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FAQ #21. How To Run A Mah-Jongg Tournament

Last updated June, 2010

: I want to run a mah-jongg tournament. Where do I start and what do I need to do?

: Have you ever been to a mah-jongg tournament? If you have, you've got a head start. If you haven't (if you live in the American heartland, or a country where tournaments aren't common), then I hope I can give you enough clues here.

No matter what kind of mah-jongg you play (or, if you aren't a player yourself, what kind of mah-jongg the tournament attendees play), the basics of running a tournament are pretty much the same. The following is written based on a one-day tournament (one that begins in the morning and ends that afternoon), but you can apply the same principles to a multi-day tournament. The longest tournaments I've attended have been 3-day events. Anything beyond that is probably overkill.

For starters: you have to find a location, with enough tables, tablecloths, and chairs. And of course you need mah-jongg sets. What a lot of American tournament organizers do is have players bring sets. It's probable that at least 25% of the players own (and can bring) a mah-jongg set. If you want players to bring sets, make sure that their promise to bring a set is included in their application to join the tournament. Make sure to plan to have extra sets, because sometimes a player who'd promised to bring one forgets!

If your tournament uses American rules, you may need to have extra NMJL cards available (inevitably, somebody forgets hers). If your tournament uses Japanese rules, you probably need to arrange to have enough special automatic tables that shuffle the tiles.

You will need to reach enough players to make it an exciting event, so you'll need to think about how to advertise to them (maybe FAQ 15 will be helpful in reaching them).

And every attendee of the tournament must play the same kind of mah-jongg (it wouldn't do to have some people playing by American rules, and others playing Chinese Official rules, etc. - that would be a disaster!). So make sure that in your advertising efforts, you make it clear which mah-jongg rules will be used in the tournament.

You'll need to think about what prizes to offer, how much it will cost to run the tournament, how much you want to raise, thus how much to charge players for the event.

I assume you yourself play mah-jongg (if not, you need to bring in at least two experienced players to act as judges to rule on those annoying little things that are bound to come up).

Make sure you have a copy of the printed rules on hand.

If it's an American-style tournament, have the official NMJL rulebook ("Mah Jongg Made Easy"; see FAQ 3) -- and my book, "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," to fill in the gaps.
If it's a Chinese Official tournament, download the official rulebook and the MCR Errata/Addenda. It would also be a good idea to have my book, "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," due to sometimes unclear wording in the official rulebook.
If you're running a Hong Kong style tournament, have a comprehensive book of HKOS rules handy (see FAQ 3) - and so on.

Tournament rules are pretty simple. Score points rather than coins or chips. With points, a winner's payment can come from thin air (rather than from other players' purses).

American: When a winner makes a 25-point hand, by another's discard, that winner gets 25 points tallied up. No points are lost by the others, unless the thrower has thrown to two or more exposures (then dock the thrower 10 or 25 points).
Chinese Official: Add points for winners, deduct points from non-winners. Do it on the score sheet rather than with chips. You can use chips if you prefer - but you'll have to make sure the chips are redistributed to all seat positions between games.
Japanese: You'll probably use chips. Players will have to redistribute all chips prior to commencing a game.

You will need to make score cards - one person at each table should be table scorekeeper, and each player must initial her score to verify that it's accurate. You also need a tournament scorekeeper, who collects the score cards and determines tournament scores by simply adding them all up, then sorting from highest to lowest. This is a function done easily in a spreadsheet program like Excel. But don't think you can just download an Excel file somewhere - the tournament organizers listed in FAQ 4a had to create their own. You'll have to create your own too, just like everybody else.

You need an East marker on the east wall, and you need to number the tables. You also need to come up with a table/seat-rotation mechanism. The table rotation used by Bill and Judi Nachenberg (pictured here - their website is http://mahjonggfunla.com) is that East stays stationary (she sits at the same seat and the same table throughout the day's games) - South moves down 1 table each round - North moves up 1 table - West moves up 2 tables. A player who goes beyond the highest-number table goes down to the lowest-number table (just as the Ace is both lower than the Deuce and higher than the King in a deck of cards).

