EMA Correspondence

A while back I contacted Tina (vice president of EMA) regarding why there’s no Open Tanyao in the EMA rules. A little while after that, ReachMahjong.com’s Gemma posted about Open Tanyao again (since I’d mentioned my dislike of it being concealed only in EMA rules), and a forum discussion was suddenly underway.

Now, Tina isn’t answering my emails any longer, for whatever reason. So I’ll give the email response I got from her, as well as the reply I sent (yet never received a reply for).

Be prepared for a WALL of text.

>> Hi. Since the EMA site is currently down, I contacted you through the
>> Mahjong Denmark site instead (as far as I’m aware you’re involved with
>> EMA as well, yes?). You don’t know me, but I’ve played in a few EMA
>> tournaments, and have a couple of questions that EMA could answer.
>> They’re not very pressing, and if you’re not involved/able to answer
>> questions regarding these matters, please ignore this email.
>>
>> Anyway, the questions I have are several:
>>
>> Why isn’t open tanyao allowed in EMA. An answer detailing the reasons
>> would be very nice.
>
> The EMA riichi rules were settled in early 2008 through discussions between
> Sjef Strik, Robert Rijnders and myself with much advice from several
> English-speaking players in Japan.
>
> The two largest riichi communities in Europe that we were (and are) aware
> of, the Dutch and the Danish, both played with Tanyao concealed. We were
> aware that it is no longer very common in Japan, but still we decided to
> keep it as a concealed hand. Our concern is that it would change the
> dynamics of the game, if Tanyao can be open. For highly skilled players,
> like in a Japanese tournament, where there is much focus on defense, the
> dynamics are not affected in the same way. But for players of less skill, as
> is the case in Europe, an open Tanyao is “too easy”. So the answer I guess
> is: Tanyao is concealed in order to strengthen the defensive element.

Hi Tina, and thanks for the answers. However, as usual with answers of
any kind, they lead to more questions, rather than leave the topic
finished. I have read – but do not use – the reachmahjong.com forums
as well, so I’m aware of that post (and might indeed quote it).

Basically, what you’re saying is that European players are less
skilled than Japanese players. While I hesitate to say that, and
rather say that they’re inexperienced, I can see where you’re coming
from. However, by keeping tanyao concealed, you make it so that
players who would get used to playing with it open won’t get used to
that, and as such what you fear – players making “cheap” hands every
turn – will most likely happen when (or if) you decide to change
Tanyao to an open hand.

The defensive argument has, at the same time, a serious flaw. If you
want to strengthen the defensive element, you should use the open
tanyao yaku – it’s a very easy hand to spot, you can defend against it
quite well (since you know its requirements), and offense is a big
part of defense as well. By keeping it concealed, you remove the
option of going for a quick dirty hand to stop your opponent building
a monster hand.

Secondly, the defense argument is made completely invalid by the use
of red fives. While you can defend against various yaku (to a certain
extent) by reading discards, you cannot, in any way, defend against
red fives. You don’t know if someone has it in his hands or not
(unless you happen to sit on them), and as such a cheap hand that you
would be willing to deal into (in order to stop a worse hand from
someone else) might backfire on you, and you find yourself facing one,
two or even three red fives.

Not only that, but the defense argument is even more weakened by the
addition of several yaku which are based on chance. I don’t have a
problem with chance-based yaku, riichi mahjong is a gambling game
after all, but saying that keeping tanyao concealed strengthens the
defensive element is flawed when you have yaku that you, as a
“defending” player, can’t defend against. I’m talking specifically
about ippatsu – which doesn’t require any skill at all, but is an
incentive (along with ura dora, another chance-based element) to
declare riichi. Not only ippatsu and ura-dora, you also have two
yakuman that’s got absolutely nothing to do with skill or defense
(tenhou/chihou – not sure if you have two or three of those, I can’t
check the sheet at the moment), as well as kan dora (that some
Japanese tournaments don’t use, since it can shift the game so heavily
- and does shift it – towards chance). Rin shan kai hou,
haitei/houtei, double riichi, nagashi mangan… all these add nothing
to the defensive element of the game, yet you have them in the game
none the less. Open tanyao would, if anything, lower the chance
element of the game somewhat.

