Many mahjong players not averse to playing for money
- Details
- Created on Tuesday, 05 July 2011 17:17
- Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 November 2012 18:00
- Written by Staff
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands - Mahjong is not purely for fun anymore; a bit of money could be involved.
That’s the results of the latest poll of Mahjong News. As always, one should be very careful with jumping to conclusions when reviewing the results of a poll on the internet. But they may be useful to indicate a trend, though.
Prominent French mahjong player Laurent Mahé, when interviewed by Mahjong News about the announcement of a mahjong tournament during a luxurious cruise on the Yangtze river, said that it would be better to give away money prizes than to spend money on tourist events. And today Swedish player Hans Wikström said in Mahjong News that ‘he has trouble to motivate himself when playing a free game’.
89 visitors of the Mahjong News website voted on the poll. 48 of them (53.9 percent) were against playing for money: Mahjong is a minds sport. Money does not make it more thrilling’. Almost just as many (39, or 43.8 percent) agreed on the opposite: ‘Mahjong is not for kids. So money prizes are okay’.
A conclusion might be that the reluctance of playing for prize money is not as common as it used to be.
Might be.
IMO, kuitan nashi will be the most problematic point for a world championship.
To shorten my point, kuitan-nashi Mahjong is like Formula 1 racing with 3 tires. It's probably a great learning exercise (good) that they turned into the only form of testing (bad). If that was the only problem, most people could live with that. The bigger problem for EMA Mahjong is their tolerance for a type of call that would be considered cheating anywhere else: tolerating the pick-and-switch for the same tile. (chi 78+9, throw nine; pon 11+1, throw one)
For a WC-Riichi event to succeed, that last point needs to be addressed once and for all. As for the rest of the rules, it will most likely be a take it or leave it scenario. There's nothing we can do about it.
But i appreciate the current changes cuz they minimize the luck factor a bit.