See emails below for more information about how to make a round robin rotation that minimizes player placement repetitions, especially for small groups (groups smaller than, oh, say 16 tables). No matter what solution you use for your table rotations, you have to thicken your skin and let complaints bounce off you.

Under Bill & Judi's rotation mechanism, East is more a permanent seat location than a permanent player designation. At the beginning of the round, the player in the East seat deals first. After that game is finished, the dice pass around the table as is normally done. When the dice come back to the East seat again, the round has been completed (she doesn't deal again with that group of players).

In a Chinese Official tournament, you'll want a seat rotation policy as well as a table rotation policy. After the deal has moved back around the table to the East seat, E switches with N, W with S - then after the next round, E switches with S, and before the final round E switches with W... (for example).

Each player has to be assigned a starting seat and table upon arrival (usually on a name badge, either stuck on or pinned on or hanging on a neck lanyard). Give each player an individual rule sheet, self-scoring sheet, and pencil.

Plan the tournament's schedule.

American: It takes an hour to play one round (4 hands, with each player around the table getting to deal once). Think about how many rounds your players will want to play. A one-day (day-long) tournament might be 6 rounds if your players are highly competitive and motivated, or 4 rounds if attendance would suffer (if older plaeyrs might object to such a grueling schedule). Unlike "un-American" tournaments, American tournament organizers don't necessarily stop play sessions when the clock ticks over one hour - rather, games are usually allowed to play out.
Chinese Official: Limit a game to an hour and a half (two hours if you prefer). When the time runs out, all players just stop, even if their game hasn't finished yet - any hand in progress is simply stopped, and not scored. You'll probably want to play 3 or 4 games in one tournament day.
Japanese: A game will usually be completed in 60-90 minutes. When the time runs out, all players just stop - any hand in progress is simply stopped, and not scored. Add up players' chips. Could maybe play 4 or 5 games in one tournament day.

Allow time off for lunch in the middle of the tournament, and allow time at the beginning for announcements and rule-setting. Allow time at the end for the awards ceremony. Random door prizes (picked from a fishbowl) help keep people from leaving before the prizes/awards are given out.

Speaking of time: If you'll be using a computer projection system and laptop, and if your play sessions have to stop when time runs out, Stephan Hilchenbach has created a useful countdown timer which can be downloaded at http://www.countdown-timer-stop-watch.com/index_gb.html.

You may also want an audio amplification system if the crowd is large enough.

Hopefully, this FAQ has given you a starting list. You and your organizing committee can now sit down and brainstorm the details. If you have questions, you can always ask on the Mah-Jongg Q&A Bulletin Board. Like this, for instance...

We want to organize competitions.

>From: Tony
>Sent: Tue, February 9, 2010 8:44:03 AM
>Subject: Mah-Jongg Q+A
>My mah-jongg question or comment is: I am running a new Mah-Jongg club and we want to organise competitions. Can anyone direct me to templates for scheduling round robin events for different numbers of players in a tournament or league format?

We expect to have between 8 and 16 players involved. We need a schedule where everybody plays everybody else the same number of times (in round robin everybody plays everybody else once). Can you direct me to somewhere where someone has worked this out before? I can't believe that nobody has tried to work this out before.. Thanks. Tony

Hi Tony,
Of course many tournament organizers have worked out ways to rotate seats at a table during a game session, and ways to rotate tables between game sessions. But it sounds like you expect that those folks have published their methodologies on the Internet somewhere -- and I've never seen anyone do that.