I have done some research (with help from friends, and Tenhou game
logs) regarding the average value of professional level open tanyao
hands (or indeed any open hands) as compared to open yakuhai/fanpai
hands. I’m willing to draw up detailed information about this, should
it prompt you to consider open tanyao.

The issue of open tanyao versus yakuhai/fanpai is also part of why I’m
annoyed at the EMA rules. Instead of seeing open tanyao hands, we get
to see a pon-fest of yakuhai or fanpai. As someone who rarely discards
honour tiles, it’s even more annoying knowing that two yaku that are
so popular in Europe gets to be in the game, whereas a yaku such as
open tanyao isn’t. Personally I think that it’s a loss that you don’t
have it. None the less – I have no say in EMA standards, since I’m one
of very few Swedish players that play riichi mahjong to begin with,
and if it’s a democratic vote, I’m fairly certain I’d get voted down
by the dutch players (who, despite absolutely loathing open tanyao
gladly uses yakuhai/fanpai as their sole yaku in tournament play…
colour me confused, if you will.)

>> Why is there no lower limit in how much minus you can get? In a
>> regular game of mahjong, the game ends once you end up below 0; while
>> I understand that you “start” at 0 points, you could easily format it
>> so that the game ends after someone ends up at -25,000.

> This seems for me to be a rule for when you play for money. When you play a
> tournament it seems more fair to me that all players are dealers equally
> many times.

Good call, but that doesn’t really change much. Someone that plays so
badly, to end up below -25,000 points, is probably going to prolong
the game so long that not everyone gets to be dealer anyway. The time
limit is a bit too narrow for as slow play as you see in Europe
(usually – I’ve only been to tournaments where there was a 1½ hour
playing time – which should definitely be enough, but certainly is…
not). I don’t know how many games I’ve lost, or placed worse, because
I played my usual strategy of not going for cheap hands such as
yakuhai or fanpai, because I figured I’d get my chance to recover
later in the game, only to find that the game ended because the time
ran out. Alas, there’s nothing to be done about that, since the
playing speed of the European players is unlikely to get any faster
any time soon.

>> Why do you allow first place to just get the points, ie if first place
>> wins with 18,000 points (+9,000 uma for 27,000 points), first place
>> gets +27,000 instead of a final points system (basically dividing
>> final score by 1,000 and removing 30 from it – should even out all the
>> scores on the table to 0).

> This paragraph was quite hard to read, but I think I can guess what you
> mean. It seems unnecessarily complicated; just keeping the simple addition
> as the final result is easier for all to understand. And when you don’t play
> with limits of 25,000 or 30,000 the normalisation to 30 doesn’t seem right.

Unnecessary complicated? I disagree. Indeed, by keeping the scoring
system (of final position at a table) as it is, you’re basically
making the playing field extremely unfair. Allow me to explain – and
normalization is not the solution either, a static system where first
place gets a set amount of points, as do second, third and fourth, is
a lot better. But an example will be better.

Imagine 2 tables, table A and B. On table A plays 1 good player
(player A1) and three bad players. On table B plays 4 good players. On
table A, player A1 is bound to come away from the game with a MASSIVE
points difference, simply because he got lucky and scored a lot off
points from the bad players. On table B the winner, no matter who it
is, will most likely have a really hard time getting any high scoring
hands to score from, since all four players are good at not dealing
into each others’ hands. Now, after the game is finished, the tables
will look like this, despite uma:
Player A1: A lot of points
Player B1 (finished first on table B): very few points plus
Players B2-4: very few points plus or minus
Players A2-4: A lot of points minus

So whereas player A1 played at an easier table, he gets an easier head
start. If this should happen for two or more tables, the chances of
any of the good players on Table B catching up to player A1 is
diminishing by each time they play against good players. No, better
then to have a static point system:

Player A1: 10 points
Player B1 (finished first on table B): 10 points
Player A2/B2 (finished second on either table): 7 points
Player A3/B3 (finished third on either table): 4 points
Player A4/B4 (finished fourth on either table): 1 point

You could also make a small change to this system (change the amount
of points to a somewhat higher amount to avoid ties after several
games, for instance) where the player sitting to the right of the
winner of a table (in these examples, the players sitting to the right
of Player A1 and B1) gets 1 point from the player to the left of the
winner of that table. This can be done because sitting _after_ a good
player is harder than sitting _before_ one (and indeed, it can be said
that the player sitting left of the winner helped making him win).

