LAHNSTEIN - Gemany has concluded its qualifying tournaments for the European Riichi Mahjong Championship 2010. At Lahnstein, near Koblenz upon the river Rhine, today twenty players struggled for their nominations. After the tournament, twelve got their tickets.

"One week before the tournament 5 players canceled. So I was worried we had to play with only 16. But then Gemma told me at Nijmegen she moves to Germany again and would like to play as replacement. And I got an e-mail from a Japanese who has lived in Frankfurt for about a half year and was bored of playing online. Then we had one of our replacement players for a total of 20 players. Which made me really happy.
 
"Saturday was quite a chill. The first participates arrived in the morning and asked me when they could come. So we started at 12.30 instead of 14.00 o´clock. It was a lot of fun and everybody liked to play against the Japanese who had not played live for about one year. It was a pleasure to watch him play, 'cuz he really enjoyed it. The tables and sets where all different, but for my first try as organizer of a mahjong tournament I dont think it was a disgrace. I really like the venue."

Delay

"On Sunday, we had a little delay because one player was late. As I planned the schedule so that we finish early, it was no big deal. The atmosphere was harmonic as always, although we play for seats in the ERC. With calculating the points everybody helped each other. I really like the helpfulness of riichi players. Its such a great thing everybody is enjoying this great game. Richard Stöckemann was the man of the day. With 3 first and 1 second place he was always on the top. He scored nearly 120.000 points!

"After the tournament I calculated the EMA points (we decided to sum up the results of the 2 tournaments after calculating the EMA points) and announced the 12 players who qualified. Then everybody went home.
 
"As a résumé i have to say: It was a lot of fun, even when its some work to do the organization. I have to thank the people from the Jugendkulturzentrum for letting us play at their venue and who knows maybe we see us next time in Lahnstein for an offical EMA tournament."

Results of the Lahnstein tournament

In the table below, R1 = hanchan (session) 1, etc; T1 = first halfway score, etc.

The total results of the two German qualification tournaments (nrs. 1~12 are qualified).