Mahjong Life and Living

No, I am not ending my mahjong life any time soon .  Instead, I ask a question with a very obvious answer: Can people leave mahjong? In other words, can people stop playing and completely disassociate with everything mahjong related?  The natural and obvious answer: Of course!    An end is inevitable for each and every one of us.  The method of end will very though.  The contrary would violate the freedom noted in "my" Prime Directive .  No one should ever be forced to play; and by extension, no one should be forced to associate with an activity and its people.  So, this idea extends to all other activity.  I am very much in support of volunteerism. Have I seen people leave?   Yes, of course.  People come and go in all activity, and mahjong is no different.  It is the natural order.  Some departures feel sadder than others.  I know some who have quit and sold their sets.  It was a sad sig...

Nine times on Tenhou.net, I have produced a game score of +100 or better .  By default, these are my top 9 scores.  So far, I've produced one every year, with the exception of 2011.  Though, it is doubtful, that I'd produce one this year; if I did, then the annual streak continues.  The month of December will be my last gasp try for the year. This is one of my signature accomplishments on the Tenhou platform.  As far as I know, this is a record unmatched by many of my peers.  My next highest scores below +100 is a pair of +99's.  To score such a game, a player must amass a point total of 89,500 or greater.  This is due to Tenhou's oka and uma settings.  The winner of a game gets +20 oka followed by +20 uma. Later, I'll do a review for all but one, because I failed to save that one game anywhere.  Under Tenhou's rules, the score a +100 game requires either a yakuman with an already high score, a double yakuman, or perfectly good ...

Throughout my Tenhou ladder history, I've gone through a number of derankings.  It's part of the growing pains.  I've never kept a particular record on my derankings, but my collection of ranking up shows their existence anyways.  Each one marked the time I moved into the next rank, which means I was in the lower rank just prior.  As far as ladder ranking goes, movement can be on the order of years.  Currently, my maximum limit is at the 4-5 dan loop .  Apparently, I'm playing at a level below that.  If anything, my list of things to work on in my mahjong play still applies and then some. On my most recent deranking  from 4 to 3, I initially pledged to rank right back up via the Tenhou client.  Instead, I am opting for another month away from Tenhou.net.  As for the month break, I did the exact same thing last December, after deranking from 5 to 4.  Needless to say, I'm slightly demoralized.  This deranking course...

This was a map project undertaken by Jellicode .  He recently recruited me as one of its caretakers, and I accepted.  Any more information about this, I shall direct you to  his entry . Ever since I was a child in the USA, I have a personal fascination with maps. One thing I used to do as a school boy: turn to the encyclopedias and look into the different countries and maps. From there, I turned to Atlases and Road Maps. Back then, the Internet was not everywhere as it was today. We had to look at printed material for our directional information.  Even today, I am an avid map reader . With that said, I'll highlight some interesting notes about this map. Something I noted in my previous article comparing riichi mahjong 10 years ago vs now .  Looking at North America, it really shows how far we've gotten as a mahjong community.  Sure, we have some large gaps of area without any mahjong club within an 100 mile radius.  On the other hand, we h...

November "officially" marks my tenth year of mahjong.  What does this mean?  Nothing really, other than I can compare riichi mahjong in 2009 vs 2019.  Ten is a round number; and we humans tend to point to things like that.  Here, I shall highlight some comparisons of then vs now.  Discord did not even exist, and the main chat communication was  IRC .  The old channel, #mahjong, is still there but very inactive.  We gathered here centered around the  Osamuko blog .  Naturally, Discord became rather popular, and a migration occurred.  As a side effect, numerous Discord servers exist for mahjong. The number of clubs across the North American continent was countable with one hand.  Now, a whole bunch of clubs have sprouted since then, each with their own collection of mahjong and non-mahjong related talent.  That talent pooled right into the riichi community.  In 2010, I was lucky enough to find Chicago Area Mahjong v...