Growing up, there were a lot of big family gatherings, and in the basement there were usually 3 or 4 tables set up for mahjong. When all four tables were going, it made for quite a racket especially when the tiles were being shuffled. I watched a lot of mahjong games when I was a kid, but never learned how to play. It was more interesting watching people play, or stacking up the tiles to build things when nobody was playing.
We shopped around locally, but didn’t really see a set of tiles we wanted to get. Found a pretty nice set on Amazon though and ordered it.
The tiles are nice and big, feel solid, and the symbols are engraved nice and deep. They feel just like the tiles I remember playing with when I was a kid.
The rules for mahjong are relatively simple (I’ve seen it described as kind of a combination of poker and rummy) but with lots of variations. The basic idea is to get pairs, sequences, or 3/4 of a kind of particular tiles in your hand. The complexity and strategy comes into the kinds of hands you build, and that certain types of winning hands are worth more points than others.
I’ve got the basics figured out, but I’m still working on remembering what some of the character and tiles are.
Now we need to find two (or more) people to play with. Interested?
