Last year, Oliv' Boivin won the Dutch Open at Almere; today, French player Sébastien Berret won the Daja/Thirteen Orpans tournament in the small village of Berlicum, close to 's-Hertogenbosch in the southern part of the Netherlands. Runner-up was German player Fred Schröder, third place was for Dutch Eveline Broers.

It was the first time this tournament was held, and it looks like it will be an overnight success. The event was MERS-qualified (1 point), so it drew a lot of attention from foreign players: from Germany, Belgium, the UK, even from Hungary and, of course, from France, since Paris is less than 500 kilometres away. And to give the French the opportunity to come and collect their trophies.

With 92 competitors, it has become one of the larger tournaments in Europe. Usually, in November, the Golden Dragon Tournament took place in near-by Nijmegen, which still holds the record of the largest yearly EMA-tournament, with over one hundred players.

But the Daja/Thirteen Orphans Tournament does not intend to grow that large. Gerda van Oorschot - together with John Kuijpers of the Daja Mahjong Club (and internet mahjong shop) she is the co-organizer of this tournament -: "In this location, there is place for just one hundred players. No more. And we like this place very much, and we like the cooperation with the manager of The Golden Lion. So we intend to stay here."

An extra for this tournament was that it was the last occasion for the Dutch to qualify for the World Mahjong Championship, which will take place next year in the Netherlands. So for 28 players, Robert Rijnders, president of the Dutch Mahjong Association, had good news and he could hand them over their qualification tickets for 'Utrecht 2010'.