much you go under 0 points. (tobi ritsu) 0%

対局数 29 / Number of games. 29 games.

平均得点 20.9 / Average point gain. You know, those +53, -51, +-0, etc. you get after the game ends; the average of all of them. 20.9 points per game.

平均順位 1.86 / Average placement. You know,  1-4-4-4-2-1-3-4-4-4-etc. averaged. 1.86st place average.

平均収支 – Average income. Only for jansou mode.

平均祝儀 – Average chips. Only for jansou mode.

和了率 .302 / Hand win rate. How often you win hands (you know, like theoretically, in four player mahjong you’re supposed to be winning one fourth of the hands, and even less because of draws where nobody wins). Winning, in average, 30.2% of the hands (a little under one third). This can be read as “agari ritsu” or “houra ritsu.” And they’re both right.

放銃率 .091 / Deal-in rate. How often you deal into others’ hands. 9.1% of the time (meaning, dealing in less than a tenth of the hands). It is called “houjuu ritsu” as “houjuu” refers to “dealing in.”

副露率 .406 / Calling rate. How often you call tiles. Pon, kan, chii. Ron and tsumo are, of course, not counted. Do note, closed kan are also considered here, as kan is a call. Called “fuuro ritsu” because “fuuro” is a “call”/”open meld”/whatever you wanna name it. You may find it in other servers as 鳴き率 (naki ritsu). 40.6% means you (in this case, me) call tiles pretty often.

立直率 .163 / How often  you riichi. 16.3% of the hands. Riichi ritsu.

You then have another dropdown menu. This is for the “monthly ranking” tenhou has. It only counts for the month, and you need at least 30 games in the month to be officially in it. There are many divisions, for different game types, that you can select on it. If you just click every button and play in whichever game starts faster, don’t even bother.

月間／般南　喰いアリ赤 – Monthly / General Lobby’s East-South Games, with Open TanYao and Red 5′s. (Gekkan / pan-nan Kui ari aka)

2+4+1+0 = 7戦

This just counts your number of first places, plus your number of second places, plus your number of third places, plus your number of fourth places to display the total amount of games you played that month. Two first places, four second places, one third place and no fourth places for a total of seven games.

R1800 １３９１２位 / This is your position in the Rate ranking. It compares how high your rate is compared to other players who play the same mode as you. With a R of 1800 in the general lobby’s hanchan (with aka and kuitan), you’d rank somewhere among the highest 14 thousand. Tenhou is crowded of players with a rate higher to 1800. Contrary to the popular belief. w

Then, you have two columns, one to the right and one to the left. They read 通算 and 平均. Tsuusan and Heikin. Something like, the raw number to the left, and the “average” to the right.

得点　+156 3566位 (通算)  +22.2 (平均) / This 得点 (tokuten) refers to the points you get at the end of each game. The raw number is a positive 156, which means if you summed up the numbers of those 7 matches (like, +54 +11 -2, etc), you’d get a total of 156, and that would put you in the 3566th place among people in the same ranking (again, for that kind of game and lobby). Then, the average (heikin) would be 22.2 per game. (Notice, I didn’t have 30 games at the time that month, so you cannot see the position for the average portion)

順位 +90 3458位　(通算) 1.85　（平均） / This is “jun’i” or “placement.” I have no idea how the raw number to the left is calculated, but if it’s a positive number, the higher the better. With a +90, that’s about 3458th. Then, the average would be 1.85st per game. It’s like you’re virtually getting first places every time you play, with a virtual second place from time to time. The middle line in mahjong is 2.5; everything below that (2.3, 2.2, 2.1, etc) is win, while everything below that (2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, etc) is fail. Again, none of these mean anything in the short run, anyway.

Then you have the lines for 収支 and 祝儀. Income, and chips. Only for jansou mode.

合計 means total, and your total for the above info would appear in there once you play the 30 games a month in that game type. It converts all those numbers into a single one, and puts it against the other players’ to give you a more general position. If this ever happens to become 1位、it would mean that you were the best player -in general- for that mode UP until that point of the month. So yeah, pat yourself in the back if that happens.

More stats include:

トップ率 .285 / Top ritsu. How often you took first place (top) that month. Should theoretically be around a fourth (25%) of all games when playing against player of the same skill level. 28.5% of games.

連対率 .857 / Rentai ritsu. How often you took first and second place (non-”losing” placements) that month. Should theoretically be 50% (half) when playing against people of your same level. 85.7% of games

ラス率 .0 / Rasu (last) ritsu. How often you take last place. It’s best to keep this low. It grades you on how low it is, not how high. So, the guy in the first place of the ranking would be like 0.000001% and not 99.999999999%

Also, whenever you “need” anything from tenhou in English, just look at this page first: http://arcturus.su/tenhou/

It’s usually in there.

PS: I’m thinking I should have a new column called “SEX” for real. “Simple Explanations by XKime.” It would makes us get more hits.

Anyway, as I said in the last news post, on December  17th we will be hosting a tournament on Tenhou to promote the new league several Osamuko.com staff members have created  To satisfy all time zones  the tournament is 8 hours long, so there will probably be times when no one is queuing, if this happens just come to the IRC channel  (#osamuko@irc.rizon.net) and ask for players!

