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WEEKLY MAHJONG

By Tom Sloper (湯姆·斯洛珀)

February 25, The Year Of The Pig
Column #307

Mahjong Competition Rules ("Chinese Official"). There are many tournaments planned for the coming year. Some are sanctioned by the World Mahjong Organization as part of the first World Series of Mahjong. A couple of competing tournaments have been announced, though, and there's a lot of confusion.

The World Mahjong Organization has sanctioned three regional competitions in Asia, and one in Europe, and one in America. The WMO has joined forces with GigaMedia, an online game and entertainment service provider, and the World Series will have an online competition as well as a real-world competition. See http://www.gigamedia.com.tw/news/GigaMedia-World%20Series%20of%20MahJong-final.htm.

In a January announcement from the WMO, the three Asian tournaments were to be:

The WMO also announced an event to take place in America in September, but no details are known. The WMO has fully sanctioned the European Open Championship to take place in June in Copenhagen. See http://oemc.mahjong.dk/. The sanctioned competitions are all part of the "World Series of Mahjong," and the final event is to be in Chengdu in early November.

Now for the really confusing part. Two events have been announced for Macau, by two different organizations. And at http://www.mahjongnews.com/ you can read about a competition taking place in Shanghai in March. It's unclear if the Shanghai tournament is sanctioned by the WMO or is a separate event entirely. This tournament likely uses MCR.

The first of the two Macau events is to take place in "late May," per a January news release from Dynasty Gaming Inc. See http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1Y1-102719641.html. This event is billed as the "World Cup of Mahjong." An April 2006 announcement at http://www.onlinecasino-news.com says that Dynasty holds the URLs to both the World Cup and the World Series of Mahjong, which is confusing since the other Macau event's website is at www.world-series-mahjong.com. But we'll get to that one in a moment. Dynasty's tournament will have an online component through MahjongMania.com. Last I heard, the rules were to be MCR, but it seems possible that HK rules might be used instead.

The second Macau event is confusingly called "The World Series of Mahjong" and will take place June 15-17, using Alan Kwan's Zung Jung rules. See http://www.world-series-mahjong.com/. This event seems more likely to actually occur than does the Dynasty Gaming event, since facts about the Dynasty event are hard to come by and there's no website yet.

麻雀

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© 2007 Tom Sloper. All rights reserved.