‘Yes, we can!’ But do we want to? And is it wise?
The number of variants of the mahjong rules is enormous. Probably most of these variants came into existence because people got bored with the standard set of rules and thought up some improvements of their own. Not uncommon in the world of board games.

In this Darwin Year (200th birthday) an analogy with nature is easy to make. The species of mahjong all have their roots in the same source. Accumulating adjustments in separate ways have lead to not variants but totally different species. Only for the tiles, with the addition of jokers, the American version is recognizable as being mahjong, but I guess it’s the most faraway from classic as imaginable. And it’s the one most obviously adjusted, for every year the winning patterns are changed. Completely within the American way of thinking in dollars: the new cards have to be bought. And people do that. If they don’t, they won’t be able to play with others. Only if a group large enough would refuse the next card, they would be able to maintain a steady variant.

The base of players in Asia is/was large enough to allow new variants, or rather species, to stay alive. Every type of mahjong feeds on the same and are therefore automatically concurrent. They can only keep to exist if there are enough players.
The more or less new ground for mahjong species is found in Europe, and the Netherlands in particular. The problem is that a lot of the number of mahjong species are trying to survive. There is Riichi, MCR, NTS and HK, all battling for players to play them. NTS- and HK-players want to stick to their ‘own’ rules and refuse to learn another variant. And therefore will become extinct if they don’t succeed in finding new players. At the same time, they make themselves unavailable for players of the other species and indirectly cause them to become extinct as well.

The Dutch Mahjong Association is in favor of keeping all variants alive and is supporting them. But the association is hardly an association. Mostly because players tend to stick to their own rules. An effort is made to reanimate NTS by adjusting the rules to make it more interesting. Useless and unwise, I say. The base in the number of mahjong players is just too small to sustain every set of rules. It would be better to follow the rules of nature and let NTS, and other types with too few players to support it, become extinct and focus on one or maybe two sets of rules. It will become easier to teach people how to play and to exchange players. If there are enough players at the base, then new variants could be considered. If there are not a lot of players and all sets of rules are welcomed and supported, then every one of them will find its end in just a couple of years. Again it will become an obscure game as it was about ten years ago and confined within the walls off a few family homes. Each one will eventually invent their own rules. Or the game will be forgotten altogether.

• Adrie van Geffen is a Dutch mahjong player and author. Recently, he published his first exercise book about mahjong (in Dutch), 'Mahjong Stap voor Stap'. (step by step) His web site, 'Adries Site', is one of the eldest on the internet aboiut mahjong.