[Tournament Name] 第1回　地球麻雀リーグ杯
[Date] 2011/12/17 9pm-5am GMT
[Prize] 1-3 Guaranteed place in the league and, maybe, free Tenhou premium for 1st*.
[Rules] Standard Tenhou ruleset, kuitan ari, aka ari.
[Ranking] Players are ranked according to their best score from 3 consecutive games. For example, if a player had -23 +45 +53 +35 -45, his score would be +133
[Requirements] Only requirement is a tenhou ID.
[URL] http://tenhou.net/0/?C25144842

*Tsunoda gives out tickets for Tenhou premium to championships which meet his requirements. We’re not sure if we’ll be able to qualify for this.

Sakura Taikai

Registrations opened this week for what is perhaps Europe’s oldest mahjong tournament. It’s in the Netherlands, costs €20 to register and whoever is running is cool because they link to this blog.

Saikyosen

On the topic of big tournaments, Mahjong aficionados most likely watched the niconico streams for Saikyousen, which has, maybe, been going on since July. Saikyosen ended last mont. The final table consisted of Yuudai Maehara, Kazutoshi Itagawa, Takeo Kojima and Asataro Nada, all of whom are Renmei 9dans. Kazutoshi Itagawa won. I didn’t watch it but I’m certain they didn’t fix the games or something. Sorry, just wanted to include a link to that event somewhere.

Mahjong league

After the failure of the last league we put our best monkeys to the task of creating a system that was easier to manage and easier for the players to play. I’ll post more about the league once.

Anyway! To promote the new league we are running a championship on tenhou.

[Tournament Name] 第1回　地球麻雀リーグ杯
[Date] 2011/12/17 9pm-5am GMT
[Prize] 1-3 Guaranteed place in the league and, maybe, free Tenhou premium for 1st.
[Rules] Standard Tenhou ruleset, kuitan ari, aka ari.
[Ranking] Player with the highest score wins. A player’s score is his best 3 consecutive games. For example, if a player had -23 +45 +53 +35 -45, his score would be +133
[Requirements] Only requirement is a tenhou ID.
[URL] http://tenhou.net/0/?C25144842

Not a lot of information on such short notice I know, Sorry.  I’ll cross-post more information when I get off my lazy ass and when it’s not late at ni- early in the morning.

Horiesenkzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Takafumi Horie now has a manga called ‘Horiesenki KS4S’  in kindai mahjong that he is writing from prison. It’s apparently based on a real-life story but I’m sure Horiemon will get THREE chuuren in one night or other boring stuff like that.

In more interesting news, mudazumo has been back for a while now. So if you haven’t already get your scans at http://anonscanlations.blogspot.com/

The theme is: The order for discarding honors.

Starting from the beginning, why should we discard them? Lone honors are the tiles most unlikely to become mentsu (groups). Number tiles have from two to five ways to become mentsu, while honor tiles only have one: drawing two of the remaining three. You may have been told by Janki movies or by Tsuchida Koushou to never discard honors in your first discard, but restricting yourself with this rule is absurd.

You may be a supporter of “shibori” (“squeezing,” keeping the tiles other people may want to prevent them from completing their hands). This “shibori” strategy just backfires most of the time. You slow down your hand a few turns to keep that Hatsu, then someone else just draws it and discards it and blam, it gets ponned by someone. What a waste. You reduced your amount of useful tiles in vain. Not only that, but that person may even draw the last one for an ankou, or completely give up on it and aim for a higher scoring hand (a game with players who shibori tend to go a lot more into late game, it seems, where hands can get pretty expensive…). Another reason to avoid shibori is, today’s mahjong is about speed and atozuke (back-door win) is pretty usual. It would be of just pretty bad taste if some guy would just pon and chii everything from every other guy, and once you got to tenpai (or near tenpai) you decided to discard that yakuhai and dealt into his hand. (The basic of shibori is, if you’re going to shibori, you must shibori until the end!). It’s pretty usual that your hand improved to some point, and you’re left with a dangerous live honor tile. There is no meaning in “live tiles” in early game, so unless you have an otherwise very important reason to keep them, discard them then!

Some other people believe that any honor (among fellow yakuhai or otherwise) are the same. They are not. There is an efficient discard order. They are all very different, and so their value changes. Given that none of them are discarded, you want to cut the following tiles:

What’s the best order in every case? Let’s watch it case by case.

East Seat in East Round.

North, West and South are not yakuhai, so they are useless. You’d probably want to discard them anyway, and if they do get pon’d by their respective “owner” it’s best to start with North. He is the player to your left, even if he calls the tile, you get an extra draw right away. Next is West, because it skips South. South for last, as it changes nothing. Then the sangenpai (dragon tiles); you always want to discard sangenpai before your seat wind tile because sangenpai can be used by everyone while your seat wind is most useful to you. The most efficient order for sangenpai is Haku, Chun, Hatsu. There is actually not much of a difference between Haku and Chun, but according to Mii’s research, saving Hatsu for last is somehow tied to a very slightly higher hand win rate (it surely is a better discard order than “haku hatsu chun” or “chun hatsu haku” and a lot better than doing it randomly). If you always follow that system, it will be alright for the most part. Then, at last, your Double East. You may want to insist on this tile the longest, as it grants you two han points instead of one.

South Seat in East Round

Why is the round win in first place? The current mahjong strategy is, discard from the tile you don’t want to get pon’d! If the south player discards East in his first discard, the chances it gets called by East are extremely low. You can pass on that danger there. Even if it gets called by East, he is to your left so you get one more draw. Next, North (it skips west player), then West. As explained above, Haku Chun Hatsu. Then in the end, the tile only useful to you, South.

West Seat in East Round

East, same reason as above. South, as it skips north. Finally, North. Haku Chun Hatsu as always. Then at last your own wind, West.

