For many riichi mahjong lovers, Ron2 is THE site to play. It is the site where member of the website ReachMahjong.Com meet and play. (On ReachMahjong.Com, soon a new 'How to' about Ron2 will be published.) So Adrie van Geffen, correspondent to Mahjong News on the World Wide Web, was very curious when he signed up. Yet, after some time, he was more puzzled than ever before.

Having full access for two days as a ‘trial member’ is not helping, for all and everything is visible but quite incomprehensible. The use of picts of a bag of money and a trophy helps, but others are not so clear.

Deciphering the characters on the button to play in the manual and comparing that what I have on my screen gets me a table (for free). No waiting, there are enough players around.

Careful

After logging in a Java-applet is downloaded and it opens in a new window.

Having checked the right buttons to declare riichi and the one to claim a win, the game is on its way already. And I’m getting nowhere. Jenn tells you have to be careful when you want to chi or pon because you have to point out exactly with which tiles in your hand you want to make the desired combination. But I don’t have time. Even making a simple pon seems impossible. While others take their time discarding, I only have about one second to make a claim. The only thing I can do is go for riichi, for claiming tiles is beyond my hand-eye coordination.

I suppose it will be a matter of practice, but in the mean time it gets quite frustrating. I’m not the slowest player in the world, but this is absurd. Maybe it is the distance to the server, but speed of light is almost required.

Point System

There is an eleborate point system for members which pales Mahjong Time. And there are all kinds of leagues and rankings. Some players have a marker that says ‘Pro’. It may stand for ‘professional’ but it would also be the only English word in the whole program. Jenn states that the site will be translated when enough foreigners join it. But the threshold is quite high to join. For after the trial period you will only be a visitor or you have to become a member and pay a monthly fee. As with Tenhou, this is not very attractive because you won’t have a clue what is going on and what you can and cannot do. Even the mail is sent in Japanese. Even if you are willing to subscribe and become a member, the question remains: How?

All in all I think Ron2 is the most crowded professional site I’ve seen so far. But translation is an absolute need to get it really world wide.

Ron2

url: http://ron2.jp 

variants: riichi

language: Japanese

download needed: no