MESTRE - The ‘Vikings’ are famous for their scientific approach of mahjong. They consider the game a very serious affair. Sometimes they have weekends together to practice and when they have their club evenings, they always like to analyze what has happened at the table and why a certain tile was discarded and not another.

Danish player Jeppe Stig Nielsen shows a set of cards which the Danes use in a tournament for the first time. Each player they meet at a table, is analyzed: how strong is he, is he aggressive/defensive, does he play open or does he try to play concealed, etcetera.

Information

Main object of the cards is to get more, or other, information than the official rankings offer. These only show the exact figures, but not the subjective way players are judged by their skilled Danish adversaries.The results can be stored in a database.

Jeppe: “I do not know if I will use it much. But sometimes it will be handy. For instance, you play against a player who is qualified as being ‘strong’ and you know, thanks to this system, that he almost never claims tiles. If such a person pongs in one of his first turns, you can almost be sure that he has a waiting hand. If a ‘weak’ player does so, you know he is just trying something with no special plan.”