North Seat in East Round

(You may leave East for one turn or so later if someone already discarded it, and jump to the next live tile)

First we cut off the double east’s poison. Then West (it skips south). South. Haku Chun Hatsu. Finally, our North.

East Seat in South Round

(The truth is, if you need yakuhai badly, you can leave South for just before Haku Chun Hatsu in all of these except South’s case)

The case you want to avoid the most is South Player getting Double South. Starting from there, you then go on with North (skips south and west), then West (skips south). Haku Chun Hatsu. Then the tile only useful to you, East.

South Seat in South Round

Starting from East. It’s useless and it would be more expensive for East to have it. Also, even if it gets called, you can draw an extra tile right away. Then North (skips west). West. Haku Chun Hatsu. Then, at the very last, your Double South.

West Seat in South Round

Avoiding south’s Double South as much as possible (at least 2000 pts), then east’s East (1500pts). You may invert this, but the truth is, even if South calls it, you get an extra draw right away. Then North. Haku Chun Hatsu. As always, in last, your seat wind.

North Seat in South Round

From the dreadful Double South. Even if it gets called, the Dealer in East gets skipped. Then East. West. Haku Chun Hatsu. In the end, no surprise, your seat wind.

With this thought pattern you can even deduce yourself what’s best in the rare West rounds or North rounds.

Also, the order may be affected by the amount of discarded tiles, or your hand. For hon itsu, you want to increase your chances of yakuhai tiles as much as possible (leave all yakuhai for last), while for chii toitsu and pinfu (or hands that are already pretty much ready and you don’t want to pile up yakuhai as much as you want your opponents not to call them) you want to concentrate on non-yakuhai tiles the most (start discarding from yakuhai). But using this basic scale of values is the entrance to a good discard order.

Discard away!

Oh, also, don’t forget to check the dora.

We arrived on Friday evening, after a nice drive through the Czech republic and half of Germany. We met our host, s25k, on a parking lot of a local Lidl store in his hometown, ~60km from Hannover. We did have his house in the GPS, but somehow we still managed to get lost. We had pizza for dinner and played a few practice hanchan in his room, filled with animu posters, figures and vinyl records. I already sensed something is not right with my play – I won both hanchan at s25k’s homemade table. This wasn’t good – from my experience, usually when someone plays well the day before a tournament, they won’t fair well on it. But I didn’t let something like this silly superstition get the better of me. I can do this, right? Right??

The Kaiser pub, where the tournament was organized, is a nice small family restaurant / pub, where the Hannover mahjong club comes to play and have a nice time. The locals consisted of people of many ages, as is usual in western European mahjong circles. They were very friendly and the atmosphere was relaxed.

The Kaiser pub in Hannover

After registration, we received our number, nametag, a small sheet of paper with a seating order (with a blank space next to each hanchan where one could write down the table’s score for self reference) and a pack of sweets (neat!). There were 7 tables in the back part of the pub. Sometimes they were really close to each other, so people sitting back to back could almost feel the player behind them, but it wasn’t a problem. The limit to 28 players was really necessary.

So, I sit down for the first hanchan, a bit nervous, but I play my best. For 4th place. Ew, well, what happened? Nothing special, I just got hit by a mangan when I was riichi, got tsumoed when I was dealer, dealt into some small hands and didn’t do anything else. Whatever, it’s just the first game. However, ron5, who we met in the Kaiser in the morning (he was lazy to come the day before from Frankfurt), jumped to the first place with ~60k points.

But wait, I ended up 4th in the second hanchan too! Now I started to wonder if that superstition from the day before came true or something. All I did was sit there at the table while the other people tsumoed, riichi’d on the 5th turn, etc. At least I practiced my defense…

Third hanchan was the same as before. You know when Akagi played against someone, it was him vs the boss, and two sidekicks that no one cared about. I felt like one of those sidekicks through the whole tournament. At least on this hanchan I managed to score a baiman or a dealer haneman or something like that on round 3 of south. That pushed me up to first place. Woo hoo, finally! I can still do this, right?

A table with tiles. They were totally white. You could put the white dragon down frome either side.

The day was over, and after the germans held a meeting about what to do with the local riichi scene, we went to have dinner. A Schwein restaurant provided us with pork meat, and we headed back to s25k’s place to play a few team based tonpuusen (2 agaist 2). I was pretty tired by then, but still played an observed others a bit.

Day two had three more hanchan for us to play. After my first place on the third hanchan, I came back pretty encouraged. But no, the riichi gods didn’t want me to do anything even remotely successful. Fourth and fifth hanchan meant a 3rd and 4th place for me, with the typical just-a-sidekick feeling I had the day before. And this absolutely manifested itself at the last table of the tournament. I faced three women, where two of them were fans of different German football teams. It was pretty clear who was the Akagi vs Boss duel here. So I just sat there, tried to build hands, and defended against riichi / toitoi / honitsu attempts from all over. Nadine König, clearly the Akagi of the table, had a crazy streak of six renchan, mostly ronning her toimen (the other football club fan). Finally, I managed to do a mangan riichi chiitoitsu and the game was over. I was second, but still 3000 points in minus.

And the results? With an overwhelming lead, the first place went to old timer Richard Stöckermann (all his games were plus scores). Second place got another local, Michael Zahradnik, and the on third place sits Holland’s Martin Rep. I also have to mention ron5 on the 5th position and Michal Marko on the 6th, as the best of our Slovak team. And of course our wonderful host s25k, who unfortunately didn’t repeat his success from Utrecht, and ended on 19th place.