You can find how seat rotation works at WMCC-organized events. Go to http://sloperama.com/tour/rulebook.htm and you can download the Mahjong Competition Rules (there's a link there). But as for table rotation, I discussed that a little in FAQ 21 (you didn't say if you'd read it or not), but you probably will have to just sort of puzzle this out on your own. It isn't always possible for every player at an event to play every other player (work out the math). The tournament organizers do manage somehow, though, to make sure to pit me against the top champions every time I play in a tournament (how else can you account for my low scores, and the champions' high scores?) (half-kidding).
Good luck. Let me know what you figure out, and I can post the information for future organizers who ask this same question.
Tom Sloper
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on Mah-Jongg East & West.
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
January 9, 2010

That's awesome info, Andrew. I'll append this to FAQ 21 for future organizers.
Tom Sloper
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on Mah-Jongg East & West.
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
02/10/2010

http://www.devenezia.com/round-robin/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1135433203/0#0

http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames_08_14_07.html

Hi Edwin!
Thanks for those links and that explanation. One thing you said:

A full round-robin is indeed possible for 16 players in a 4-player game. Smaller numbers of players (less than 16) would be difficult to schedule in a 4-player game like mahjong.
Exactly what I figured (read: "guessed"). But since I don't regard myself as a math-head, I wasn't able to (and didn't want to try to) explain it to Tony. I'll append this to FAQ 21 for future tournament organizers.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on Mah-Jongg East & West.
Los Angeles, CA (USA)
02/10/2010