Not only are you levelling the playing field something enormous, you
make it so that a first place is a first place, no matter how much you
got during the game. I, personally, think it’s a lot more fair against
the skilled players.

Secondly, another change that I think should be made is how tables are
seeded. In the tournaments I’ve been to, it’s been pure chance for all
the tables, so you could easily end up against new players/bad players
during the entire tournament (and thus get a lot better chance at
winning, since the current system is so flawed). Instead, I think that
the tables should be seeded _after_ each game instead of before the
entire tournament. This way, you can make sure that good players face
off against good players, and bad players (or new players, if you
will) face bad/new players. It’s a lot more enjoyable for everyone,
and would again make it so that a really good player stands a better
chance at winning than someone who just gets lucky with his opponents.
I’m willing to help out in forming a system for deciding table
seating, if you want, because I know it can be a bit difficult. Again,
this is not something that’s even covered by the EMA ruleset, and if
you have a standard for how the _game_ is played, I think you should
have a standard for how tournaments are held.

>> Are you planning on fixing the scoresheet (pdf) mistake where you list
>> the yaku in “1 yaku”, “2 yaku” (and so on) – the original name in the
>> tables are “Iihan yaku”, “Ryanhan yaku” (and so on), which means
>> “1-han yaku”, “2-han yaku.” Are you afraid that people will start
>> mistaking yaku and han? (A mistake easily made, but which shouldn’t be
>> a problem during tournaments.)

> I don’t really consider this a mistake. It just a simplification.

No, I’m afraid that it is a mistake; a mistake that’s easy to make
when translating, sure, but it’s still a mistake. Besides, fixing it
shouldn’t be too hard, you have what, 5 different instances of the
mistake, on a pdf that is easy to update? Professionalism is key when
building a standard.

>> Are you going to keep working on the rules – as it is, several
>> situations are missing in the rulebook, making tournament play a
>> rather confused state of affairs. Personally – only my opinion, but
>> still – I would like to see a clear list of how to behave on
>> tournaments. Rules about language (ie, if there are several different
>> nationalities at a table, stay to English), play behaviour (if I’ve
>> drawn my tile, you can’t say “oh sorry, I meant to call that!” and
>> expect me to put the tile back), and what happens if there are riichi
>> sticks on the table but the game ends because time runs out? There are
>> several areas where the rules don’t state anything, and it’s fairly
>> annoying if you’re expecting a professional tournament, but end up
>> playing with people who don’t know what happens in certain situations
>> (open vs closed kan and kan dora, for instance).

> I have an idea to add at some point a bit of etiquette or tournament
> behaviour.
>
> For the things you mention:
> calling tiles: you have three seconds to announce a pung. If you have picked
> a tile, and someone pungs the previous discard within three seconds, you
> will have to put the tile you picked back in the wall. That’s pretty clearly
> stated in the rules (3.3.1), so there shouldn’t be any confusion, exept many
> players don’t read the rule books, or are inexperienced.

My situation was merely an example, nothing else. Again, one of the
requirements for playing in a tournament should be _knowing the
tournament rules_. This doesn’t happen, yet there are no safe guards
to ensure it doesn’t happen. Something less severe than a chombo would
be ideal to deal with breaking tournament etiquette, I’d say; if you
play in a tournament, you better know the rules. Again, this requires
a section on tournament etiquette, which I’d be glad to see as soon as
possible.

> If time runs out, the riichi bets are treated just as if the game ended
> normally, i.e. they are collected by the winner of the game.

I know this. A lot of people don’t, and I’ve not seen it mentioned in
the rules either.

> You seem frustrated that some things are not covered. The rules are trying
> to cover most standard situations. If there are things you find are not
> covered, let me know.