One elite table right here! Martin Rep on the left.

And me? 100 points behind Gemma Collinge, on the 24th place. Like a boss. What can we learn from this, though? Well, for one, defense is not always the best way. Although I was very happy with my defense (managed to defend against a lot of really scary hands), there might have been situations where risking it could have changed the outcome. It would be easy to blame everything on bad luck, so I won’t do that – but still a bit more luck on my part could have helped a lot. Full results on the EMA site.

Overall, the tournament was very nice, and we really enjoyed staying at s25k‘s place. But I think this was the furthest we will ever go by car. If we ever go to Holland, France or Denmark, we’re taking a damn plane.

Lirma being made up almost exclusively by students, it makes sense for the playing area to be somewhere in the university. On Sundays however, you need a student ID to actually get inside and so I found myself standing just outside the closest entrance to the designated room, with a bag from McDonald’s in my left hand (so that I don’t go hungry as the hours pass by) looking for someone to let me in. Fortunately though, even on Sundays the university has plenty of people around and after barely half a minute a girl lugging around an instrument her own size opened the door for me, and I appropriately prepared myself to walk around hopelessly lost trying to find where that particular room is. Despite my expectations, finding it turned out to be easy, even though I have no sense of direction and decided to be too much of a bloke to ask for directions, the map on their website describes its position well and it’s really just a simple matter of getting inside the university at the proper entrance, and taking a left. Unless someone mucked up and forgot to book the room, in which case the nearby kitchen proved to be a valid alternative. As I entered the room, I found a row of coat hangers to my right, and two of the members to my left, one of them studying. After hanging my coat and placing my still warm bag filled with cheeseburgers on a nearby table, I greeted the students and proceeded to stand around, taking it easy as I waited for more people to turn up. And so they did; some by their own accord and others seemingly woken up as the time slowly went past four in the afternoon. As people dropped in, a few brought things along with them; necessities such as mahjong sets, a cloth to slam the tiles on and tea for everyone to drink. On my very first visit, someone even brought cookies. And as you’d expect from students, there seems to always be at least one person missing due to getting plastered the night before and finding himself unable to get out of bed to join the rest of us.

Once things get going and tiles are slammed, the first obvious question that comes to mind is how the ambiance is; with hungover students, complete beginners and myself at the same table surely some problems must arise. However, even with my smug self counting for everyone else, the occasional rule argument discussion and even a certain person implying I might want to cheat, as far as I could tell, good times were had by everyone attending. Tea most certainly helped here. What really made a difference though was whether or not to use the rather thick and somewhat nappy cloth. Without it, the wooden tables delivered a rather as-you’d-expect loud bang as tiles were discarded on it. Whereas by using the cloth, not only did it get slightly trickier to handle the tiles but the sound was almost completely absorbed. And not just from the tiles. Interestingly, I found that without the cloth, the table would be surrounded by constant chatter filled with sassy remarks and game related comments, while using the cloth almost killed it completely. On the occasion that someone dares break the silence, it would be with a faint whisper before a more conversation friendly volume was reached, and soon after, once several words had been exchanged back and forth and both parts were content, silence returned, eagerly awaiting the next whisper. The group has ordered a few new sets and are planning to get a decent cloth so any further writing on that subject from my part is a waste of effort, so…

As for notable hands, I could write about my getting shou san gen twice, but the most noteworthy hands I’ve seen so far were in the first hanchan I played on my very first visit. After the first hand ended with ryuukyoku, the following two had someone with either one tile too many or one too few. With one person looking over toimen’s shoulder to give him hints where he probably didn’t need it, there was one particular hand where having him there saved him from first doing a noten riichi, and soon after a hopeless furiten riichi. I don’t remember any hands beyond that, but this had set the bar. Right off the bat I got the impression that I was mostly dealing with complete beginners. While there are a few beginners attending, that hanchan turned out to be an exception rather than the norm and while I wouldn’t say that the skill level is high amongst the members, it’s most certainly enough to enjoy a few (or several, if people feel like it) games while sipping tea and in general having a good time. I’m not even all that bothered by having to play with the EMA ruleset. I don’t like it, sure, but the good points makes up for it.

Once a game is finished, scores are entered in a computer (or phone, whichever is closest at hand) and stored. That’s it. Since the first time I visited, there’s been some talk about doing something to display the statistics gathered every week so that you are able to see how you’ve been doing over the course of however long you’ve been going there, that it would be easy to do so and yet, to my knowledge, nothing has been done. Anyway, once games have been played and people have had it for the day, teacups are assembled, mahjong sets are put back into their intended vessel and tables are arranged in the order they were when we arrived, people scatter and I make my way back home feeling it was time well spent, returning next the week after for more blithe, easy (but no less engaging) mahjong with the locals. Oh, and here’s their website: http://lirma.studorg.liu.se/.

It’s been ages since the tournament and I’m finally going to give you some of my impressions of this weekend.

The Oranda Saikou in Utrecht (17.-18.9.2011) was probably one of the tournament highlights in Riichi-Europe this year: 2 days, 9 rounds, 68 Participants from 10 different countries – and 4 #osamuko users.

