If you want a quick round of Riichi mahjong then Tenhou is the place to be. Most of the time over 5000 players are on line and it is just sit and go. If you only want to play for fun you don’t even have to create an account: just click ‘ok’ and the system will create an account for you, no password needed.

Always enough players

Within the Riichi rules you can choose to play with open tenyao (all simples) or not and with or without red fives or a three players version. There is no wait for other players for there are always enough. However you  don’t have a choice who you play with. There might be, by creating a private room, but it went too far for me to try it. Although there is some thorough documentation about the possibilities of Tenhou at http://arcturus.su/tenhou/ the all Japanese interface makes it unattractive to me to explore.

The gameplay is quite obvious. A button is to ignore is shown when you can make a combination. If you want to make the chow, pung or kong then put your pointer on the tiles of the set. I just keep in mind that the button with the square character in front is the one that says mahjong (ron or tsumo).

Lingual gap

The lingual gap is too big for me to download and install the program, I think needed to play for money or competition. I’ll just stick to the ‘for fun’ part without download, just to play a quick game and satisfy my daily need. Playing on Tenhou has the same feeling as when playing full computer versions like Four Winds or Nine Dragons. Ther is no personal touch to it, no interaction between players and all in all quite mechanical and emotionless and impersonal. But good to enhance your skill and certainly speed of thinking.

Tenhou