Diary of the World Mahjong Championship 2007 - Diary of the World Mahjong Championship 2007

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Created on Monday, 05 November 2007 09:22

Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 November 2012 18:00

Written by Martin Rep

A heavy day

EMEI SHAN, November 4, 2007 - For the most players in the Hong Zhu Shan hotel in Emei, this second day of the World Mahjong Championship was a real heavy one, Just imagine: 120 players in one room, together with 40 beautiful and smoothly running automatic mahjong tables, during four sessions of two hours each. That means it is getting hotter and hotter by the hour, and the later it gets, the more tired the players are.
It was a day of disappointment and a day of pleasure. I spent the first two hours of the day, sitting at a table with two kind Chinese and a Japanese. Unfortunately they did not give me one single 'hu'. But after the second session I felt a lot better already, since I almost won that table. Almost...
Although there are also a lot of elderly Chinese who are very strong, the young students make the greatest impression. They seem to 'hu' without any effort.
Is there also good news for the Europeans? Absolutely: Désirée Heemskerk of the Netherlands will probably play in the final tomorrow. The best sixteen players after 8 sessions ('ju') will fight for the prizes in the final 'ju'. Ms. Heemskerk, with her 22 points after 7 ju, can have her revenge then for the bad OEMC she played last summer in Copenhagen. But also Alexander Doppelhofer from Austria, who has 18 points, has a chance to play in the final.
After seven ju, there is one player with a 100 percent score: Minora Imaeda from Japan. He is followed by a Chinese with 26 points, and two other Chinese, with 24 points, followed by another player from Japan. A number of players have 22 points.
And what about the bright young Danes? Well, their results are not quite what we hoped they would be -- to say the least. Martin Wedel Jacobsen, the European champion, has 15 points right now. He's the best Dane.