The venue: the "NDC Den Hommel"

Chapter 01: How to mobilize your Luck ~the TV~

Things began to move on Thursday evening with the arrival of ron5. Seeing him exiting the train, I wasn’t quite sure if that would be him or not. He looked different from what I’ve expected after seeing some pictures. Handshake. No mistake now, it had to be him, if not, why would he talk to me? Returning home and hungry, we ordered some pizza from the infamous “meganekko” pizza shack, where all staff surrounding the only male – the cook – would be bespectacled young girls. Delicious pizza for a very good price. Following that, we played a few rounds of our favorite game with a girl from my local mahjong group and jslade, who was also coming along to Utrecht. Good opportunity to get used to each other.

At midnight, ron5 and I got into the car to pick up another #osamuko member. Just arrived from Sweden, fso was waiting at the Hanover main bus station. He looked like aimlessly looking around for some guys from the internet to pick him up. I decided to give him a call on his mobile phone and there he noticed us as being those internet guys. Handshake. Back in the car, he told us that he forgot all the food he had packed for his 17 hours bus ride and I decided to give him a little midnight snack upon arrival at home.

It felt quite strange to have these guys over at my place. We were all tired and being tired knowingly doesn’t help at all when it comes to provide socializing chatter. 2 AM, we decided to stop pushing it and to go to bed.

fso and ron5 sitting there at 1:30AM, enjoying Marmite toast just before going to bed.

The next day, just a few hours before departure, I was finally packing my suitcase and getting a mahjong set ready for possible evenings of game and fun in the hostel.

We were waiting for jslade to arrive playing 3 player 17-steps mahjong.

I won. I won around 95% of the time. Lucky! Could it be that this is my lucky weekend?

It was around 3PM when we departed. A roughly 300km trip was lying in front of us.

4 guys, 2 cars and one German Autobahn.

We arrived in Utrecht at around 6PM, already noticing the difficulty to get used to the Dutch traffic. Bikes everywhere. Hundreds of them – even at night. They cross the street without watching, ride their bikes without lights at night. But we still managed to get to the hostel without killing one of them.

The hostel was located in a park of an old castle and old fortess complexes. Too bad that we had no time to check out the area , it looked quite interesting. Inside the hostel, we found yet another #osamuko user: Senechal from Canada.  The team was finally together.

After checking out our room, which was acceptable, we decided to figure out how to get to the venue and to eat something afterwards.

The plan sounded easy, especially because we had an automotive navigation system with us.

The second car, depending on my navigation system, followed me and ron5 in my car. Pressure arisen. – “Don’t lose them! Don’t drive too fast! They need my guidance!”, I thought. We managed at the beginning. Getting used to them, even the bikers were not a big problem anymore. It surprisingly went very well.

We nearly arrived, one last roundabout and then.. we came across impassable street construction sites. “In 500m, turn left” – but there were no 500m. We noticed quite fast that those construction sites made it impossible to rely on the navigation system anymore. “Turn left” – but there was no left. Great. The guys in the second car, which was a 23 year old Volkswagen Polo,  sure had their problems to keep up with the very sloppy and tensed up driving style I had, since I never was sure if I’d be able to turn left or not next time. We lost their / They lost our sight several times. The result was a >25km detour.

It took about an hour to find the venue, but at least we figured out how to get there without taking the detour now and we decided to go downtown to grab something to eat. Easy plan… not.

Another detour – and in the end, we couldn’t even find anything else than an overpriced KFC. I spare you with all the idiotic details, but a broken handbrake, KFC house rules that tell you to leave the house after 13 minutes, more and bigger street construction sites, “Turn right” without being allowed to and hundreds of bikes riding without light say enough.

For the way back, I gave the navigation system to the driver in the second car, jslade. He was stressed out from receiving all the anger from surprised road users when he had to switch lanes again, because I was told to turn left when there actually was no left. Relieve!

Surprisingly, the way back had no construction sites at all. But jslade still fell for the navigation system’s announcements: “In 500m, stay on the left lane” – so he switched lanes and was now driving against traffic. He noticed that there was something wrong fast enough and they survived. Back at the hostel, we went straight back to our room. 4 hours of driving through Utrecht was enough for the day.

A horrifying trip. Wasting so much energy, I thought I could at least get a good sleep.

For me – with my height of ~2meters something – nights in hostels are usually bad because of the small beds. Small beds with foot ends. I can’t stand beds with foot ends. Luckily,  I found an extra mattress rack on the floor which had no foot ends. So everything should’ve been good.

It was around midnight when I went under the shower to be prepared for the next day. I had to be extra quiet for the people already sleeping in our room. Being ready for bed, I noticed the upcoming hell. Mosquitoes, a bloodcurdling air condition and snoring people. The night was awful.

Barely slept at all, hearing the alarm felt like being released from torture. What could possibly go wrong today?

At least I had no stress getting ready in the morning. After having a shower before going to bed, I was already “on” when we went to the breakfast hall.

Breakfast was quite good. I had the feeling that the order of the breakfast buffet was a bit confusing, but it worked out. I didn’t like the fact that they already prepared the small bowls for cornflakes with joghurt, leaving me with less choices for breakfast. Either bread or a kind of dutch rusk which was a bit flat in the taste. But one of the breads available was quite delicious and since we were in the Netherlands, the basic thing to do is to put chocolate sprinkles on your bread instead of e.g. chocolate spread. ron5 and the others were very suspicious about that. I loved it.

Breakfast done! Ready to go! Sh…

Thanks for that...

That – at least – summarizes all the hours spent inside the car in Utrecht. With that kind of luck, how could I even do good during the tournament? What tournament, you ask? Ah, you forgot about it while reading?

I see.

Chapter 02: How to be fully awake, when you actually aren’t

Clear directions.

There we are. The first day of the tournament.

