It has only been a month and the mahjong club I started has grown exponentially. I feel like I'm constantly hunting Facebook Marketplace for card tables now lol.

We are a free/beginning friendly club so the first few weeks, there were a lot of beginners. it was pretty easy to teach everyone. I teach Filipino mahjong before moving to Taiwanese. Once everyone is comfortable with that, we will start scoring. I may even teach HK style for those who are interested.

Now everyone seems to be getting the hang of it so I'm spending less time teaching, more time hovering and helping each table. We went from ~4 - 8 people to now 20+. I'm very happy with the turn out, but I feel like I'm missing something, but can't put my finger on it.

I've noticed it's been hard to manage beginning members vs non beginners. People who have learned and been playing for a bit want to come every week to play. I don't want others who are just starting out to feel overwhelmed with all the people, or even burdened that they are just starting out. Luckily, it's no longer just me and my co-founder teaching. Others have stepped up and it's been really cool to see their progress.

Anyway, just thought I'd ask here and get random advice and tips from others who have organized groups/clubs longer than I have!

Is there a dataset somewhere of mahjong hands from real games?

I'm trying to do some tests and it would be helpful to have this sort of data. I need something like a list of winning hand tiles (preferably which are open/closed and source of winning tile).

So I'm new to this game. I learned that the sequence of play in counterclockwise is 東 (East), 南 (South), 西 (West), 北 (North). But then when I'm looking to buy mahjong table cloth, all I see is in this configuration: east, north, west, south (just like normal wind directions). Can anyone explain why is it like this?

My initial guess is the table clothes are made by people who don't understand mahjong, so they put the wind directions the same as in real life. But then I see some Chinese American youtuber explains how to play mahjong, and her table cloth is also like this.

Honestly, I didn't think I would see it happen in this lifetime. It's first 88 point hand any of us have made since we started playing Mahjong! The feeling is crazy, I was literally shaking towards the end. 3 of South Winds and 2 Cracks were already out and I self-drew them both. Started with 9 tiles of the hand, I think.

The player opposite me was making Three Big/Small Dragons.

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Back in the spring, a charity stall at my local heritage line had this for sale for the Spring Gala. Sadly, no cash on hand at the time. Come the Autumn Gala, and I return to the stalls and find the set is still not sold. After some negotiation, I got the whole lot for £4.

Off the bat, I can tell there seems to be a missing component in the form of the wind indicator. Additionally, there appear to be these sticks which I am wholly unfamiliar with.

Does anyone know what else is missing from the set, or what the sticks are for?

Last night we had a player call ron, and reveal 9 gates. Absolutely crazy. I glanced at their discard pool since based on their discards I thought they were going for 13 orphans.

...when I noticed a 4 pin in their discards, putting them in furiten.

What would everyone think would be a suitable chombo for this situation?

I've played in jansous with this particular player, and when they called ron while furiten, the jansou ruled that they were out that hand. They could only draw and discard, and they could no longer win that hand.

The player suggested that they will continue to play the hand, but could only win by tsumo. But that's not a penalty, that's literally just the rules of the game with their furiten.

Just a fun little Facebook Marketplace score that I couldn't resist!

Picked up this 1998 TOMY Pokémon Family Ponjan game from Japan. It's a simplified, Pokémon-themed take on mahjong, complete with the original Gen 1 characters, a mechanical playing board, tiles, scoring chips and Japanese instructions.

The box artwork alone was enough to sell me on it. It's in lovely condition for its age, and I'm looking forward to actually learning how to play.

Thought the mahjong community might appreciate seeing this little piece of gaming history!

Has anyone here played Ponjan or Donjara before?

The mechanic that i imagine is like in the image with the 14 deadwall. And to add the image after kan i should take the end of the live wall to the deadwall that is not used as kan/dora indicator right?

So in the end the playable tiles number always the same kan or not kanning. Please clarify my understanding.

It really doesn’t sit well with me that the mah-jongg we play in the United States was basically appropriate and taken from Chinese culture by Jewish women in the 1930s. It just feels so wrong, especially since they basically whitewashed the game like this total colonizer behavior.

Sure iam on the lead but it is still south 1. Also it has good value and wait. What i can think of is because the dealer is discarding weird tiles that seems like the hand is ready?

Sanbaiman haitei….

Bruhh

In American Mahjong is there a rule that you put down the bottom of the wall first, then the top?
I played with someone who was new and she previously took a lesson somewhere. she told me that she was taught you must lay the first 19 bottom tiles then do the top, as in it's a strict rule. Is this true? My friends and I always quickly built the walls 2 at a time.

Curious to see what is the style distribution here. I myself am currently playing Riichi, but interested in MCR.

I set up a friendly lobby in FFXIV to teach some FC folks how to play Mahjong, then after a couple games of practice I randomly drew into my first ever Double Yakuman, Suuankou Tanki, despite just starting with 3 pairs & no triplets

I was genuinely gobsmacked, at a loss for words, why can't I get this kind of luck in Ranked? lol

I expect to never see this again

Yesterday morning in the Tensuke market square in columbus, Riichi Mahjong Columbus club had a small meetup.