A NEW YEAR POST

2008 has arrived. A new year, for new resolutions and new goals.

Goal No. 1 – To finish up my Masters and be done with it. I don’t think the University is going to wait for me to dither any longer.

Goal No. 2 – To reach my target weight loss. Hopefully the few thousand dollars spent on Yoga/Gym membership will help.

Goal No. 3 – To participate in an international mahjong tournament.

The last was made as I was navigating through the photos of the 2007 World Mahjong Championship (WMC) on Tom Sloper’s website. E-Mei Mountain! How cool is that?! Just looking through the photos posted gave me goose pimples. How I wish for the day when a Singapore flag can be hoisted alongside all the rest and I could be one of the participants sitting in that grand hall, at the green felt table, cool tiles under my hand!

I was squinting hard to see what I could of the hands the players were making in the photos. Really interested to know how others play and the various strategies employed. I wouldn’t have minded just being a kibitzer in the tournament. And the exciting finales - what an experience!

In the meantime, it is hard to even get our weekly games going, with all the sundry happenings in our busy lives. Poor EP is probably thoroughly frustrated at trying to coordinate something and I fully sympathise. I just hope that the situation will improve further on into the year. It is also my New Year Wish for further developments on the local MCR scene and that we may see more active participation soon.

A Happy New Year to all.

FURTHER REACTIONS ON THE ST ARTICLE

There have not been many opportunities to play mahjong lately. Everyone seems to be rather busy, and coordination of schedules is a little off. If not for preparation in moving house and end-of-year shopping, I may be suffering from mahjong withdrawal even now.

It has been a few weeks since that ST article came out. My initial zest has waned and I am feeling a rather doubtful regarding whatever little attention I have gotten from people around me. I was rather glad no one mentioned seeing me in the papers the one or two days after the article was published, and I thought I could happily keep a low profile at work still.

Then a few colleagues started asking me about it and soon, a few of them were teasing me about being the “Queen of Gamblers” and joking about my preparing for an alternative career after the IR is completed. Ok…haha…..nice joke…..but didn’t any of them read the article and understand we wanted to move AWAY from the gambling element? I tried to explain about our rationale for choosing MCR, but they didn’t seem interested to know the details so I gave up and played along.

And it seems people were more interested in my photo being splashed across the pages than the reason for its being there in the first place. One colleague said “Getting into the papers for whatever reason is a good thing…” I didn’t know how to react, how about murder and mayhem?

Then of course I had to fend the usual questions from “concerned” relatives “That guy in the picture is your boyfriend ah???” (Are you, EP DARLING?)

The worst of it was when a “higher-up” came by and made smiling comments like “It seems we are not keeping our employees occupied if they have time for such gambling activities….” and “I need to discuss with X (another manager) about our employees appearing in the papers for such things (namely: gambling activities)….” I got rather confused, was he joking? While the article did not name my affiliation to my company, my duties do put me in the frontline and it is not inconceivable that image issues may arise for the company because of the publication of the article….if it was taken in the wrong context. It worried me for a while, but since there has been no other feedback from the “higher-ups” and other external parties, I guess I am safe.

I have to admit to being rather irked by the various comments on gambling. Did anyone read the article fully, or was it not clear? I thought the main emphasis was on the dissociation with the gambling element. I actually re-read the article a number of times after receiving the various comments, and I thought it read rather clearly. It makes me want to get these people to do a comprehension test on the article, like we used to do in Primary School.

Well, not all of it is bad. EP has had some people approach him regarding our sessions, so we may have new players at our table in the near future. Having new players and being able to make new friends is always a plus point.

There were funny moments too. A colleague from a foreign country saw the article. Since he had no earthly idea what mahjong was, he thought the title “Mahjong Magic” referred to the practice or performance of some kind of magic tricks. It was hard to keep a straight face when he kept asking me when I would perform magic tricks for him.

All in all, it wasn’t exactly a very comfortable experience being “famous”, and I swear to think twice if I am ever approached for an interview for any reason. At the very least, I know enough now to seek permission from my higher-ups at work to prevent potential repercussions should such situation arise in future.

ARTS GROUP TICKET SELLING PRACTICES - A RANT & AN APOLOGY

Just had an unintentional argument with a member of a well-established local choral group and needed to get some rants off my chest.

The disagreement was over the issue of the choir mass selling tickets to school and personal friends and relatives. My understanding of the ticket selling practice of this group was that the selling was two fold. Members were expected to meet certain quotas in ticket sales, while the remaining would be made up by the public sales through the ticketing service, SISTIC. My guess is that there would be certain “performance pressure” on the members to meet and exceed the quota.

