MESTRE - Ildikó Hargitai from Hungary was a most remarkable winner of the 4th Open European Mahjong Championship. Until some years ago, she was hardly noticed during tournaments. But over the last year, she started playing better and better. You can check her results here, even though this has not resulted yet in a high ranking in the Mahjong News MCR Ranking or the (more static, but also more official) EMA ranking.

Anyway, Ildikó played a very balanced OEMC and she played impressively. After Day 1, she was on 11th position, with 12 out of 16 points. During Day 2 and Day 3, she did not lose one table point anymore. So that says a lot about her strength. Just as the margin of 4 points with the runner-up.

This time, the competition came mainly from Europe, even though Jun Nishikawa from Japan was the runner-up for some time and eventually ended on fourth position. Veteran player Leni Janssen from the Netherlands led the classification during the first five sessions. Then she started losing points, so in the end she was five table points behind Ilka. Young Martin Faartoft from Denmark slowly but surely climbed up the ranking, but he never could bridge the gap with Ildikó Hargitai.

The winner was also remarkable, since she was the only player from Hungary. The Hungarian mahjong association is by far not the smallest EMA member, but the other qualified players just could not pay the cost of this fourth OEMC.
Of course, also the input of the Chinese was missed. Although a Chinese never made it to the honorary stand of an OEMC, they proved again to be the masters of the game during the world championship last year in Holland.

Organization

You can see from the unofficial country ranking that the Danes still are the strongest players. If we leave out the one Hungarian player, they have the best average score: 18,93 table points. Somewhat surprising is that the Dutch did better than the French - but some of the best French players preferred to stay at home.
The Italians gained high praise for their perfect organization. Before the tournament, there was much discussion about the subscription fee of €230 and the expensive hotel rates in the Venice area. But during the championship, hardly any critical word was spoken, let alone heard. The venue was great, the food even better.
Even the tournament hall succeeded in standing the heat.