Open Tanyao

[Barticle]

Okay, cool. I´m just not used to thinking of them as 26-han yaku. Plus I´m sat in a busy office so brain not fully focused on MJ matters!

The fourth hand usually counted as double yakuman is Dai Suu Shii (Big Four Winds).

[alban lusitanae]

The Japanese game is played with a one-han minimum (ii han shibari) but dora don´t count - so this could also be described as a one-yaku minimum

Rules text must say one-yaku, otherwise rules lawyers would abuse the one-han text to win games, even with the mentioned Dora exception.

At least that is my view, IMHO

[Bunta]

I have to get back to the topic.

I read all the 8 sides:S

I played some european tournaments and have to say most of the european players like to open up their hands. So maybe it would not be a good idea to add open tanyao. The problem of open hands comes from MCR, cuz most of the europeans played this variant of mahjong before Riichi and dont understand the essential way of playing Riichi.
So open tanyao would increase the number of open hands.
On the other hand i dont understand why the EMA not allows tournaments with open tanyao when the rest of the rules are the same, cuz one tournament in the netherlands changes the red fives for yakitori.
I understand the reason for standard rulesets and i totally agree with that, but when the EMA allows one tournament to change the rules, they have to allow others too!

If people dont like a tournament with a slide diffrent ruleset they can stay at home and play another tournament.

Some people here say they dont like closed tanyao. I favor open tanyao too, BUT i can change my kind of play to the prevalant rules and dont think it should be any problem for anybody who understands how to play the game.
IMHO, i think its necessary to be able to change your playingstlye cuz of the tremendous number of rule variation in Riichi.

I think thats all i wanna say about tanyao.

[silent observer]

\"After 5 counters a hand must consist of at least 2 han.\"

No. It can\'t say that. If anything, the rule needs to be rewritten to say \"After 5 counters, a hand must consist of yaku with a total sum of at least 2 han.\" That way, dora is explicitly left out (since it\'s not a yaku), but toitoi is acceptable (since it\'s a yaku worth a total of 2 han).

Fat chance EMA will change anything though.

On the other hand i dont understand why the EMA not allows tournaments with open tanyao when the rest of the rules are the same, cuz one tournament in the netherlands changes the red fives for yakitori.
I understand the reason for standard rulesets and i totally agree with that, but when the EMA allows one tournament to change the rules, they have to allow others too!

Now THIS is some really interesting information. I\'m laughing my ass off here.

Ok, I\'m officially going to run an EMA tournament with Open Tanyao, if what Bunta says is true.

[Bunta]

If you dont believe me see their homepage:

http://toernooi.dedriewijzen.com/docume ... inryu.html

[MortenA]

"After 5 counters a hand must consist of at least 2 han."

No. It can\'t say that. If anything, the rule needs to be rewritten to say "After 5 counters, a hand must consist of yaku with a total sum of at least 2 han." That way, dora is explicitly left out (since it\'s not a yaku), but toitoi is acceptable (since it\'s a yaku worth a total of 2 han).

Fat chance EMA will change anything though.

If you change that definition you also need to change the way Yaku is defined in the EMA rules. It may be wrong or misused terminology but I have always learned that Yaku meant the same as "Fan but not including Dora". And apparently I am not the only one with that understanding as it was used as such in the EMA rules. I guess the terminology in the rules could be changed but the problem is not the rule you are pointing out but the terminology itself.

On the other hand i dont understand why the EMA not allows tournaments with open tanyao when the rest of the rules are the same, cuz one tournament in the netherlands changes the red fives for yakitori.
I understand the reason for standard rulesets and i totally agree with that, but when the EMA allows one tournament to change the rules, they have to allow others too!

Now THIS is some really interesting information. I\'m laughing my ass off here.

Ok, I\'m officially going to run an EMA tournament with Open Tanyao, if what Bunta says is true.

You could always try to apply. I don\'t know why the dutch tournament is allowed to be played with yakitori (although it\'s a smaller yakitori than the one I\'ve heard of).

[silent observer]

I don\'t know why the dutch tournament is allowed to be played with yakitori

Because EMA needs to enforce a standard across Europe so that riichi mahjong becomes even more popular, that\'s why!

Wait... That\'s not how you spread a standard, by allowing tournaments to change the rules like that.

OH SNAP!

Tina, any comments on this?

[GRDavies]

If you dont believe me see their homepage:

http://toernooi.dedriewijzen.com/docume ... inryu.html

It\'s true, i can shed some light of it\'s origin.
First there was one Riichi tournament per year, organised by Martin Rep & Sjef Strik. No red 5\'s were used.
Later it became 2 tournaments per year, also no red 5\'s, but because Martin & Sjef also organised their Golden Dragon tournament for their club Nijmegen, first HongKong later MCR, they found it too much and asked if somebody would step up to organise the second annual Riichi tournament.
That person or better said persons came in the form of Robert Rijnders and family. They also like to organise tournaments (this year alone they are responsible for 3 out of 4 variants Championship tournaments we play on tournaments
here in the Netherlands).
On one of the Riichi tournaments we used the Yakatori to add some little flavor and that was only once.

