Mahjong Life and Living

Now that the event is over, we go forward from here with another tournament as a memory.  Some of us have a collection of tournament participation in the past, while some have this one as their first one.  Either way, it was certainly a collective experience.  Hopefully, plenty of us have found moments, where we can think and/or say: "I like how things are right now."  This thought first appeared at 2022 Riichi Nomi; in turn, I naturally gained the ability to produce puns.  Likewise I was getting plenty of such thoughts this past weekend.  To those who could not attend, future events are around the corner. Unlike anime conventions with their "post-con depression", everyone should walk away from this tournament feeling good.  Even if your mahjong results were not as you hoped they were, you can be happy for being there feeling the "synergy" or as I had been corrected: "the flow".  As mahjong players, that feeling of "flow" feeds off of e...

Day 1: Saturday, Aug 31, 2019 Tournament Day 1 (round robin) and Dinner Session The round robin portion of the tournament was covered in the first day: three before lunch and three after.  Each hanchan observed the time limit of one hour.  Games normally finished through S4 well before that.  This day covered a bulk of the weekend's events. With 40 players, the event used ten autotables: eight AMOS JP2, one AMOS JP EX, and one older unknown table. Before the tournament begins, the opening ceremony covered a general introduction of the pros and Saikouisen.  Then it was followed by a performances of Japanese calligraphy and a guitar solo to get everyone in the mood.  Naturally, as soon as that was over, the tournament begins. My first game featured Rachel, Kazuki, and Kyle.  I've faced Rachel before in the North American Open last year.  In a practice game, I edged out Kazuki by 100 points.  Then Kyle took on Hiro in the Tornado Alley...

With COVID-19 still lacking a vaccine, mahjong remains bunkered along with most of the world.  It has been two months since my last session with real tiles.  I miss it.  For now, exclusively online is the way to go. In turn, we're getting an increase in online mahjong activity, in the form of tournaments.  I for one have been participating some last month.  At the turn of May, I have some tournament play lined up for myself.   So far, I have played in five online competitions since Easter.  A couple of these disrupted sleep patterns.  I play these for fun and for community involvement. This upcoming weekend, I shall be running one with my own club.  It is our replacement for the Anime Central tournament , which unfortunately had to be canceled.  The convention itself was canceled due to the pandemic.  So, this year, my club offers the 2020 Chicago Online Riichi Tournament . The day after, I plan to play with the Brazilian...

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...

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...

To think, the following year of 2020 will be the next World Riichi Championship in Vienna .  Unfortunately, I am already making the personal call to not attend due to cost.  Besides, the cost of the trip will be better well spent on a trip to Japan instead, as I've yet to ever go.  So, I'll have to apologize about this decision here.  Regardless, I hope for others to take up the opportunity to play at the World Riichi Championship as it was a great experience. With that said, I look back that the memories of the past in the 2017 World Riichi Championship : Overview Visit to Los Angeles Pride of Mahjong (LAPOM) Road trip to Las Vegas The Las Vegas shooting Tournament goals and expectations My own tournament results Specific plays Chatting with the pros Signature girl Extra one week stay The flight home For now, I merely leave a list; and if necessary, I may add more.  However, I plan to go over some of these items in separate entries.

The Catfood Bowl S0 Tournament was the first official tournament on the Mahjong Soul English server.  This was held at the beginning of the month (June 4-7), starting on the day returning from a Las Vegas.  Ten players from the North American riichi player base, as well as ten more selected from the general English Mahjong Soul, participated. Here are the full results  along with replay URLs posted in the Mahjong Wiki .  Likewise, the respective Twitter postings from English Mahjong Soul were collected.  Video is available via Dasuke's Twitch stream . Overall, the tournament was fun.  To see a mahjong stream with a hundred plus viewers is astounding.  In general stream sense, this is very paltry low.  However, for a mahjong stream, that is a lot. The tournament layout was interesting, as it utilized the double elimination format.  As far as tournament formats goes, brackets in mahjong are not all that practical as pretty much "anyth...

It seems fitting for the tournament scene to have been a big part of my mahjong journey, as I literally traveled to these tournaments to play.  For a record, here is my mahjong tournament history .  While I had been operating the Anime Central tournament for a number of years, my first chance at my own tournament play came in 2015.  From there, I got to travel to at least one tournament per year since. Hopefully, I do not travel to a tourney this year.  For family reasons, I was in Las Vegas last week.  I feel the need to save up a little money and catch my breath.  Yet, I retain the ability to just go to one, if I so choose. I will be looking to go through the tournament listing down the line and see what kind of memories still remain in my head.  Will I go through gameplay?  Not really, unless I happen to actually remember some moments.  Then I will share them. Memory lane will be fun.