That’s what I’m doing. There’s a reason why the golf rulebook is over
90 pages long (which seems a bit superfluous at first glance). It’s
because it covers every situation that’s ever required a referee call.
I see no reason why there should be any problems adding small things
like these to the rulebook without any major discussion. Likewise, it
should be easy to require all tournaments to acquire the most current
rulebook (and not just a list of errata – they work for a while, but
every now and then the rulebook itself must be updated) before a
tournament, and make certain they know the changes (by keeping the
errata IN the rulebook, and not as a separate document). As sad as it
is to admit it, I’ve been a referee for certain collectible card
games, with a rulebook spanning more than 200 pages, so I’m well aware
of the procedure in changing, or adding, rules.

> Hope to see you soon at one of the many riichi tournaments coming up.
>
> We would love to see you in Denmark! How about 29 August in Aarhus
> http://uk.mahjong.dk/activities/cphopenuk/2009/
>
> or 3 October in Copenhagen?
> http://uk.mahjong.dk/activities/dmriichiuk/2009/
>
> Best regards,
> Tina

Chances of me going to another EMA tournament as things stand (I
really can’t stand the lack of open tanyao, nor the lack of etiquette,
or plain … ignorance, of players regarding the game), I doubt I’ll
go to another one. It’s a pity, since the chance of playing mahjong in
real life is so small here in Sweden.

Way back when mahjong first arrived in America, they started changing
the rules around a lot, and one of the rules they added (which is
still in effect) basically brought the downfall of the entire rule
set. It was the 3 han minimum requirement, and to be honest, I’m
putting it up at the same level as withholding open tanyao from the
rules in EMA (granted, there were other reasons that American mahjong
lost its popularity, but chief among them was this).

Anyway, I appreciate your time, and I might (although unlikely as it
is) drop by a tournament – I enjoy playing against Danish people a lot
more than I enjoy (indeed, I don’t at all) playing against Dutch
players; you have some very skilled players. Seeing how they’d play
with a better defined rule set would be interesting indeed.

I realize this email might come away a bit harsh, but you can’t really
convey tone of voice through an email. You have my support in
spreading mahjong popularity throughout Europe, I just hope that
Europe is ready for something as controversial (or not) as open tanyao
quite soon – I think that allowing it would let people get used to
what a shit hand it actually is in most (not all, definitely)
situations; personally I’d say it’s the way to go about it. Beginners
tend to use open tanyao a lot (anecdotal evidence, I’m afraid), but
quickly realize that it’s only good for certain situations.

Some other things that I need to touch on. The lack of documentation
on the EMA site was (and is, but hopefully due to the restructuring of
aforementioned site) horrible. Keeping logs and other material (from
meetings conducted) would remove some of the opacity surrounding EMA.
Someone outside the inner circle usually have no idea what’s going on,
or what decisions or issues are brought up for discussions, and as
such has quite the hard time giving their input on it. You mentioned
on reachmahjong.com that there had been a discussion about rule
changes recently, but the public, or EMA’s members (as it were)
weren’t really brought up to date on that, or even made aware of it.
If you’re going to act like Europe’s big sister when it comes to
mahjong, everyone should get a chance to know what’s being brought up
for discussion – BEFORE it’s brought up for discussion.

Secondly; I know that EMA runs a ranking system for riichi
tournaments. As it is, the ranking doesn’t serve any purpose other
than patting yourself on the back with, a tool for people to boost
their egos with, nothing else. Are there any plans on making it
actually count for anything, or should players continue to either
ignore it completely (as should currently be the norm, but which
certainly isn’t) or boast about their ranking?

Best regards,

—–
If you hadn’t figured it out yet, >> means it’s from me, > means it’s from Tina. Should be fairly easy to understand though.

So yeah. I’ve not received any answers from her, and judging by the reachmahjong.com post about the subject, any chance that EMA might adopt Open Tanyao seem slim to say the least. Their arguments are weak (“less interaction between players is what I like in my mahjong!”, “European players can’t handle the responsibility.” and so on), but they’re quite the inveteratists.