Read more columns
Full-screen
See more Sloperama

SLOPER ON MAH-JONGG

By Tom Sloper (湯姆 斯洛珀)
May 26, The Year Of The Dragon
Column #808

I read an interesting interview with Richard Garfield on defector.com. Garfield is the mathematician / game designer who came up with the very popular collectible card game, Magic: the Gathering. What grabbed me in Nick Zarzycki's article was Garfield's outlook on luck in games. The question of luck versus skill has bedeviled mah-jongg players for a hundred years.

Earlier this century, when I was traveling to international tournaments, there was a concerted effort to get mah-jongg admitted to the Mind Sports Olympiad. The idea behind the Olympiad is to test players' mental skill, without unduly influencing outcomes by the introduction of luck. I can see how chess, shogi, and Chinese chess (xiangqi) are purely skill-based (thus qualify as mind sports), but I don't get how poker also became considered a mind sport.

One of the efforts to reduce luck from mah-jongg (to qualify as a high-skill mind sport) was "Duplicate Mahjong." Although I was briefly involved in that effort, I have to confess that my heart wasn't really into it. Wall tile order had to be identical on all tables in the competition, but how that tile order could be equivalent for all players at a table escaped me. According to the Wikipedia entry on World Mind Sports Games, the Mahjong International League was accepted as the sixth member of the International Mind Sports Association in 2017. I don't know if they still have to use the Duplicate method.

But now I've strayed too far from Richard Garfield and his philosophy surrounding luck in games. Garfield sees luck as "a kind of social equalizer." He sees games without luck as appealing to a too-narrow audience; with skill-only games, he says, "it becomes more difficult to find the person who gives you a good game." He continues, "games are a wonderful way to bridge different cultures, different ages, and different mental interests. And the more luck that’s in a game, the broader that can go." I love that insight.

Mah-jongg students often ask me how much luck versus skill exists in mah-jongg. I have two answers for that: 1. It depends on which mah-jongg variant you play; 2. Just the right amount! Seriously, it's impossible to quantify: is mah-jongg 50-50 luck and skill, or is it 60-40 towards the skill side or the luck side? How could anyone possibly measure that in a way that would garner acceptance in peer review in the mathematical community?

As I said in FAQ 8, the Strategy FAQ, the more experienced/skilled player will win more often than less experienced players, but even the most highly skilled players are subject to the vagaries of chance.

All things being equal, a player should win only 20% of the time (with wall games happening 20% of the time). But because of luck, all things are never equal! In Chinese folklore, the dragon symbolizes good luck. The 2024 dragon surely wants us all to have good luck, but the mah-jongg goddesses enjoy messing with us too much.

麻雀

Click the entries in the header frame, above, to read other columns.

© 2024 Tom Sloper. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without express written permission.