This was all before there were talks about the first European Riichi championship. Because of the succes MCR after the succesfull first Europen Championship (MCR) the idea was born to (co) organise the first European Riichi Championship and Martin & Sjef decided to adopt the EMA-rules completely, which wasn\'t a big difference, except for the red 5\'s (for more details look up one of my older post here in this thread).
The Rijnders or "de 3 wijzen" (one of the Dutch names for the Big 3 Dragons or Big 3 Scholars, the 3 family members founded the club of Almere), wanted to distinguish themselves of the tournament of Martin & Sjef, so also adapting EMA-rules but instead of using the red 5\'s they chose to use the Yakatori as their "trademark".

Is the latter 100 % EMA rules? No.
Do they use a game altering rule change? Definitly no.

I\'m not in anyway afiliated by EMA, so i can\'t shed any lights on what the stanpoint is of the EMA concerning this oddity, maybe Tina can give us one.

[GRDavies]

You could always try to apply. I don\'t know why the dutch tournament is allowed to be played with yakitori (although it\'s a smaller yakitori than the one I\'ve heard of).

Everybody who hasn\'t have their yakitory flipped over pays 1500 points to everybody who does.
What kind of penalties did you hear of?

[silent observer]

GRDavies: the main question is - do you get EMA ranking if you play in that tournament?

[WorTeX]

you get EMA ranking from the upcoming golden dragon tournament which uses yakitori instead of red fives, which I think is quite funny, because yakitori bonus is almost random if I may say... atleast you could somehow keep track and control red fives.

For a funny example, 3 players have their yakitori down on the 2nd to last hand of south wind, player with yakitori wins the hand, meaning everyone\'s yakitori is reset. That means 4500 point bonus to the player winning the last hand (little chance of 2 or 3 players winning on the same tile, but it happens rarely).

Does this affect the game differently than red fives? yes.
Is it a \"variation\" of official EMA ruleset? yes (ruleset doesn\'t mention yakitori).
Should open tanyao be allowed as a variation in tournaments? yes.
Would I play in a tournament with open tanyao? yes.
Do we need more riichi tournaments in europe regardless of variations in rules they use? YES.

case closed.

[GRDavies]

GRDavies: the main question is - do you get EMA ranking if you play in that tournament?

We have had for the tournament held on 27 Sep. 2008, but this years edition isn\'t on the list of EMA ranking tournaments for this year.
Don\'t know if the site isn\'t up to date or EMA has made restrictions or decided that the Kinryu Majan Taikai (which i believe is rougly translated as the "golden dragon tournament") doesn\'t apply 100 % EMA rules.

Is this correct or not? To be honest no, but alltough i\'m against open tanyo, the ranking system does support if there were tournament held with other rules, the Dutch ranking systems uses all 4 MJ variants. So, personally i have no problems if people organise for example Open Tanyo tournaments and integrate the result in the EMA Riichi ranking. The rules apply to everybody and a ruleset can be more (un)comfortable then for the other player, but if you score a 95% spot you can have 95% of the max ranking points, no problems here.

Would i come to a open tanyo tournament? Money is the main decider, but maybe once, but if it turnes out to be a allout crapshoot of open tanyo\'s, yakupung hands and hardly Riichi hands also problably the last.

[WorTeX]

Would i come to a open tanyo tournament? Money is the main decider, but maybe once, but if it turnes out to be a allout crapshoot of open tanyo\'s, yakupung hands and hardly Riichi hands also problably the last.

for fun, I could make some sort of statistics of my tables in KMT\'09, what winning hands will be, and almost bet few of my fingers on that over 60% will be open hands anyways.. Too bad I have nothing to gain from betting my fingers ;)

[Tom Sloper]

It may be wrong or misused terminology but I have always learned that Yaku meant the same as "Fan but not including Dora". And apparently I am not the only one with that understanding as it was used as such in the EMA rules. I guess the terminology in the rules could be changed but the problem is not the rule you are pointing out but the terminology itself.

Yes. I vaguely recall emailing Tina right after the document was published, trying to clarify the distinction between yaku and fan, but it was already too late (to make edits to the document would require re-obtaining consensus or something).
Yaku = a scoring combination, anything that earns fan but isn\'t a dora (red fives being essentially dora).
Fan = a score doubler, earned by dint of having made yaku or having the inclusion of dora in the hand.

I also objected to the WMO about the way they use the word "fan" to mean "scoring combination," since that was at odds with the term\'s usage throughout the mahjong world, but my complaint was rejected and the term has been adopted in MCR.

[alban lusitanae]

We have had for the tournament held on 27 Sep. 2008, but this years edition isn\'t on the list of EMA ranking tournaments for this year.

IMHO, EMA ranking should only be given on tournaments which play according to the EMA RAW (Rules As Written). If EMA allows ranking to be given on tournaments with variants to its RAW, then the ranking value is not credible, and this fact can\'t be disputed.

I also objected to the WMO about the way they use the word \"fan\" to mean \"scoring combination,\" since that was at odds with the term\'s usage throughout the mahjong world, but my complaint was rejected and the term has been adopted in MCR.

Which means a cunning player in WMO can win without Yaku. Pity.