We found a good spot to park our cars on the evening before, so there was no confusion about “how to?!” and “where to?!”.

Getting out of the cars, I put on my suit jacket and off we went.

Entering the stage, I already noticed familiar faces. I didn’t know their names, but I’ve seen those faces on the internet! Nevertheless, it was time for registration. I told them my name, they found my name on their list, I picked a number, they gave me a name tag with spelling errors and a sheet where I could see which tables I’m going to play during the tournament. It came with a plastic wrap on a orange coloured strap .. very cute..

First Round, Table 14. I sat down at table 14. It was still early. People were walking around getting coffee from the tea station. Talking, lots of that. Socializing. I was getting ready for the game. I took four tiles from the stack to get used to the size. They were unexpectedly light. What else was there? One riichi stick for each player, some chips to be used as honba / counters, a calculator, a laminated paper wind marker, a yaku / point sheet and a sheet of paper to keep track of the points lost / received.

It began to rain.

Still around ten minutes left until the beginning of the first round.

Left to right: jslade, ron5, fso

I was not nervous at that time. Instead, I somehow was getting very indifferent about the upcoming first round. Maybe it was because of the bad sleep I had during the night. I wanted to go to bed again.

But too late! The match was about to begin. 3 other players sat down at my table. One was an Asian-looking Frenchman, one Dutch and a Dutch substitute player, who had just a basic idea of the Japanese / EMA riichi rules.

Everybody in the room sat down and the referee for the tournament held an introductory speech. I couldn’t understand anything and eventually stopped caring. Afterwards, the sitting order was decided and the game began.

Around that moment, I got nervous. My hand was shaking. I occasionally pushed over some of my tiles with my sleeve which didn’t help to calm down at all. I cannot even remember what was happening. The only thing I remember was that the guy who kept track of the points messed up big time once: Counting 5 han instead of 6 and then – after I told him that it would be a 6 fan Oya-Haneman – subtracting 12000 instead of 18000 from his points. And there I didn’t care anymore. Round over. A fucked up round. I could not even concentrate on the discarded tiles. The only thing I noticed was that I ended up being 3rd. I somehow managed to get at least some lucky points with a jigoku ikkitsuukan haitei tsumo for example.

15 minute break. Time to wake up. Where was my Dr. Pepper when I needed it the most? Next match: Table 17.

I sat down. Barely spoke to the others about the match, I just wanted to continue. At this point, even though the first round was fucked up, I wanted to play more. I was happy that I was able to compete with others.

Round 2 was about to begin. Who would be my opponents?

2 elderly Dutch women sat down. They seemed nice. It was difficult to talk to them, since one was unable to speak English at all. After a while, the third player arrived. A French woman. The game is on.

This round seemed more easy and laid-back than the first. The nice talking to the women during the game helped me a lot to calm down from the first match. But still, many mistakes. I was still not able to concentrate on the game. I dealt into a very french and very obvious Chun Toitoi Dora 3 Haneman. My attention was too limited on my own hand – probably a result of the lack of sleep. I was surprised when I noticed that the French woman knew how to count and knew the scores, especially after I remembered Osamu’s talking about French players. She was very eager in ‘er own French way. A good opponent.

The round went on. Despite the laid-back atmosphere, I didn’t back off , was able to get real points and ended up first. How did I do that? No time to think about that, it was already time to move on to the next round.

At least, I managed to be in “the plus”. The first round was a devastating -16000. Second ended up +25500. I wondered, what is going to happen next round? But first…

Lunch time. Already. Time has passed very quickly.

Chapter 03: Recreation and devastation

I wasn’t very hungry at that point, but I still wanted to check out the lunch buffet.

The buffet was full of fresh and warm stuff. I got myself a bun and a schnitzel sandwich. It was tasty and stuffing. I wasn’t sure if that was the right food to eat before having 3 more matches and I decided to look out for available fruit.

Apples and oranges. Damn, and there I looked forward to a good banana. They had milk available, but no bananas.

Slightly disappointed, I went back to the table, where all the other #osamuko members had already assembled at.

We talked quite a bit about the experiences from the first two rounds. The others also had their ups and downs, but they seemed to be in a good mood at least.

After we were done with the food, we immediately went back to the top floor to get ready for the next rounds.

The ground-floor lobby

Back on the top floor, I sat down at table 3. A dutch man was already sitting there. Handshake. He told me that he is novice player and not very experienced. After we talked a bit, I got up again to grab myself a glas of water from the tea station. I really needed that.

Beginning of the third round. The Dutch man, a French and an elderly Dutch woman.

The Dutch woman was right there from the beginning.

Chi! Chi! Pon! – “Outside Hand.”

This was going to be interesting, I thought. But during the game, I got the feeling that Outside Hand was the only hand she knew. She had a very serious look on her face, so maybe she is just trying to make us think that she only knows the “Outside Hand”?

By the time I heard that the French woman I played against got a Shousangen, I was also Shousangen tenpai but had no use for that: one of the players left two of the remaining Chun in his hand after the French guy in front of me declared riichi.

To the end, it was getting very uneventful. Nothing big happened. For me, this round was not bad, but also not very good. A small plus of +4500.

I needed another glass of water.

Round 4 was about to begin. Table 6. It got way too hot inside the small room. The air condition was getting really bad. In addition to that, my head began to ache. Not a good sign. I was exhausted.

The beginning of round 4. Another Dutch woman, IF and another Frenchman were my opponents this time.

It was a rollercoaster ride, receiving big points upon losing big points.  Unnecessary deal-ins.

