2-player variants?
Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 2:25 am
When me and my other mahjong-obsessed friend can't pull together a full game we sometimes play a rough 2-player variant. I was wondering if any of you folks have experience with such variants? I know there are some 2 player games using mahjong tiles, but I'm looking for adapting the existing rules in a way that preserves the balance as much as possible.
My own experience is entertaining, if not entirely successful. Our first iteration was just each of us playing two hands at once. Dealer would be east and west, non-dealer north and south. Other than discouraging feeding triplets to yourself, the rules were unchanged. This sort of worked, but it quickly became clear that seeing two hands at once gave players far too much information. Huge, flashy hands became common and we quickly scrapped the format. Our second and more successful variant involves chopping 26 tiles off the end of the wall, essentially enlarging the dead wall to represent the tiles that will never be revealed in a 4-player game. We each get more draws, but the resulting discards are more realistic than when a 'robot' who draws and discards indiscriminately is used. The total number of discards is also more or less the same, which keeps Ron a viable option.
I can't say with certainty how well this is 'balanced', since my friend's playstyle is rather distinct and games with him don't go the way they would normally, but it seems as though the overall flow remains intact until near the end of the hand, with essentially no drawn games and a somewhat greater chance of success with 'big' hands. This bias isn't hugely disruptive in my experience, since I can play my way and my friend plays his way without the usual results changing dramatically. However, we are not a good barometer for this sort of thing, so its entirely possible there are facets of this that pose problems obvious to others which have never come up in our games.
My own experience is entertaining, if not entirely successful. Our first iteration was just each of us playing two hands at once. Dealer would be east and west, non-dealer north and south. Other than discouraging feeding triplets to yourself, the rules were unchanged. This sort of worked, but it quickly became clear that seeing two hands at once gave players far too much information. Huge, flashy hands became common and we quickly scrapped the format. Our second and more successful variant involves chopping 26 tiles off the end of the wall, essentially enlarging the dead wall to represent the tiles that will never be revealed in a 4-player game. We each get more draws, but the resulting discards are more realistic than when a 'robot' who draws and discards indiscriminately is used. The total number of discards is also more or less the same, which keeps Ron a viable option.
I can't say with certainty how well this is 'balanced', since my friend's playstyle is rather distinct and games with him don't go the way they would normally, but it seems as though the overall flow remains intact until near the end of the hand, with essentially no drawn games and a somewhat greater chance of success with 'big' hands. This bias isn't hugely disruptive in my experience, since I can play my way and my friend plays his way without the usual results changing dramatically. However, we are not a good barometer for this sort of thing, so its entirely possible there are facets of this that pose problems obvious to others which have never come up in our games.