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SLOPER ON MAH-JONGG

By Tom Sloper
April 1, 2023
Column #785

American Mah Jongg (2023 NMJL card). The 2023 card is here! Get your mah-jongg tiles on the table, turn'em all face-up, and follow along. That's the best way to learn a new card, you know; make each hand on the card, make it in multiple different suit combinations... Anyway, let's give the card a once-over (I'll do a second-over next week).

First, I always like to start by looking at each hand to see if it's new, or a repeat, or a variation on a hand from a previous card. Then, I look to see how Flowers and Dragons are handled on a new card.

There are 55 hands listed, with several of them having multiple iterations (with an "-or-" in between), so you could think of them as 70 hands if you want to make things complicated. But why would you?

There are five* hands repeated from last year's card: Evens #2, Consec #5, Odds #1, Odds #3, and S&P #5.

Twenty-one* of the hands are the same as a previous year. I only checked back to the year 2000, but none were repeats from 2000 to 2008, so I could have checked back only to 2009.

The biannually alternating hands are Consec #1 and the pung-kong-pung-kong hands (which were pung-pung-kong-kong last year). This year Evens #3 is 1 or 2 suits, as is Consec #2 (the most powerful hand on the card); when last seen in 2021, these were two suits only. Odds #2 and 369 #1 alternate the usual way. The pung-kong-pung-kong hands are the perennial "switcheroo" hands, easy to switch between and also easy to fool others. They have become even easier with the new single-suit variations. Odds #1 usually alternates shape biannually (mirroring Consec #1), but this year it didn't.

Five hands are variations on previous hands. And the remaining twenty-two hands are new (not seen in the past 20+ years of cards). That's a lot of new hands!

The Addition Hands are all new, simple "1+1=2" through "4+4=8" hands that hog up low and even numbers.

There are no Flower pungs or quints on this card; just kongs and pairs. There are three Dragon pung hands on this card, so Dragon pungs are not dead giveaways. Of interest is Like Numbers #2, which utilizes three Dragon singletons, very unusual. I'd say Like Numbers #2 could prove to be easier to make than one might think.

Next week I'll look into some more aspects of the 2023 card.


* Thanks and a tip of the Sloper hat to Debbie Barnett, who noticed a miscount, which has been corrected!

麻雀

QUESTIONS about the 2023 NMJL card? See FAQ 16.

COMMENTS
Email . Hit me with your best shot!


Join Johni Levene's popular Facebook group, "Mah Jongg, That's It!" for lively conversations about American mah-jongg and all things mah-jongg. Like the new card, for instance!

The pseudonymous "Bubbe Fischer" is writing her own analysis of the 2023 card at BubbeMJ.blogspot.com.

Where to order the yearly NMJL card: Read FAQ 7i. But you're missing a bet if you don't order your NMJL card directly from the National Mah Jongg League!

Need rules for American mah-jongg? Tom Sloper's book, The Red Dragon & The West Wind, is the most comprehensive book about the American game, a good supplement to the League's official rulebook. AND see FAQ 19 for fine points of the American rules (and commonly misunderstood rules). AND every player should have a copy of Mah Jongg Made Easy, the official rulebook of the National Mah Jongg League (see FAQ 3 for info on mah-jongg books).

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