This choral group has among its members, a number of choir instructors who teach at various local school choirs. From past experience during their concerts, it appears that the students from these school choirs make up the main body of the choir’s audience. I would hazard a guess at 70-80% of the concert hall available seating. It does not seem unreasonable to extrapolate the relation between the required quota and the sales to the students of these members.

This is not exactly a bad state of affairs. For one, it is definitely a good thing that the choir students are exposed to a higher level of choral expertise and I believe that the schools or the student’s education fund may be paying for this, so it doesn’t financially affect the students. But I do wonder if this well-establish choral group is taking advantage of this “easy” sales from the school choirs and not doing more to publicize and reach out to the general public who has no direct links to the group.

I used to be actively involved in the amateur performing arts scene as well and hold the opinion (along with a few other friends) that in order for performing arts to flourish locally, performing groups need to move away from the “force-feeding” method of selling tickets and move towards letting “market forces” determine the “demand” for the tickets. Performing group members need to ensure that the quality of the performances is as high as they are able to achieve, not busy trying to sell tickets to their nearest and dearest and getting stressed about it into the bargain. Arts managers (or committees of amateur groups) need to focus on influencing the “market forces” rather than the “demand” directly, whether through public education, better publicity or other means.

The practice of selling concert tickets to their own school choir students seem to be a means of “force feeding” in my opinion, and coming from the instructors of the choir themselves, may seem a little biased and also rather too commercially oriented. I do wonder if these choir instructors do as much to promote concerts of other performing groups where they have no affiliation. Ditto for those other members who sell their tickets to their own friends and relatives.

Also, the fact that the tickets get sold to the same group of people every concert simply means that less of the general public would be aware of the presence of the group itself or even the presence of a choral music scene locally. It would always be a closed “insider” circle, and contributes nothing to the growth of the local performing arts scene. Commercially, spending some opportunity cost (in lost ticket sales to “insider” circles) to try and reach out to the bigger public may be a more commercially sound move in the long run.

If it had been any other amateur group, I would definitely have been less critical of this practice, since I fully understand the difficulty of ticket selling and covering costs in a country where performing arts is still relatively unsupported at the even at the professional level, not to mention semi-professional or amateur groups. Many amateur groups are simply not well known enough to attract enough audience by their reputation alone, and also do not have the funds to engage in major publicity exercises. My own group died a natural death after two not very well attended concerts where we tried not to rely on “enforced members selling”. Well, I can, at least, say we tried.

However, for the group in question, other than being relatively well established and having a loyal following, I understand that they are also reasonably active in their various other activities like recordings and private bookings, and various other types of sponsorship, to ensure a reasonably healthy funding. In my humble opinion, they are in a better position to lead the way in the abolishing of this system of “enforced members selling” for a concert or two and experiment with the selling of tickets solely through public means and more involved publicity, without suffering major loss in ticket sales. Practicing “enforced members selling” at this stage of their development only appear to bring this group to the same level as any other secondary school choir (whose members have to canvass their friends for “support”), and is perhaps not the expectations of a leading group in the local choral music scene.

Of course, to be fair, this is the state of affairs not only for this particular choral group, but also many other local established performing groups in various genres. It is further exacerbated by the fact that the various public ticketing services will only do so much and no more to promote and publicize non-big ticket concerts, even though publicity is one of their services when they have been contracted. I certainly understand the constraints, and can even emphathise, but like I mentioned, certain groups are in a position to do more and change the status quo.

Well, I do apologise to said member if my comments had offended, and I firmly believe that we can take an “agree to disagree” approach to this.

MAHJONG SESSION 08-12-2007 - CONTINUED

Following the rant on knitted hands, here are two slightly more interesting hands that happened during the last game.

Hand #1


I started with a hand consisting of quite a number of high suit tiles, so I decided to go for Upper Four as the base hand. Play went extremely well and I managed to discard all the lower suit tiles and honour tiles after only about 8 to 10 draws to end up with this:




I only needed to pung any two of the three pairs and discard the 6C and Upper Four would be in the bag, plus points for All Pungs too. At this point, only one 9B was out, so I had plenty of chances.

At this point, AJ discarded a 9B.

Here lies my dilemma, should I get ambitious and ignore the 9B, and hope to draw 8B and/or 9D from the wall to make Three or even Four Concealed Pungs? Or pung the 9B, considering it was the last 9B?

I decided in favour of a more conservative move, and punged the 9B. Getting the hand ready ranked higher among my priorities for this hand. I still have a chance for additional points from Three Concealed Pungs if I happened to draw the winning tile, 8B or 9D, myself.

