A mahjong journey
…one feels that at times, quite frequently in fact. However, I think it’s more akin to zen meditation or stoic practice, letting go of winning, letting go of that good hand, accepting defeat, being one with the whims of the universe. Being one with the flow.
If there was a game that was a metaphor for existence, then mahjong is it.
Early Awareness
Growing up in the west I had never really heard of or thought about mahjong beyond “mahjong solitaire”… that tile matching game some PC’s came with for free. It wasn’t until the Saki anime aired back in Spring 2009 that I understood the existence of the actual game of mahjong.
While Saki was amusing, I felt like I was missing out more enjoyment of the show by not understanding the game or how to play. Thus, my journey into learning to play begun…
I seem to recall long hours pouring over large .pdf sheets of rules, yaku, and instructions for playing on tenhou.net that someone on 4chan’s anime board had compiled in the wake of Saki airing. At the time I grasped a basic sense of the rules, enough to win some games and feel satisfied that I “understood” the game (a far cry from the truth).
After that initial phase I didn’t go much deeper. I did, however, enjoy playing on the network mahjong machines in arcades in Japan while on holiday… you could get a good 30-45 minutes of game time from a single coin where every other game in the arcade would last a few minutes, if that. 😅
I played occasionally on Tenhou, on and off over the years, but never really in much depth (or with any great deal of success). The next real milestone for me was in Final Fantasy XIV. A few years back when the hype got the better of me and I returned to the game (after vowing never again since the 1.0 disaster). Obviously unlocking the gold saucer minigame arcade was a priority, and one of the games there was mahjong.
FFXIV – “Mahjong Master”
As a client, FFXIV mahjong is a bit more interesting, you can see your opponents and chat to them, and given the quantity of people playing mahjong there is relatively small… you get to know your regular opponents. There’s a community (multiple discord communities in fact). Beyond that, there’s a goal, a title you can display on your character, the coveted “Mahjong Master”, one of the rarest titles in the entire game.
How hard could it be, right? I mean I already knew how to play…
…
…
…2 full years later…
“Mahjong causes great damage to the human spirit without a single benefit.”
My word that was a struggle. For several reasons:
The small quantity of players playing the game in FFXIV means that it can take hours to find a game depending on time of day, and some days no games at all.
The ranking system gets progressively harder as you go higher up, to the extent than when you almost reach the 2000 rating required for “Mahjong Master”, you can lose rating by finishing 2nd, 3rd, or 4th in a game. Nightmare fuel compared to all other mahjong ranking systems where at least finishing 1st or 2nd usually guarantees positive progress.
You actually need to be good to win enough games on average that your rank goes up
Shout out to the regulars I ended up playing with for that time, particularly the elusive and mostly silent Phoenix Silver, probably the best player on the EU data centre, as well as all those in the Mahjong of Light discord, the regular meetups organised by Ziggy, tournaments organised by RPGReki, the in-game cross world linkshell invites, and those that I probably annoyed by repeatedly winning against (sorry Joro Gumo if you’re out there somewhere!).
Anyway to actually get there, I had to invest time actually learning riichi mahjong theory. “Riichi Book 1” is essentially the bible for English speaking people wishing to learn the basics how to play well. It is by no means anything more than a beginner level book, but by reading this alone, and actually absorbing all it has to offer, you can easily reach Mahjong Master in FFXIV. To go beyond that however is a different story…
Beyond FFXIV
By this point I was clearly hooked by the game. The depth of strategy was endless, after 2 years of reading various books, and hundreds, perhaps even thousands of hours of practice… despite my title in FFXIV, I was still very much a beginner.
I was very aware that ultimately this is a game that requires a certain mental fortitude. You are essentially playing something where at best you have little more than 25% chance of winning, and little less than 25% chance of coming last. The effect of skill is there, but it is ultimately dominated by chance. The fortitude required to play safe, to fold good hands a majority of times, to avoid dealing in, to accept your losses, to even accept even wild loss streaks as a statistical likelihood at some point. It is a game of stoic zen practice, a game that would challenge even the great Marcus Aurelius.