From what I remember, I always dealt into big hands in the beginning of each round. Mostly once and never again. Still, this has stopped me from gaining more points during the day.

This round, I dealt at least into something big twice. I kind of didn’t care. My head was aching. Aching too much. I wanted to stop playing, lay down and sleep. At least I managed to lose not too many points: -4500. I was glad that this round has ended without more point loss – it also could’ve been a monster plus round, but I was just too blocked because of my headaches so that I couldn’t do anything at all.

Drink. Maybe that would help. I needed more water. My aim from that point onwards was to at least finish all 9 Rounds and be above zero points.

No time for recreation and relaxation!  Round 5, the last of the first day awaited. I didn’t look forward to it -  I felt like shit.

This time, I was going against jslade. He played at table 9 for the whole day already and he will continue to play at table 9 for the rest of the tournament. Playing against him put me into a kind of bad position of playing against someone I regularly play against. The other players were a German woman and yet another Frenchman, but he was able to speak German. A very German round – and for starters, I dealt into an oya-mangan right of the bat.

Great. I backed off, no use of dealing into more big hands. I was still pretty fucked up and couldn’t keep up my attention, so why should I push it and eventually deal in again? I cannot remember how things went during that round and where I ended up. -5300 Points sound like a third place. I still was in the plus zone.

This was the end of the tournament’s first day and it was already getting late again.

The bridge next to the venue

The team met outside. We kind of decided that we should look out for a supermarket to buy ourselves some drinks and snacks for the second day. Knowing that there was a small Aldi right behind the next corner, we were able to drive there without any help from the navigation system.

There we were now – Aldi. A closed Aldi. It was quite a surprise to us that an Aldi in the middle of a big city is closing at 6 PM. It couldn’t be helped now. We went back to our cars.

I remembered Senechal’s talking about a supermarket near the hostel which is supposed to sell Dr. Pepper. Everyone was a bit against going back to the hostel already, but I was the one in charge of the navigation system so they kind of had to follow us there against their will. It turned out to be a very good decision.

The little town near the hostel turned out to have a small alley where you could find everything you need: Supermarket(s), small restaurants and bars. So we went to the supermarket first.

I checked my money. It was not much, but enough to get some bottles of water ready. Right after entering, I came across the fruit section and remembered the situation from today’s lunch and I grabbed myself 3 bananas. Then I went directly to the milk corner and decided to have some juice pack sized soy milk. There I remembered the Dr. Pepper.

I ran to the soft drink corner and there it… should’ve been. It was out. They were out of Dr. Pepper. Sen mentioned that they had Dr. Pepper yesterday, but now they were out. I couldn’t believe what I saw. I strolled around, came back and it still wasn’t there. I did that several times. It was just too tough to accept the fact that it was out. I gave up.

We went outside, packed everything in our cars and looked out for something to eat. We eventually found a little not very inviting pizza shack. Even from the inside, it didn’t really look inviting but we decided to enjoy our dinner there anyways.

A bad idea. The pizza was expensive, but that wasn’t the real problem: The pizza was expensive and disgusting – that was the real problem. I barely managed to eat half of it. I could not even imagine that anyone of us could enjoy this as much I could not imagine that there were real salami slices on my pizza – they tasted like plastic.

We were still eating when the pizzarian’s son, who was helping out taking orders, came up and began chatting with us asking where we were coming from, what we were up to and how we liked it in Holland so far. He was probably around 15-17 years old. Not ill-minded, but premature. I wonder what kind of impression we left on him, since he was so interested. He also wanted to hang around with us during the rest of the weekend, but that was going too far – and he did not notice. It was difficult to explain him that we were not here to just have a nice vacation but for a reason and that our time was very limited. He didn’t quite get what was going on and still wanted to meet up. Very persistent. After another try in explaining the situation, he let go.  That was close. He was disappointed and I felt a bit bad about rejecting his offer to meet up, but still – we nearly got into something very strange there. We payed our drinks and pizza and agreed on going back to the hostel to play some mahjong in the bar next to the hostel’s reception.

Back in our room at the hostel, I went under the shower in order to be prepared for the next day, while the others went ahead to the bar for a drink.

A good and refreshing shower, I needed that one. It surprised me when I noticed that I had no bad thoughts about messing up during the tournament, I was still having fun and was really looking forward to the upcoming day.

After the shower, I went over to the bar hoping they would already be playing mahjong, but they were still drinking some dutch beer. When they were done, I grabbed the table-cloth I brought from home and put it on the small bar table. Perfect fit! We got the tiles out of the case and began playing.

I was not quite in the mood to play myself and was more interested in seeing the others play, but fso insited that I at least show him the true way of occult playing in telling him what to discard. I made an attempt. fso could not quite follow my discards, but it turned out to be haneman in the end -  That’s were I stopped giving him hints. I was happy with my 100% success rate.

We played a couple of rounds and then it already was past midnight. Time to go back to the room.

A fun day. I think we all had fun – at least, that was the impression I had, when I went to bed.

…and I was still in the plus zone.

Osaka is pretty close, so I decided to stop at Marchao jansou in Umeda, a free parlor (this means, uh, betting). They very kindly explained the rules of the store to me, and made me feel really welcome. I’d recommend going there to anyone who has a good grasp of Japanese and rules and manners of mahjong. This is important. So, how did playing in Japan go?

