Since 2019, UTD students have fought, strategized and stolen from each other on Friday nights. I decided to join them by attending a meeting of the Riichi Mahjong club.
Popular across Asia with roots in the 19th century, mahjong is a tile-based game about tactics, strategy and dramatic tile stealing. Each tile has a suit labeled with a Chinese character either representing numbers, dragons or wind directions. The gameplay mainly involves taking a tile, either keeping or tossing it, or even ponging — stealing — another person’s tile. Riichi mahjong is a Japanese variant on the game that places more emphasis on defensive and risk-taking gameplay. Before going to the first meeting of UTD’s Riichi Mahjong club, I watched online videos of mahjong gameplay showing players quiet, focused and driven; their strategies seemingly based on skill. Walking into the Founder’s classroom for an afternoon of play, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
My obvious ignorance of how to perform the simplest turns wasn’t met with frustration, but with excitement for having another player.
The players were indeed focused and driven, but they were also very inclusive of new members and rather vocal. The players laughed, chatted and lightly trash-talked their opponents as well as themselves. The setting was anything but stressful, with Japanese pop playing in the background and the scattering of tiles on tabletops bringing everyone to a flow state.
My obvious ignorance of how to perform the simplest turns wasn’t met with frustration, but with excitement for having another player. The most important concept turned out to be yaku, which is like a five-card hand — think of a royal flush in poker — except it comprises 14 tiles. The yaku is required for winning the game. Without it, your hand is moot, said computer science sophomore and club president Tyler Keonine. This yaku is what makes Riichi different from other mahjong versions.
“Yaku is a winning condition,” Keonine said. “You need this combination to win and there are thousands of combinations to win with.”
These yaku hands can contain tiles from the numbers, circles and bamboo suits, higher-valued tiles of the same three suits called aka, as well as “honor tiles” such as winds and dragons. There are tens of yaku hands but for beginners, including myself, there are three to know: riichi, tanyao and yakuhai. Riichi, for example, is where you have four sets of three sequences (4,5,6) and/or triplets (1, 1, 1), with the last two tiles being the same tile. That might look like having 1, 2, 3 in numbers suit; a set of 4, 4, 4 in bamboo suit; a set of three north winds; and finally, the last two tiles being two red dragons. The randomness in this hand makes it the easiest for beginners to get their bearings in the game.
The best way to learn is through baptism by fire — where you’re thrown into the game without knowing anything besides the fact that you know nothing.
Of course, with any new game, the best way to learn is through baptism by fire — where you’re thrown into the game without knowing anything besides the fact that you know nothing. During gameplay, I posed numerous questions, such as: “Why is this five of a bamboo suit red, but this same five of bamboo is black?”, “Why was my turn skipped?” and “Can I steal this tile from you?”. The more experienced members taught me by not only answering but elaborating on my questions. “That bamboo tile is red because it has more points; this helps in the end if you win.” “You were skipped because another player stole a tile and the game returned to his turn.” “Yes, you can steal that tile, but now your hand is partially exposed to your opponents.” Every game was different, with different questions and new confusion, but that only spurred me to learn another concept in the game. With any new hobby comes the need to devote time toward learning.
Club secretary Emily Lu, an accounting sophomore, said she found riichi mahjong confusing at first because of the complexity of yaku hands, the need to remember them and that any action could immediately demolish her chances of winning. But consistently playing and being involved not only gives you exposure, but also allows you to learn new situations in real time.
“When I first started learning riichi, I had no idea what was happening and there was no framework,” Lu said. “But I would see other players, you see what they do and learn from them.”
Casually conversing while playing with Keonine and Lu, I learned that Keonine was the first to join an older mahjong club and remarked that the older club, originally, didn’t have that many and was almost dead. But with combined efforts from both Keonine and Lu, they were able to revive the club and pull in new members that were interested in mahjong but wanting to play the riichi version specifically.
The game’s beauty comes from spotting tiles you may need, giving up a tile you don’t need or the regret of not stealing another player’s tile fast enough, all in the span of seconds.
Time flew by. Gameplay started at 12 p.m. and ended at 6:45 p.m. that day, and I spent the whole time moving tiles without ever feeling bored, but rather energetic and passionate to play game after game. The energy comes from riichi’s fast pace: getting into the groove of first seeing your tiles, trying to form a strategy for yaku hands, figuring out what tiles to give up and seeing what others are giving up certainly gets the heart pumping. Unlike card games such as Texas hold’em or poker, the game’s beauty comes from spotting tiles you may need, giving up a tile you don’t need or the regret of not stealing another player’s tile fast enough, all in the span of seconds. That regret isn’t maddening, it’s livening.
Keonine said he is able to accept the regret and cope with misfortunes such as a bad hand, ponging the wrong tile or having consecutive bad games. For me, losing the first five games was annoying but after that, my skin thickened and I was able to understand that winning, or even having a barely-decent hand, is rare in riichi. The focus diverted to trying to have a good time.
“That makes me strong as a person,” Keonine said. “You keep continuously losing to the point where losing doesn’t affect you.”
Playing with the riichi club provides numerous benefits besides just passing the time: the game builds skills in working in a fast-paced environment, learning to strategize with what’s given to you, knowing when to give something up to better yourself and most importantly, making friends. Besides playing recreationally, Keonine said some members participate in online tournaments with outside organizations and other UTD clubs, such as the Chinese Student Association. Even though it was difficult to understand all of mahjong’s intricacies as a beginner and earning a very probable 0–30–win streak, I’m still going to return to play and experience the same excitement I had the first time.
“We don’t play with money and there’s always a new hand, you might win the next one, right?” Keonine said. “We’re just trying to make the craziest hand, the rarest hand; losing doesn’t matter but if you win big, then it’s really fun.”
The club meets in-person every Monday from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Friday from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. as well as online on Saturdays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. with no one needing to bring their own mahjong set or know the fundamental rules. The club’s main platform, a Discord server, can be accessed through a link on their Instagram, @utd_riichi. If one wishes to arrive at their first meeting with some knowledge, they can utilize the beginner resources found on the Linktree as well as in their Discord server.