There is a computer program or formula for tournament table rotation

>From: Edwin Phua
>Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 3:53 AM
>Subject: Re: Tournament scheduling
>Dear Tom,
>I refer to the recent question on tournament scheduling and table rotation by Gail.
>There are solutions for the problem(s) posed by Gail, within constraints set (20 to 28 players, 6 rounds). Some solutions may not be ideal, due to mathematical impossibilities. All solutions here been trawled from the Round Robin Tournament Scheduling forum ( http://www.devenezia.com/round-robin/forum/YaBB.pl) (credit to Ian Wakeling).
>For 20 players:
>Round One: (1, 2, 3, 4) (5, 6, 7, 8) (9, 10, 11, 12) (13, 14, 15, 16) (17, 18, 19, 20)
>Round Two: (1, 12, 15, 18) (2, 5, 10, 20) (3, 6, 11, 16) (4, 8, 13, 17) (7, 9, 14, 19)
>Round Three: (1, 2, 8, 17) (3, 5, 15, 19) (4, 9, 16, 20) (6, 10, 13, 18) (7, 11, 12, 14)
>Round Four: (1, 6, 14, 20) (2, 11, 13, 19) (3, 8, 9, 18) (4, 7, 10, 15) (5, 12, 16, 17)
>Round Five: (1, 5, 9, 13) (2, 7, 16, 18) (3, 10, 14 17 ) (4, 6, 12, 19) (8, 11, 15, 20)
>Round Six: (1, 7, 11, 17) (2, 6, 9, 15) (3, 12, 13, 20) (4, 5, 14, 18) (8, 10, 16, 19)
>For six rounds, there will be some instances of repetition. Four players (Players 1, 7, 11, and 17) will meet one repeat opponent twice, while four players (Players 2, 8, 12, and 14) will meet one repeat opponent once. The other twelve players will play against all opponents once and will thus meet eighteen different players over six rounds.
>It is not possible for any player to play against all other players in a 20-player field. Since mahjong is a four-player game, and one gets to meet 3 opponents at any one time, all best solutions involved a field where the opponents are in multiples of 3 (e.g. for 16 players, where the opponents are numbered 15, a multiple of 3; 5 rounds is needed for all players to play one another once).
>For 24 players:
>Round One: (1, 2, 3, 4) (5, 6, 7, 8) (9, 10, 11, 12) (13, 14, 15, 16) (17, 18, 19, 20) (21, 22, 23, 24)
>Round Two: (1, 9, 18, 24) (2, 11, 19, 23) (3, 5, 12, 16) (4, 6, 10, 14) (7, 13, 17, 21) (8, 15, 20 22)
>Round Three: (1, 12, 15, 19) (2, 5, 20 24) (3, 11, 14, 17) (4, 8, 18, 21) (6, 9, 13, 22) (7, 10, 16, 23)
>Round Four: (1, 6, 17, 23) (2, 10, 13, 18) (3, 7, 19, 22) (4, 9, 16, 20) (5, 11, 15, 21) (8, 12, 14, 24)
>Round Five: (1, 5, 10, 22) (2, 8, 16, 17) (3, 6, 15, 18) (4, 7, 11, 24) (9, 14, 19, 21) (12, 13, 20, 23)
>Round Six: (1, 8, 11, 13) (2, 7, 9 15) (3, 10, 20, 21) (4, 12, 17, 22) (5, 14, 18, 23) (6, 16, 19, 24)
>Round Seven: (1, 7, 14, 20) (2, 6, 12, 21) (3, 8, 9, 23) (4, 5, 13, 19) (10, 15, 17, 24) (11, 16, 18, 22)
>For a field of 24 players, there is no repetition for seven rounds, and every player will meet 21 other opponents, and will not meet only 2 opponents. For a tournament of six rounds, any one round can be dropped.
>For 28 players:
>Round One: (1, 2, 3, 4) (5, 6, 7, 8) (9, 10, 11, 12) (13, 14, 15, 16) (17, 18, 19, 20) (21, 22, 23, 24) (25, 26, 27, 28)
>Round Two: (1, 5, 21, 25) (2, 6, 13, 17) (3, 11, 16, 28) (4, 12, 20, 24) (7, 9, 19, 27) (8, 10, 15, 23) (14, 18, 22, 26)
>Round Three: (1, 6, 24, 28) (2, 5, 15, 19) (3, 9, 14, 25) (4, 10, 18, 21) (7, 12, 13, 22) (16, 20, 23, 27) (8, 11, 17, 26)
>Round Four: (1, 9, 17, 23) (2, 10, 14, 28) (3, 7, 15, 20) (4, 8, 22, 25) (5, 11, 13, 24) (6, 12, 18, 27) (16, 19, 21, 26)
>Round Five: (1, 7, 16, 18) (2, 8, 21, 27) (3, 10, 19, 24) (4, 9, 13, 26) (5, 12, 14, 23) (6, 11, 20, 25) (15, 17, 22, 28)
>Round Six: (1, 11, 19, 22) (2, 12, 16, 25) (3, 8, 13, 18) (4, 7, 23, 28) (5, 10, 20, 26) (6, 9, 15, 21) (14, 17, 24, 27)
>Round Seven: (1, 8, 14, 20) (2, 7, 24, 26) (3, 12, 17, 21) (4, 11, 15, 27) (5, 9, 18, 28) (6, 10, 16, 22) (13, 19, 23, 25)
>Round Eight: (1, 12, 15, 26) (2, 11, 18, 23) (3, 5, 22, 27) (4, 6, 14, 19) (7, 10, 17, 25) (8, 9, 16, 24) (13, 20, 21, 28)
>Round Nine: (1, 10, 13, 27) (2, 9, 20, 22) (3, 6, 23, 26) (4, 5, 16, 17) (7, 11, 14, 21) (8, 12, 19, 28) (15, 18, 24, 25)
>This is one of the best solutions: a field of 28 players allows a full round-robin of nine rounds, where every player will meet every other player (27 of them) exactly once. For a tournament of six rounds, any three rounds can be dropped.
>As for computer programs, there may indeed be some programs written for handling tournaments, but these programs may not be easy to use, and/or are not usually specifically written to handle table movement/rotation. As far as I know, Mahjong Denmark has a Mahjong Tournament Organiser program (which includes a function for scheduling and creating table/seat arrangements).
>Best regards,
>Edwin

Edwin,
This is all fantastic information. I'll add it to the tournament FAQ. Thank you!
P.S. - I'd completely forgotten that you and Andrew had already responded to a similar question previously.
May the tiles be with you.
Tom Sloper
Author of "The Red Dragon & The West Wind," the definitive book on Mah-Jongg East & West.
Los Angeles, California, USA
June 29, 2010

Note: A "round robin" tournament is one in which all of the entrants play each other at least once, in which not winning a round does not eliminate you from the overall competition.

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