Reachmahjong.com

I'm back from a 5-day trip to Niagra Falls for a gaming convention. It was a rough week - my native and beloved Boston was constantly on my mind.

I ran two teaching slots each of the 5 days. My wife and I took either 2 new players (one table including Jenn and I) or 6 new players (Jenn and I anchoring different tables). All told, I taught 22 people the joys of Riichi Mahjong. I actually originally intended to teach up to 16 but had huge demand and started an "overflow list" signup-sheet. I had a dozen people on the overflow signup but simply ran out of energy and time to teach them all before the week was done. My favorite momement was late in the week watching four of my earlier students playing at one of the tables by themselves. All told, I played somewhere between 25 and 30 hours of Mahjong. I'm exhausted I had a small sheet showcasing the best Mahjong related stuff that is available (books, good computer and iOS software, tips on buying a set, this forum, etc). Fun stuff!

Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I taught my standard simplified Riichi rules (mostly simplified in eliminating mini-point calculations along with a few of the edge-case rules). A fair number of the folks are now on the lookout for a good set of their own.

Here are a couple of pics from the event. I'm the goof to the middle of the first pic (blue shirt).

Wow! I have a brother who lives in Niagara Falls. I totally could have gone.

I'll need to keep my ear out for that in the future!

Thanks for the post, and helping to spread the fun of mahjong!

Good work, Dave.

That mat in the first pic is very colourful. It appears to have the winds printed on it - do you rotate the mat or the people?

Hi Bart,

The mat is really nice - it is heavy and so doesn't rotate easily. Rather than rotate chairs, I used a home-built wind indicator that I could just turn easily. The winds on the mat were, therefore, just for show (the tiles tended to obscure them anyway).

I have to say. That's some busy stuff. Good going.