Very soon after, SJ discarded a 9D and I went out on it. So much for Three Concealed Pungs. The hand came up to 25 points, not too bad.

While counting points, EP and AJ pointed out that I could have ignored the 9D and waited to go out on the 8B since it was still early in the game. Winning with the 8B would have garnered me an extra 16 points from a Pure Shifted Pungs in the bamboos. If I did draw the 8B myself, I would also have Three Concealed Pungs.

I must admit that I didn’t notice the Pure Shifted Pungs possibility in my hand. However, I also wonder if I would have passed by the chance to go out on the 9D had I been aware that 8B would have been a better wait. I was rather fixated with being able to go out than making any kind of bombastically high value hand.

EP and AJ felt that it was a waste of a good hand not to pursue the more expensive alternatives, but I didn’t really feel too bad about it. Self drawing seems so uncertain that I’d rather bank on a sure win for this hand.

Hand #2

This was my hand after some early draws and discards:




What would you have done with it?

I thought of

1) All Terminals and Honours. But I would have to throw away the 2B pair and try and get partners for the remaining honour and terminal tiles.
2) Just All Pungs

I decided to play by ear and hope that I could get another honour or terminal pair before someone tempted me with a 2B discard.

I punged the East Wind and 1C pair subsequently. Unfortunately, I was faced with the 2B discard before I had gotten another terminal or honour pair. Decision time.

These days, I play pretty conservatively. So I decided to give up the ATH (just a little too far from getting ready) and just concentrate on All Pungs. I punged the 2Bs.

Quite soon after, I punged the last White Dragon set and decided to wait on South to go out.

What irked me was that I totally missed the fact that had I chosen to wait on any of the Dot Tiles, I would have All Types as well! Arrgggh!

I did manage to go out on SJ’s South Wind discard later, netting 17 points for this hand. But I got needled some by EP for missing the All Types, since I had been making All Types hands quite frequently lately. Seems like playing mahjong is not doing too much for my memory after all. ^_^

MAHJONG SESSION 08-12-2007 - AN ODE TO KNITTED HANDS

We finally managed to get enough people for a game last Saturday after our almost one month “sabbatical”. AJ managed to join SJ, EP and I for the game after being MIA for almost a month.

We had a pretty interesting game. For once, there were a lot less chow hands attempted or made during the entire two games that we had, and that applied to all four of us. I must have made the record “All Pungs” attempts in my entire mahjong career. For someone who dislikes pung based hands as much as I, it wasn’t exactly a very comfortable experience, but I didn’t do too badly, walking away with 6 table points after the two games (Actually what felt good was getting more table points than EP).

SJ won her first ever knitted hand in the first game, and I also managed another knitted hand win in the same game. The knitted hands always seem to both fascinate and intimidate beginners. Personally, I love them, and I think I hold the record for making the most knitted hand wins in the group. I like to think that I have inspired some of the others to try knitted hands too, when they see it is not all that difficult to achieve.

Knitted hands depend a lot on starting tiles. I never commit to knitted hands unless there are at least 10 tiles in the starting hand that contribute towards the combination, and at least half of them should be singular honor tiles. If there are more than 5 singular honour tiles in the starting hand, I may commit with just 9 suitable tiles in the starting hand.

Reasons to love knitted hands:

1) No decision making. Once committed, it is a straight road ahead. Draw, discard or keep until the hand is complete. For someone who HATES decision making, building knitted hands is a stress free process.
2) High flexibility. Since the knitted part of the hand need not be entirely complete to go out, there is greater flexibility for building the hand.
3) Multiple waits. If the hand is built fast enough, one can expect at least two or three tiles to wait for. Sometimes, even four. No need to lament death of crucial tiles and a higher chance for self draw.
4) Value for effort. At 12 points minimum and up to 28 points max (eg. Greater Honours Knitted Tiles + Fully Concealed Hand), the knitted hand is extremely worthwhile to attempt for its flexibility in building and waiting. This is especially so considering the starting tiles are mostly so disjointed that it would be difficult to build anything else out of them.
5) Defense value, both ways. Since knitted hands are always concealed (for knitted straights, the knitted portion is always concealed), and there can be a variety of combinations, it is hard for other players to defend against you. Likewise, a concealed hand offers better defense for the player if other players do make dangerous exposures or near the end of the game. With thirteen tiles to choose from, it will be hard NOT to find a safe discard.