The first day I showed up, I changed 10000Y (uh, about 100 dollars) into game chips (in Japan, betting is illegal, so you basically pay for this fictitious money to bet in-game, and then cash it in afterwards) and sat to play some Ten-go. This means, every 50Y = 1000pts (riichi stick). They use the Ultima auto-dealers; they reveal the dora and give out the starting hand out to every player automatically. HOWEVER, the dealer must still take his first draw from the wall… and it’s very easy to forget to do this. I think I made shouhai (12 tiles in hand) about three times, go-pon (wrong pon) one time (penalty is depositting 1000 points on the table), among other disastrous mistakes as my hands kept shaking for the first 7 hanchan.

I used to think “I’m used to playing online. In real life, I could be even better. You have more thinking time, you can read other people’s tenpai more easily, and watch their movements with more ease. I’d be a very fast player.”

Unfortunately, this was not the case. Even for real life, everyone moved even faster than online, I didn’t get too much time to think about my next steps in my hand, and felt pressured to discard rapidly (mind you, no one was hurrying me, and you can take your time to think if you say “sumimasen,” but you kinda feel like you better not think too much and just discard). With such speed, I didn’t get enough time to look at the table, made dumb mistakes constantly, and even once I won a hand, I didn’t get a chance to think how much it was worth before, and ended up being very awkward (“Ron! Eh… excuse me, riichi, yakuhai… ura dora, eh, 20…30…40…50fu…” “Tsumo… riichi pinfu… eh…”) even though I know this stuff by heart. I was so nervous I couldn’t even remember the charts, and was like “whatever, if they say it’s 6400, let it be.”

Another reason I couldn’t count score so easily, was that not only you have to count score, but the amount of chips. This parlor uses 100Y coins as chips, and you receive one every time you score ippatsu, aka dora or ura dora. http://www.osamuko.com/2010/10/18/how-to-get-better-at-jansou-mode/

So, along with the tsumibou, even for a simple mangan, you’d have to be like “Tsumo! 2000 4000 wa, 2100 4100 no 2mai ooru desu.”

Also, in the case of a ryuukyoku (draw) the dealer always rotates, so there was a lot of damaten (silent tenpai) from every dealer, and it would get pretty dangerous from middle game on, specially if you don’t have red dora in your hand. Every direct hit you get with red dora, will impact your pocket immediately.

Gladly enough, everyone was kind enough to help me get the system right, and after a few hanchan my hands stopped shaking and I could enjoy myself some more.

Another thing to enjoy is that, drinks are on the house! You can drink as much as you want while you play, you won’t be charged. The only charge you have to pay, is the table fee after the game ends, but the staff takes care of it, they deduce it from everyone’s score, and supervise that the point/money exchange between the players is accurate. Also, the very same automatic table itself converts points to yen. Pretty useful, huh.

After 10 hours of playing, I left that day with the 10000Y I came in and an extra 1100Y. I thought “Oh, I’m so good, I should be a Jangoro like Fukuchi. This seems easy.” But that’s a terrible mistake too.

The next time I came in to play, I exchanged 10000Y again and sat to play. My hands weren’t shaking anymore, and I could actually feel like I owned the place, could tell my points fast and clearly, and felt like I could win again. Until, eventually, I started losing, and then I lost it. I dealt into a few ippatsu (some of them while I was in riichi myself, or some people made two or three riichi in the same turn), lost a few times and felt like an idiot, so I started playing like an idiot. I let go of my system, and from then on everything went worse. I was completely cracked under pressure at that point, looking how my stack grew shorter. I couldn’t think of what to do, so I resorted to occult as well, trying to “erase my presence” by not calling tiles and not dealing in. From then on things went better, but I was already losing a lot. The old man to my left was very nice and polite, but on the table he was a complete cruel monster who seemed able to complete every yaku in the history of mahjong. Haitei, rinshankaihou, chankan (on the dora as well), he kept winning them all and taking everyone’s money as he smiled and was being just really nice. He was a good player, a cordial winner and even at the very few times he lost, gracious in defeat. I don’t mind losing money to people like him, I guess. I ended up losing those 10000Y. But I want to keep playing him some time. I charged another 10000Y and after losing 1000Y of those I went back to the bookstore with my girlfriend to pick up some mahjong theory books. Kagaku Suru Maajan, Ara System, Hisato Note and Note X, Saisoku Saikyou, among others. Mainly stuff on digital mahjong. I didn’t want to get my hands into occult just yet.

You see, the problem there is that even if you win, the table fee is such that you’re not winning much, and whether you’re second or third, there are many cases where you just end minus. If you don’t win pretty much every hanchan, you’re going to be minus, after all. And if you lose most of them, like I did that day, your minus is going to be pretty big (about 120 dollars in a day!).

Not only did I play at a parlor, but I also played with Kyoukai’s professional player AkihiroKawamura, featured in a past article: http://www.osamuko.com/2011/06/03/pro-player-interview-kawamura-akihiro/

We played a few home games, and made a niconico broadcast of it. Betting is illegal in Japan, so even if we were betting that night at, let’s say, about 30Y every 1000points, and I’m not saying we were because we weren’t, and even if we were I wouldn’t be able to say it, but if we were, I would have lost 1600Y the first day, and won 100Y the day afterwards.

Kawamura’s mahjong is amazing. He completely dominates the table. But he’s a good guy. He is a very considerate person, like most, if not all, of my Japanese hosts have been so far.

Anyway, for a country that doesn’t allow betting, I sure lost a lot of money in mahjong. And in mahjong books.

You can see my not so great marchao stats here:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/843/machao.jpg/

More on mahjong after the break.