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| Tai-Up Kim |
For the time being, the World Mahjong Federation is just a private dream of its president, Mr. Tai-Up Kim, designer of its 'unified rules' and CEO of the Korean software company Tanksoft. But he is working hard to make it true. He is looking for partners in Europe and the United States to organize mahjong tournaments there. 'If we hold a few tournaments in WMFR (World Mahjong Federation Rule), I think the WMFR can easily be an international standard', he claims, and: 'WMF will succeed eventually.'
Tai-Up Kim is not easily discouraged, even though a large tournament he had planned in the Korean resort Seogwipo in 2003, with USD 10,000 as prize money, never took place because of a lack of interest. Misdemeanors
For him, an important role in mahjong is played by computers. He designed a computer program, Mahking, which masters the World Mahjong Federation rules. In real games with four humans, Mr. Tai-Up says, it is virtually impossible to see that all players do their moves within 5 seconds. It is also not possible to check a ready-declaration at the moment it is given - it cannot be done until afterward. "Mahjong is intented to be played by four persons, which means that there may be collusions between some players."
"Using the World Mahjong software", says Mr. Tai-Up Kim, "two humans can play with two cyber players (Artifial Intelligence players), so they can compete against each other, just like in the game of Go." That's why, in the Mahjong World Federation, there is an important role for the computer. Tai-Up Kim was inspired by IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue, which managed to defeat world chess champion Gary Kasparov. He developed the software World Mahjong, which was tested during the last five years.
Question for Mr. Tai-Up Kim: When you play against the computer, how can you be sure the tiles in the wall are not manipulated? How can you be sure that the AI does not take advantage of knowing what tiles the humans have in their hands?
Answer of Tai-Up Kim: Good question. Many professional mahjong players raised those questions and confirmed that there are no gimmicks in the programming. We demonstrated hundreds of examples which show the input and output of our program and they confirmed the AI makes a decision under the same condition as a human player. In fact our business partners, Nexon and Playtech, inspected those thoroughly before concluding an agreement.
Question: The thing many players like about mahjong, is that they like the beautiful tiles and can hold them in their hands.
Answer: Playing with tiles must be a good experience, but it requires some inconvenient process (shuffling, arranging, distributing, etc.) and allows some misdemeanors (changing of tiles, pre-picking, etc.). And it is not easy to make foursome. Many mahjong players nowadays prefer to play network games as for the other games. Internet games are a widely accepted trend around the world."
 More about the World Mahjong Federation and its rules >>
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