WARSAW - Twenty enthusiastic young players (all from Poland, plus a Japanese who studies in Warsaw) today participated in the third edition of the ‘Warsaw Mahjong Taikai’ (riichi mahjong). Szymon Lasota, vice-president of the Polish League of Mahjong, was quite happy with the smooth organisation. "We are now considering to organize the next tournament completely according to the EMA rules, so that the tournament may attract more players from outside Poland", he said. "Maybe in August or September 2012." The riichi rules in Poland differ slightly from the rules of the European Mahjong Association.

The players who ended on the position 1~4 all recieved prizes: for the places 1~3 there was pocket mahjong, and places 1-4 got also books, artbooks. The sponsors, Waneko, Animatsuri and hanami, handed them a program to learn Japanese.

During the tournament, one yakuman was made: Jakub Tomaszewski (he participated in the last ECR) made suu ankou (fourt concealed pons) on tsumo.

The final results

The final classification is determined as follows. Szymon Lasota: “We use three steps to dermine the classification. The first one is 'table points': you get 1 point for the fourth place at a table, 4 for 3rd place, 7 for 2nd place and 10 for 1st place. So, in this case, we had two players who were the best, with 34 points. Secondly we check how many times a player got the first place at his table. Not until then we use tenbou, the number of mini-points.

“We use this system because we think that it promotes best players, not lucky ones who got yakuman, or many baimans.


”

More information on the Facebook-page of Mahjong Poland