MahJong

Before I delve further into background, I have to tell you about a situation that occurred this past weekend. Namely, I was taught how to play MahJong. I had heard of it, from those internet games where you click on the matching tiles and from The Legend of the Drunken Master with Jackie Chan (his step-mother is constantly gambling), but playing was a different experience.

For those of you who have never played MahJong, imagine a combination of lincoln logs, dice, Scrabble, and Gin Rummy. There is a series of various markings, much like the "suits" in our card decks. However, these are emblazoned onto fairly thick tiles, which could probably also be used as weapons, should the occasion demand it.

To play, you start with:

1) The "lincoln log" phase. After scrambling the tiles, you build a square enclosure by stacking the tiles, face down, in four lines of 17 tiles, stacked two high. It's like making a house out of cards before you start playing. However, this seems to be an important part of the process.

2) The "dice" phase. Three die are thrown into the middle, which are then used to choose the starting player as well as the starting tiles.

4) The "Scrabble" phase. Each person gets 13 tiles (although only 4 at a time), which they then look at and stand up in front of them, just like Scrabble tiles.

5) Rummy. While this game is a lot like rummy, it is also different in important ways. There is a draw and discard phase and you can take someone else's discarded tile, but only if they are the player before you. Differently, you HAVE to have exactly 4 runs of 3 and one double to win. Having a really cool run of 6 means nothing (as I found out, bah!). Also, the discard pile is actually just a big mess in the center. It's sometimes hard to figure out what someone has just discarded! And you have to have EXACTLY four players.

We played at least 5 games, and I never won. I did get pretty close, but someone always got it before me. Oh well, at least there wasn't money on it! Perhaps I should teach them to play Rummy and see how they do?