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
“Be like the cliff against which the waves continually break; but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Alas, one cannot resign oneself entirely to fate, else in mahjong, that is to accept a 1st place rate of slightly less than 25%, and a last place rate of slightly more than 25%. A long losing streak does not happen entirely in a vacuum, entirely by chance, your actions were ultimately some input to tipping the balance towards that outcome. One must still introspect, and learn, and grow.
I knew that I was still a beginner. In order to grow myself I had to study more and get more games. This brought me out of FFXIV and onto other clients. I spent some time back in Tenhou, and a new flashy gacha mobile mahjong game: Mahjong Soul. The standard of play in these clients is generally higher, and thus more of a challenge, the ranking systems essentially go all the way up to Japanese Pro level.
How could I get there? A lot more time, practice, reading, reviewing my own games, and following a structured learning approach:– The Hopeless Girl on the Path of Houou has been an invaluable resource, methodical, and complete with electronic training tools. Ultimately, however, there is a very limited amount of intermediate to advanced level strategy guides translated into English (and most of it unofficial translations of non-English content), thus one ends up getting things like this from Amazon japan…
As of today, I’m still very much a beginner on the path: 2 dan on Tenhou, and Expert 2 in Mahjong Soul… a long way to go (though I am still proud of that Mahjong Master title, one of 0.3% of players 😂).
IRL Games
Other than online play, once hooked on the game I also started looking into where to play IRL. Suffice to say finding other players in the UK for irl games is somewhat of a challenge, the total pool of players is even smaller than the FFXIV community of players. However, they do exist! There are discord servers, facebook groups, and meetup.com arrangements, and much to my surprise, an official european mahjong tournament ranking system.
Simultaneously to the learning above, I set about trying to get some irl games. First step: get a set of tiles and a mat to practice with at home. On a computer everything is done for you, irl you need to know how to shuffle, build the wall, score hands (I’m not even going to go into the complexity of that here), know when you’ve won, and not make mistakes.
Ironically, the first time I found to play irl was actually at an FFXIV event: FFXIV London Fanfest 2023, a small group of people (by small I mean 4 people total) from the FFXIV mahjong community managed to get together for a single game in a library near Kings Cross station. My first irl experience, and I ended up in last place with negative points… as to be expected. 😅
After that I needed to figure out how to attend one of these EMA tournaments. Luckily, there was one coming up near me, and more importantly, the tournament community seems pretty welcoming to newcomers, even those that struggle with scoring hands!
Overall, a great experience, playing with other players of a high level, irl, in a welcoming environment for newcomers, what more could one ask for. I even didn’t do too bad, top half and positive points overall!
Other than that I’ve actually found some other avenues for playing irl… turns out some people at my workplace play mahjong (though with Hong Kong rules), so we’ve had a few games there. While enjoyable, there’s not really much strategy to Hong Kong rules mahjong, there’s no real defence, just go as quick as you can for any hand that gets the minimum score, and everything is pretty much up to chance. I feel like it’s probably an uphill battle to convince them to want to switch to riichi rules. 😅
WROTL – World Riichi Online Team League
Finally, and the real reason I wanted to write this blog post, we come to “wrotl”. The WRC (organisers of the biggest international riichi tournament) recently organised a tournament between Japanese professional players and international amateurs. This was a chance I couldn’t miss, the ability to play against serious professional players, some of the best in the world. Like if someone said “hey, do you want to play a few football games with Ronaldo and Messi?”, who could resist?
So yeah I’m in that, for the next few months, every saturday on ron2.jp (an alternative Tenhou based client), playing professional players worldwide.
…and so far… I’m not totally embarassing myself! 😂 Lamp- currently 570 out of 854 total players. If I can finish in positive territory then I’ll be happy. But even without that, just playing against this level of player is a really great way to learn and improve. I’ve already gone up 1 dan level in Tenhou since the start of this.
I might post an update here once it finishes, but judging by my overall posting activity, it’s unlikely right? Just check on twitter if you need to.
Despite all of the above, I’m still a beginner
I have a huge backlog of study material to get through, I’m definitely still a beginner.
Mahjong strategy has a depth I’ve not encountered anywhere else, in all likelihood I will be a beginner forever. There is always more to learn.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few” ― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
