No Russian players are participating in the OEMC 2009. Are things not going well with mahjong in Russia? Is this a consequence of the ill-fated first Russian Open? Mark Chizhenok, president of Mahjong Russia, explains.

I would not say that absence of the Russian players at OEMC 2009 is an indicator of the mahjong not going well in Russia as well as it is not a consequence of the First Russian Open.

First, you should look at the history of the Russia's involvement in the European mahjong movement and you will see that it is gradually improving: in the beginning I was the only player who attended European tournaments, now there are two more players who once came to Europe and at the upcoming tournament in Paris you should expect another Russian début - the number 2 of the Russian ranking is going to play there. I should not forget to mention online MORSE tournaments: this winter we have our first victories and the Russian players got prizes in four tournaments in a row.

You should also look at our website. I think it is one of the most informative and active mahjong websites among national mahjong homepages. More than 200 unique visitors and more than 800 hits per day. Each month a dozen of new topics is created on website's forum, and more than 100 messages are posted there every month. This statistic is important because the distances in Russia do not allow the players from other regions of the country to easily meet each other. It is also a reason for online gaming being popular among Russian mahjong players (according to MahjongTime about 300 users from Russia created an account there during the year of 2008).

Of course, if we put these figures against the population of Russia (~ 142 000 000) and compare them with the same figures in European countries, they will not be so impressive. There are some additional factors which should be taken into account.

Young people

The majority of the Russian mahjong players are young people. An average mahjong player in Russia is much more younger that an average mahjong player of such European countries as France, Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary (according to my impression given by the participants of the European tournaments). In general they do not treat mahjong as seriously as many Europeans do. For example, some of the players refused to participate in the Russian Open only because it was a two days tournament whereas they cannot allow themselves to spend the whole weekend for a mahjong game (because there are so many other things to do in this world). By the way, my dissatisfaction with the Russian Open cannot be spread to other Russian players. For many of them it was the first experience of playing at the tournament of such status and I received many good comments from them as well.

Many young people cannot afford the expenses: according to my calculation a Russian player has to spent about 1,000 USD in order to take part in most of the European tournaments, and, of course, OEMC 2009 is not an exception. The life does not seem very stable for them, so sometimes it is difficult to plan well ahead (several months ahead in case of OEMC) and pay in advance considerable amount of money for registration, air tickets, visa, accommodation.

Ranking

By no means I am justifying our players for not coming to Baden bie Wien this summer. I do think that it is very inappropriate to miss this tournament and I do think that at least once in two years it is possible for a couple of players to overcome all those circumstances and make it to the championship. I did my best to arrange for that. All players from the Russian ranking were invited to nominate themselves. I got a few responses and finally persuade our number one to be nominated. But when it came to registration and payment of a fee, he dropped off, explaining that he was not able to decide it so early due to uncertainty with his working schedule.

So, by now no Russians are playing in OEMC. But any way, whether the Russian judge at OEMC means something to you? I will be a referee at Baden.