As I had indicated a while back, Mahjong is as varied as the cultures which play it consistently. For a while I have played the British Variation, with some minor modifications. As a neophyte, I tried to review the various rule-sets I could get my hands on and in the process come up with a variation that was at one time both simple to learn as well as strategically fulfilling. My first forays into creating the ultimate, simple variation gave rise to a simplified form which borrowed elements of the Japanese Riichi Mahjong as well as the British rules. It worked, but I kept getting complaints that it was too simplified or not as challenging.
Then there was another aspect that kept nagging me, the fact that I had not managed to find a single guidebook that focused on the strategy aspect. That thankfully changed in recent months when I obtained a copy of “A Mahjong Handbook” by Eleonor Noss Whitney. It starts off by covering the basics, the tiles, the seating around the table, breaking the wall, basically how to go about playing. Then it covers a variation it calls the “Modern variation”. Nothing particular here other than that it focuses on the notion of patterns which earn you doubles over and above a base score for a winning hand. This was all stuff I already knew and experimented with during my early games. The section that really caught my attention however covered both an offensive and a defensive strategy for playing the game. It was while reading this section that I realised for the first time just how important Chows, or sequences of three tiles, really were for a comprehensive strategy.
If you haven’t already, please go back and review my other Mahjong blog entry by clicking here.
You see in my experience of British Mahjong, Chows make sense only within the context of complex hands that are indeed very difficult to put together. An All Chow hand earns you a minimum point score and single Chows hold no value whatsoever. Yet in other scoring systems Chows can be used intelligently both to block opponents from winning in situations where you cannot win, as well as construct hands that garner points by containing mix scoring patterns.
In all the variations I have seen so far, actual play varies little, it is usually the scoring method employed that does while also requiring adjustments to hand building. So before reviewing the two variations mentioned in the title, allow me to go over a few gaming principles and hand-building strategies.
In most Mahjong variations, the objective is to put together a hand of exactly 14 tiles composed of four sets of three tiles and a pair. There are three types of sets you can put together, sequences (Chow), trips (Pung) and quads (Kong). For the purpose of determining a valid winning hand, Kongs are looked upon as though they were sets of three tiles (Pung). Now there are four copies of each tile in a Mahjong set, so you will find four One’s of Bamboos, four Eights of Characters, four Red Dragon tiles so on and so forth. From this you will therefore appreciate that sequences should be easier to assemble than Pungs or Kongs. It also follows that any pattern that relies on assembling Pungs or Kongs will be harder to put together than those which focus on Chows.
Yet your strategy cannot focus on assembling just Chow-based patterns, basically because in all the point scoring systems I have encountered, the higher scores are weighted significantly in favour of assembling Pung and Kong-based patterns. So what should be your plan of action?
Mahjong is no different to other pattern-based games; Gin Rummy comes to mind here. For this reason, your likelihood of winning a hand will depend to an extent on the strength of your starting hand. Eleonor Noss Whitney states that if you notice that you have a hand requiring more than 5 tiles to complete, then your chances of winning are poor, and you should focus on minimizing damages by not offering the winning tile by discarding undesirable tiles without proper foresight. If on the other hand you have an initial hand that requires 5 or fewer tiles to attain a ready hand (one tile left to win) then you can really focus your strategy on maximizing your score.
The guidelines offered are simple yet effective. If you find yourself holding on to middling sequenced pairs such as 4-5 or 6-7, you should hang on to them in the hope of making Chows with tiles on either side of these pairs. If you have something like 5-6-7-7 then her recommendations are more in favour of forming concealed hands if possible and to stay away from forming exposed Pungs, unless it would mean going out and declaring a winning hand or making a ready hand. Personally I find it difficult to simply pass on forming a melded exposed Pung by claiming a discard, just to focus on achieving a fully concealed hand, but I see the merits of her thinking.
Another aspect found in the book A Mahjong Handbook is the ability to assess how a player plays his hands. Some players develop tendencies toward forming suited hands, or maybe honour tile based hands, this in itself would suggest a counter-strategy based on retaining crucial tiles he might need till the very last minute, or until such time that you cannot hold on them without impacting your chances of winning. The book is also clearly against giving out any information regarding the current strength of your hand such as physically separating your completed sets such as to reveal your current hand situation to your opponents. Some may argue that, okay your opponents know you have a set but that they still do not know what you are holding. That may be true but the fact is that by revealing for example that you have completed three out of the four necessary sets, an opponent may decide to change his strategy in order to attain an early (albeit lower scoring) win just to block you from winning the hand.
There’s more to the aforementioned book than what I have mentioned so far, but now I would like to focus on the two Mahjong variations I was referring to earlier.
MCR
MCR stands for Mahjong Competition Rules. It’s a format used during tournaments in Asia and stands in direct competition with the Japanese Riichi Mahjong rules which are also employed during tournaments in the Far East. MCR does away with some of the more intricate scoring methods employed in traditional Mahjong. Points are scored for patterns identified within a winning hand. There is no doubling in the MCR scoring system; you only get points associated with the patterns you succeed in putting together through your winning hand. You may have multiple patterns scored so long as neither of them overlaps significantly. If two related patterns can be observed within a winning hand, then the higher scoring pattern prevails over the other. Additionally, as happens in Riichi Mahjong, only the winner receives any points.
In my opinion the only really shortfall with MCR Mahjong are the 81 distinct patterns you need to memorize in order to plan your strategy. With repeat play you will arrive to remembering most if not all of them, but you will always need a discrete reference sheet for those that you will find difficulty committing to memory.
WSOM
WSOM stands for World Series of Mahjong. This tournament has been held annually since 2007. This year it was supposed to be hosted in Sydney as opposed to Macau, but the late announcement of the new venue (March) did not allow most players time to make the necessary preparation to attend for this year’s event. This resulted in the tournament being cancelled. We will have to wait till next year for the next WSOM. The rule-set used for this competition is adapted from the pattern-based Zung-Jung variation designed by Alan Kwoon. The WSOM rule-set is seen to borrow favourably from some of the more popular variations like Riichi. As in MCR only the winner gets any points. Discards are also orderly arranged into rows of 6 (left to right) within the wall as happens in Riichi. Flower and Season tiles are not used. Scoring, as for the MCR variation, is pattern-based and your winning hand may score multiple patterns. Unlike Riichi or other Mahjong variations, there is no doubling of scores in the WSOM rules. A winning player will always receive three times the value of his winning hand. If he wins on a discard and his hand score exceeds 30 points, than the person responsible for his win will have to pay the total points owed to the winner less 60 points. These residual 60 points are then paid off in equal parts by the remaining two players. Everyone pays in the case of a self-drawn winning hand, so each of the remaining three players will pay exactly one-third of the total points due to the winner.
That in essence is what WSOM rules are all about. Additionally another favourable aspect of this rule-set is that you only need to get familiar with 44 patterns, and they are not that difficult to remember either. Obviously during your early game it would be a good idea to keep a list of scores for easy reference.
I’d like to conclude this blog by offering you a few links you will find useful should you wish to get down to playing this incredible game.