HONG KONG/MACAU - Last week, the World Series of Mahjong (WSoM) 2010 in Macau was announced. A large mahjong tournament, where a million US dollars can be won. During this competition, the Zung Jung mahjong rules will be used. But what are Zung Jung rules? An explanation by the man, who invented them: mahjong scholar Alan Kwan from Hong Kong.

What's that name?

Zung Jung (中庸) is a concept in Confucian doctrine meaning "the Way of the Middle". ("Zung Jung" is Jyut Ping Cantonese transliteration, and is pronounced like "Zhung Yung".)

The ways in which the mahjong scoring system is connected with the name will be covered in my book (Chapter 35).

What is it?

Zung Jung mahjong scoring system has been complied by Hong Kong mahjong scholar Alan Kwan (who also wrote this article). It was first published over a decade ago, back in 1997 (yes, it was older than MCR), but didn't receive much publicity until it was adopted by the World Series of Mahjong competition in 2007.

Zung Jung belongs to the "New Style" family, which means that it adopts a larger variety of scoring patterns (than older systems such as Chinese Classical or Hong Kong). In fact, the list of patterns look remarkably similar to that of Modern Japanese (Riichi) mahjong. While in this aspect Zung Jung is similar to Modern Japanese, that is also the extent of the similarities; Zung Jung does not inherit most other characteristics of Modern Japanese, including "riichi" itself, kui-sagari (reduction of pattern value for exposed hands), nor furiten rules ("sacred discard" prohibitions).

Why another system? - short list

Why did I feel the need to develop yet another mahjong scoring system? I'll try to answer this question in two ways. First is a short list of Zung Jung's features:

    1.    Rules Simplicity: Zung Jung's rules are very simple and easy to learn. A player who already knows any New Style system can learn Zung Jung in several minutes. Even for a player newly introduced to mahjong, learning Zung Jung is just a 15-30 minutes effort; most of that is in learning the pattern list, as Zung Jung has very few rules besides the patterns themselves.

    2.    Straight-Forwardness: In Zung Jung, every pattern is assigned a point value. When your winning hand qualifies for a pattern, you score those points. And that's it. You score for your patterns, and your patterns are your score; there are no complicated faan-conversion tables, no "basic points" to dilute your pattern score, and no outrageous lucky bonuses (such as for self-draw or ura-dora) to render the pattern score unimportant. This straight-forwardness makes Zung Jung intuitive and transparent, and hence easily understood by anyone.

    3.    Rules Clarity: The rules are presented clearly and logically; the literal interpretation is safely correct. The "exclusion rule" (what and what patterns can be combined, and what cannot) is spelled out explicitly and can be easily understood by 7-year-olds.

    4.    Strategic Depth: Zung Jung presents frequently the classic choice of whether to go for a big hand, or to go for a quick win with a smaller hand (often to stop an opponent's big hand). The player should play each hand to its full potential, not just play towards the fastest and easiest win allowed. (Many other systems claim the same, but the experts won't tell you the secret truth, that playing towards the fastest win is in fact the best strategy after all.) The rules of Zung Jung are simple, but the strategy is infinitely complex.

    5.    Fun and Excitement: Easy to learn, rich in strategy, fun to play. Zung Jung presents the tension of attempting big hands, the excitement of completing them, and the satisfaction of thwarting your opponent's!

Why another system? - long answer

Before we answer the question of why we're introducing another system, let's first think about the question of why we need any scoring system at all. Why not just use "uniform scoring", scoring any winning hand as a flat 1 point? Why all the hassle?

The reason is because, we consider different winning hands to have varying degrees of beauty and difficulty, and so they should be of different worth. In Chinese Classical mahjong, where this all started, triplet and kong sets are considered more difficult, and hence more valuable, than sequence sets. As mahjong developed towards its modern forms, the emphasis shifted from evaluating individual sets to evaluating the hand as a whole, but the concept behind remains the same: the hand is evaluated for its beauty (consistency and coherence) and difficulty.

So, my question is: what should a scoring system do? When we come to think about it, we can only arrive at the most obvious answer: it should evaluate the beauty and difficulty of the hand! And that is precisely what Zung Jung focuses on doing.

That is what most other scoring systems pretend to do, too. But there is a difference between pretending to do it and actually doing it. I developed Zung Jung because I wanted a system in which the hand value reflects directly the beauty and difficulty of the hand, not just a rough semblance of the beauty and difficulty. For example, most faan-based systems have some one-faan patterns which can double the value of the hand, but some of them are so easy that it is questionable whether they should be worth that much, especially in those cases where one more faan is actually worth a lot. (The full elaboration is a very long story and takes up an entire book. Please be patient as it takes time to write it.)

Most existing scoring systems are just the results of historical trends and habits. With Zung Jung, I intended to give it a mathematical overhaul. Ideally, a high-value hand should be worth so much because it does demonstrate great beauty and difficulty - not just because it used to be awarded so much according to old habits.

Everyone can play!

Zung Jung is designed to serve as a scoring system for international competitions. That does not mean that you have to play in an international competition in order to enjoy it! Zung Jung is also designed to be an easy-to-learn, fun and exciting system for everyday playing. And you can visit the official website and learn to play today!

Zung Jung mahjong scoring system official website