American Style Group

[Chris Schumann]

For anyone interested, there is a new Meetup group for playing by the National Mah-Jongg League rules centered in North Saint Paul.

A few things to know about NMJL style. 1) Chows are never allowed. 2) You need to make one of the valid scoring patterns to go out. 3) The scoring patterns change every year and you must buy your own card (about $7) every year to play.

If you want to check them out, head on over to http://www.meetup.com/The-North-St-Paul-Mah-Jong-Players/

Chris

[JDL]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 10:43 AM, Chris Schumann
<chris.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A few things to know about NMJL style. 1) Chows are never allowed.

Is that actually fun? I thought that most of the point of mahjong was
balancing the probabilities between pungs and chows (and the other
rarer melds).

--
JDL

[Chris Schumann]

Hard to say. It certainly is popular. Estimated membership (which you
get when you buy a card) is about 400,000. There are tournaments and
cruises dedicated to it.

I don't know that any serious study has been done to relate odds against
payoff for NMJL style. The league doesn't talk about how they come up
with the card each year, but I know that if I had a couple million
dollars coming in I would spend a good chunk of getting those numbers right.

Here's a sample card:
http://www.ateacherfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Mahjong-2010-Card1.pdf

Going back to Chinese Classical (the oldest known mahjong scoring
system), chows were worth zero points, but they helped you complete your
hand. Only pungs scored points. When special hands were scored, those
multiplied your score, so chows were naturally to be avoided if you
wanted a high score.

NMJL has no patterns with sequences, but they do have singles and pairs.
So you can claim a tile to go out, or to meld a set of identical tiles,
which can be 3, 4, (or in more crazy times) 5, or 6 tiles because they
use 8 jokers, and the jokers have their own rules too. For instance, you
can replace a joker someone else has used if you have the tile it
represents, then use it as a wild tile in your hand. But if a player
goes out with no jokers, you have to pay them double.

Chris

[JDL]

>> On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 10:43 AM, Chris Schumann
>

> Here's a sample card:
> http://www.ateacherfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Mahjong-2010-Card1.pdf
>

OK, that helps. Sequential numbers still might matter, but the chow
itself isn't anything special.

Speaking of American Mahjong, what's the difference between modern and
traditional. The sets look like they each have 166 tiles. I thought it
just meant the presence or absence of Arabic numerals, but Yellow
Mountain has a set they call traditional that has both sets of numbers
on it.

--
JDL

[Chris Schumann]

Terms are not standardized, so "traditional" only means something to
YMI. Traditional seems to mean made of bone and bamboo, while their
"modern" sets (aside from cards) are all plastic. All sets for American
mah-jongg will have numbers and letters. They also usually have actual
dragon images that only differ in color, which is unfortunate for those
who are red/green color blind. Early American plastic sets had three
differently-shaped dragons.

NMJL play has standardized on 152 tiles for play: The regular 136 that
(nearly) everyone uses, plus 8 flowers (not necessarily two sets of
four), plus 8 jokers. The rest are spares or more flowers or jokers.

Chris