AMSTERDAM - How much luck is involved in mahjong? That was the (impossible) question of the month in MahjongNews’s July-poll. Relatively a large number of visitors of the website had themselves tempted to fill in the poll: 62 visitors of the international (English) edition, and 21 of the Dutch edition.

These are still small figures, since the number of daily unique visits of MahjongNews exceeds almost every day the amount of 400 (no separate figures for the Dutch or the international edition available). So we should not jump to conclusions.
Yet, there is an interesting difference between the visitors of the Dutch edition and the ones of the English site. Most Dutch chose for 50 percent of luck (on a scale of 10~100 percent), while the English tend to give the luck factor a lower rating: 30 percent.

In the first graphic, the poll results of the English edition are displayed. On the x-axis (from left to right) the percentages are shown (1=10%, 2-20%, etc.) Most English speaking surfers voted 30 percent.

In the lower graphic you see the results of the poll in the Dutch edition. Most surfers here chose for 50 percent.

The exact results of the polls


And what is the real answer? MahjongNews asked mahjong scholar Alan Kwan from Hong Kong for his opinion. In his contribution for The Independent Internet Newspaper, Mr. Kwan claims that, amongst all games where both luck and skill are involved, ‘mahjong is a strange beast since so many different versions are being played’.
If in mahjong uniform scoring were applied, says Alan Kwan - every hand scores the same value, regardless of its contents - the luck factor is minimized and the competition factor is maximized. This game, however, is rarely played since it can be rather monotonous. But even then, mahjong has a substantial luck factor in its tile-drawing mechanism.
In what Kwan calls ‘pattern building mahjong’, with a well-balanced scoring system, the large gain in intellectual playability is very well worth the small trade-off in the competition factor. According to Mr. Kwan, Mahjong Competition Rules is not quite pattern building
mahjong. In the ideal pattern-building game, the winning hand should be defined by he regular hand, rather than by the patterns.

In many Hong Kong parlors nowadays, the game is played with much ‘luck inflation’. “Merely a gambling game for gambling excitement”, says Alan Kwan.
Without giving any figures in the question ‘skill or luck’, Alan Kwan thinks that is is better to optimize the intellectual playability with pattern building mahjong.

Read Alan Kwans column, taken from his book Zung Jung: a Perspective of Mahjong History