I need to clarify here that I refer mainly to Lesser/Greater Honours Knitted Tiles, hence the stipulation for the singular honours in the starting hand. I never attempt Knitted Straight just by itself, unless it happens to combine with Lesser Honours. In my opinion, since there are more suit tiles to build on and less singular honour tiles to get rid of, it will easier to develop “pure” Knitted Straight hands towards the more regular chow based hands, which are perhaps worth more and definitely easier to build. Knitted Straights without Lesser Honours also have much less flexibility when it comes to getting ready and going out, since the knitted part of the hand needs to be complete.

The one thing to note about making knitted hands is that there is no turning back. I learnt that there is no such thing as keeping options open for a round or two when it comes to knitted hands. Since the tiles required to build knitted hands and those for other chow or pung based hands appear to be mutually exclusive, changing between them will guarantee plenty of “If only I had kept that tile” laments throughout the entire game. Knitted hands need to be committed to right at the start and players attempting them need to stick with them right to the bitter end. The only other hand that may co-exist with knitted hands, and only for a little while at that, is Thirteen Orphans.

It looks like this post has turned into an ode to Knitted Hands rather than the hands analysis that I had intended. Oh well, more for the next post then.

MAHJONG SESSION 08-11-2007

Some belated analysis and play anecdotes for the mahjong session on Deepavali. It has been some time since the game, and my memory is spotty, so I may not remember all the information.

Hand #1

This was my hand after several go-arounds.

I was South. I needed either the 3B or the South Wind, and I would then be ready to wait for the other tile to go out. Or I could be greedy and discard one of the winds and do an All Types with the Green Dragon.

SJ opposite me was most probably also doing an all types hand as well, with the following exposures:

SJ discarded South Wind and I punged it. At this point, East and West Winds were dead, so there was a high chance that SJ needed the North Wind to get ready or even go out. I had enough points to win without all types, so the logical thing would be to give up all types and discard Green Dragon. I would then be ready to go out with 3B.

I am always perfectly logical on hindsight. Something in my make up prevents me from being logical at the point of play. Bad…very bad. So naturally I went and discarded North Wind to keep the All Types option.

Of course, SJ won with that tile.

Hand #2

I ended with this hand very early on in the game:

So many possibilities exist for this hand! The least would be a mixed triple/shifted chow, which can then combine with all fives or maybe middle tiles maybe (but then I would have to get rid of the threes).

I managed to draw a lot of fours and fives throughout the whole game. Practically every draw was either a four or a five.

There can too much of a good thing, perhaps, especially when one is so easily excited and confused as I. Because I had so many choices and so many ways to shift, I was too busy trying to shift things around trying to get the maximum number of combination (I could maybe get mixed triple chow + all fives + middle tiles) and points out of the hand that I totally confused myself in the end and ended up keeping and discarding the wrong tiles.

I won’t go into the analysis of the subsequent play because thinking about it makes me want to jump out of the window. ^_^

Needless to say, I didn’t win this hand.

Hand #3

I didn’t win this hand either, but it was rather fun to build this hand. Started out with:

I didn’t know what to do with this hand. Maybe a mixed triple/shifted chow. Whatever it was I could discard the honor tiles since they did not appear to contribute to the general scheme.

Drew a 5C, discarded West. Drew an 8B, discarded Red Dragon. Drew 5C, what next? Decided that the 1D was too disconnected to be useful, so I discarded that. Now my hand looked like that (after only one go-around):

I supposed I could have continued to pursue the mixed/shifted triple chow, but fate tempted me with a discarded 5B from one of the other players. I suddenly realized I had the makings for Reversible Tiles if I discarded the character tiles. I lamented the discard of the 1D earlier. If I had noticed the pattern, I could have kept it. I guess this is why practice and trying out new stuff is so important. Otherwise we would hardly be able to recognize some of the more special combinations when it is staring at us in the face.

Now, I didn’t think there was much difference between either option points wise, but the hand seemed to be closer to going out with Reversible Tiles. Also, Reversible Tile wins were rare in our group and a first for me, so there was a novelty factor too.

I punged the 5B and 8B pair subsequently and konged the 6B as well, in the process getting rid of the character tiles. I managed to draw a 2D and was ready to go out with either another 2D or a 5D. But I was too late. Someone else won the game.

Later I found out that WJ was also building a Reversible Tiles hand too!

MAHJONG ARTICLE ON ST LIFE

What with the preparations for the new house, work, dieting (I never did realize that dieting was such a full time job) and also sheer laziness and procrastination, there has been hardly any opportunity to blog lately. Finally a chance to play catch up today.

I had meant to write up the long overdue reviews of the arts performances that we had attended in the last month, but the Straits Times (ST) Life article featuring EP and myself came out today, with a big picture of our smiling faces and it was too exciting not to blog about first (even if my surname was spelled wrongly, ^_^….).

