Mahjong Life and Living

Plenty of things are happening around me. I am using many distractions around me right now to divert my attention to a number of different directions. Even mahjong itself can be considered a distraction at this point. Given everything that is happening this month, it is necessary. Sure, I have a ton of draft entries in my collection at the moment, but they are generally not being filled. As far as these entries are concerned, I have plenty of material to write about.  If there is one thing perfectly clear here, time moves very fast.  Regardless of the year, once the month of September starts, the remainder of the year appears to zip by to me.  Any month seems to go by quickly, but the autumn months are particularly fast.  The weekly mahjong sessions with my club accelerates time even more. That's my perception.

The following is an overview post written in my Facebook, that I posted a year ago. I took the liberty of copy-pasting here: By now, the end of this year's World Riichi Competition had passed a few days ago. Since then, I had stayed over at my sister's residence just to get a feel of living in this town (again). The past five days were reserved for some quality family time. In general, it was some good downtime after a large event, where I had a tremendous amount of fun and enjoyment. By this point, I presume everyone else had made their way home. Tomorrow, I make my return home; and as soon as I arrive, I plan to make my way home to my mahjong club. Given any large event, we have multiple people from multiple directions, and they are all mutually unique from one another. Yet, general commonality brings such people together due to a shared common interest. To be more specific, we are a bunch of very crazy people willing to spend some extra money just to play this...

The  2019 Los Angeles Saikouisen Pro Tournament was on Labor Day weekend (Aug 31-Sep 1).  For me, it was four days of automatic table play with LAPOM's tables.  With the event in the past, I can look back on this tournament, just like all the others.  As always, there had been some interesting moments.  Due to the recency of this tournament, I have this event split into five articles, counting this one. I initially had a general policy to not attend any mahjong tournament for 2019, unless it was a convenient road trip.  After a deep talk with family on my Vegas trip earlier this year, I could not justify my attendance, that involved flights.  It was a matter of expense.  I did check Chicago to Los Angeles flights and prices were reasonable.  So, attendance came to within reason.  In the end, I became compelled to go via Facebook private message.  Eventually, I became convinced to attend; so I did. With that said, this is my gen...

Here is a litmus test in the form of just one question to determine if you truly enjoy mahjong: Can you take a 4th in a game, and still look back at the game fondly? If yes, then you truly enjoyed the game and mahjong overall. Every mahjong player has lost a chunk of games.  Even the good players have produced a loss rate (4th place) of 20% or more.  In general, losing is not fun.  It's even worse when there is a string of them.  However, a game can be played for pure enjoyment regardless of result. For example, here is a kazoe yakuman - just note the dora and uradora indicators.  I dealt the 3pin right into it, thinking that I can set up my hand and hit him for houtei.  Yes, that was my plan.  It did not work. I remember him saying, "Ron.  48." My immediate reply as I look at the hand, "Hey, that doesn't look like it's worth 4800." Then he repeated, "48,000." "Oh," I said. Then I laugh.  Even now, I can thin...

By sheer luck, I managed to find a completely new group of online mahjong players.  Actually, I was summoned there.  Together, we formed a group centered on the mahjong meme: Connect Kan.   The name is a general mockery of the whole "kan" calling found in the lower levels of Majsoul.  One member spent the 60 jade (an in-game currency) to create a tournament lobby.  Naturally, we found ourselves wanting to find a name for the lobby.  So, we called it "Connect Kan".  An odd circumstance forced us to create a new Discord; and we kept the name.  It's catchy! Connect Kan meme How did I find this group? Probably in relation with the Catfood Bowl tournament in June, one user decided to go ahead and gather up some Majsoul players into a Discord to run tournament play on his own.  He called it the "Beer League".  The reason became obvious, when I finally got to play in one.  These were "pick up tournaments", where for lack of fo...

If there is a way to emulate mahjong club play across the internet, then voice chat is the way to go.  Verbal interaction during mahjong play very much behaves like mahjong social play.  While we cannot see each other, we can at least hear each other to gauge instant reactions to mahjong.  Discord has made this practice very easy. Last year, we used to have Tenhou Tuesday as a regular thing.  However, that died off when its figurehead moved to Japan.  This past summer, I've had Connect Kan.  Here and there, we play mahjong with voice chat.  Without the mahjong, people can simply talk. Needless to say, it's nice being able to receive some instant reaction to mahjong play as well as have some casual conversation during a mahjong game.  For me, it's a general replacement to the good old fashioned phone conversation.  For mahjong community development, it's a good way for people to get to know each other, so that we do not produce bad blood f...

Once upon a time, I did dabble with chess a long while back in Yahoo! Games.  However, I did not go far; and the ranking play somewhat discouraged me.  Yet, for some reason, I bought a Judit Polgar book of chess puzzles but never went into it.  I still have it collecting dust. Fast forward to my A4 years and eventually Facebook, I played some more via Facebook chess.  Then here and there, I occassionally looked at Chessgames  to think about the puzzle of the day.  Most of the time, I failed to think them through but it was still amusing looking at them.  Just once in Facebook, I managed to pull the bishop sacrifice into the king side to set up an attack towards mate.  Doubtfully, I may not be able to pull that game out; but it was a good memory. Then to the present, I have been watching Agadmator's channel .  He has an approach of telling a chess game in somewhat of a story mode fashion, while explaining the different lines.  That go...