3 sets of Mah Jong came back with us from Penang in November. Since then, I've hosted Mah Jong night at my house nearly once a week. Usually it's a Friday evening. Delivery pizza or homemade dinner at 7:30, followed by shouts of Pung! Chi! Hu! until about 11:00 and then on over to the WFP for a beer, or 2, or 3...
If we have enough people, there are usually 2 tables, one for the quiet/competitive type, the other for the yappy/social type. I'm sure you can guess which table I belong to. I've somehow been pegged as the really competitive girl, even though I totally am not! Well, I am a little, but not that much more than the normal person! Maybe it's because I've been surrounded by uber-competitive-over-achievers my entire life (GATE Program, GT and AP classes, tennis camp, living with pre-med kids in college and someone who is in the 99.9th %tile after college, and JPAs at the WB). Now that I'm in Banda and surrounded by chilled out aid workers, I guess I am competitive vis-a-vis my cohorts? Oh who knows. I like to win, but I have no problem with losing.
Anyway, back to Mah Jong...the game's caught on like wild fire. I think I've got about 5-6 friends who are now addicted and I know at least of 2 friends who bought sets over Christmas break and brought it home with them.
Anyone know how to keep score? I've played since I was 5 but have never learned how to keep score. I've looked around online but all of the systems are kind of lame.
Since there are always newbies joining. I made a little cheat sheet to help people remember.
6 comments:
dude! mah jong rocks. yupno and i will initiate you into our backgammon / hookah adventures when you are around. board games rock!
I've just started playing backgammon here. It's addicting, especially on a raining Sunday afternoon!
I don't think scoring is that hard, as long as you're consistent about what is worth more (for instance, how much 13 unique tiles is, compared to a 1-9 suited, compared to 1-9 unsuited.)
I think the way we play, we gave extra points for:
if you pung your corresponding wind
if you only pung or only chi the whole game
if you have sets of 3 that are similar across suits (i.e. 1-3 of Wan and 1-3 of Tiao, or 3 of 4 Wan and 4 Tiao)
if you hu when you pick up a tile (as opposed to taking someone else's discarded tile), you get extra points
if you take someone else's discarded tile to hu, they pay you double or extra.
The biggest special hands are 1-9 of one suit (qing long), 1-9 of more than one suit (hwun long), 7 pairs, all unique tiles (those last two, you have to draw the tiles yourself)
And yes, my pinyin sucks ass.
yeah baby! I finally get a shout-out - even if it's just for my (evidently justifiable) arrogance.
I don't know anything about this game, but my friends and I are now addicted to 'Mexican Trains'-- every played it??
I'm sorry, but Mexican Train sounds like a sex act involving four or more people and a donkey.
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