If some of the visitors to EP’s or my blog had noticed, there was request last week from Sandra Leong, a journalist of ST requesting for an interview with EP and myself regarding mahjong playing in Singapore and MCR specifically. Unfortunately, I am unable to scan the published article in at the moment as the scanner has been disconnected for the move.

We can thank Mr Lim Boon Heng, Minister, Prime Minister Office, for the sudden interest in the mahjong playing community in Singapore. He mentioned to reporters at a recent community event that the People’s Association is in negotiations with the police to allow mahjong sessions to be organized regularly within its network. Currently, the Common Gaming Houses Act bars playing through one-off playing such games of chance for money in public places.

If this comes through, it will be a major move towards acceptance of mahjong as a healthy gaming choice and perhaps a sort of permission for other community bodies to start organizing similar sessions. We can perhaps look forward to more opportunities to play in future and maybe even national level tournaments if the acceptance becomes widespread enough.

ST took the opportunity to do some follow up research following Mr Lim’s comment and did a write up on the current mahjong situation in Singapore. EP and I were mentioned in the article more in direct relation to MCR, and our hopes that MCR will be more widely played in Singapore.

The ST article was rather generic on the whole, but still a heartening and welcome move in the right direction for serious mahjong enthusiasts. The focus was to highlight that mahjong is no longer just a game of chance played in sleazy gambling den or a game associated with the old retirees with too much time on their hands, but a game of skill played across an entire spectrum from students to expatriates. There was also a constant theme in the article that mahjong does not have to be played with money or to be associated with gambling in order to be exciting. Many people were already playing the game for pure interest’s sake. It also mentions various other points (medically and socially) which supports the mahjong as a healthy game choice.

EP and I are glad that we agreed to do the interview and are extremely enthusiastic about the spin off developments that may take place.

On a related issue, there was a post on Reach Mahjong Columns by professional Richii player Jenn Barr where she mentions her views on the dissociation of the gambling element from mahjong. Riichi mahjong, a popular Japanese variant, has a heavy emphasis on the gambling element, and has a loyal following in Japan. It seems to have reached cult status, and professional games are often televised and top players are given celebrity status. Jenn disagrees with the opinion that mahjong should not be associated with gambling, which many mahjong leagues are trying to push across and the Richii variant and the Japanese mahjong playing community is a good example of how gambling and mahjong can coexist happily.

I had some thoughts after reading Jenn’s post, and perhaps this would be a suitable time to air my two cents worth.

The association of mahjong and gambling has a long history in Singapore, and, I believe, many other South East Asian countries where mahjong is played. This association is further emphasized by popular media, such as movies and TV shows. Whether we like it or not, gambling IS frowned upon by many people, whether for religious, moral, legal or other personal reasons. It HAS led to social problems, whether major or minor. This is something we cannot dispute.

Even “social” gambling, such as playing among friends with small stakes, may not be necessarily accepted as a healthy activity. Just like how many alcoholics/smokers start as social drinkers/smokers, there is the worry that social gambling may lead to further addiction.

For many mahjong leagues, whose main aim is to promote mahjong playing and bring mahjong playing to higher levels, whether gambling, in itself, is really good or bad is moot. The importance is that the general public, the same general public whom we are hoping to reach out to, are viewing the gambling association as a bad one. This association is a barrier to achieving the aim of getting more people to play. It is not realistic to change an entire society’s outlook on gambling, but it is more achievable to present a different aspect of mahjong playing – the non-gambling aspect, to make it more acceptable and palatable to people.

In Singapore, there have been previous efforts made to set up official mahjong leagues and to bring in regional mahjong tournaments to the country by mahjong enthusiasts. However, these have all been shot down due to objections to promoting a game that has obvious gambling associations. On a personal basis, I have not allowed anyone at work to know that I play mahjong on a regular basis, to prevent my superiors and colleagues from labeling me as a gambling addict.

While I have nothing against Jenn’s refreshing support of the gambling element of mahjong, I cannot dispute that the gambling element associated with the game in certain regions has caused the general mahjong playing community some problems in propagating the game further and it is perfectly understandable why many mahjong enthusiasts who play for interest's sake would like the game to be dissociated from the gambling element.

Tina Christensen also commented in an earlier post that we might consider forming a Singapore mahjong league if we were interested to play mahjong on an international level. Thanks to the recent developments, it seems that an official Singapore mahjong league may not be totally out of reach now. I am happy that we are involved in this mahjong renaissance in Singapore, however small our contribution may be and I look forward to the day where mahjong enthusiasts in Singapore can share the limelight with other intellectual games players and say proudly, “I play mahjong.”