The popularity of mahjong, the 19th century Chinese tabletop game, has exploded in recent years. Spots have been popping up around the country and the game is gaining popularity with younger players. While the largest clubs in the country are in New York and San Francisco, one of Philly’s popular clubs stands apart from the rest by having its own space now.
Philly Mah-Jawn Mahjong Club moved into its new clubhouse space on the second floor of the Corn Exchange Building in Old City in March, with a grand opening planned for Aug. 8 and 9 after it’s fully set up.
“To say that this is a clubhouse is really true, because … the goal is just to give everyone a space to play,” said Mike Lee, the president of the club.
Founded in 2018, the club originally met at Pasqually’s Pizza, Beer & Wine in West Philly. They moved to the now-closed Thirsty Dice in Spring Garden, then Queen & Rook Game Cafe on South Street.
Much has changed as the group worked toward securing a home. They’ve gone from hand-shuffling tiles to having several state-of-the-art auto-shuffling tables donated by club members.
The group has recently gone up to seven active officers from four, all of whom balance the club obligations with full-time jobs. Membership fees currently go toward covering rent. All the furniture and equipment at the location has been donated or purchased through donations. Lee said the group is currently applying for non-profit status.
Like poker, there are around 40 variations of mahjong played around the world. The most popular — which Philly Mah-Jawn plays — is Japanese or riichi mahjong, which grew in popularity partly because it has been featured in Japanese media, such as video games and anime.
The COVID-19 pandemic also helped boost the popularity of riichi mahjong, with many people playing virtually at online services, including Tenhou, Riichi City and Mahjong Soul, or coming across it in video games like the “Yakuza” franchise.
“During COVID, it entered a lot of people’s head spaces that mahjong was a game that was fun,” Lee said. “It didn’t need to be some kind of dark, ‘gambly,’ smoky thing that a lot of people think about when they think mahjong.”
Lee said that the club’s membership grew exponentially when the pandemic’s lockdown ended and players started meeting at Thirsty Dice.
The club also hosts the Philadelphia Riichi Open. The second year annual tournament is expected to draw players from across North America and will be held at the Old Pine Community Center on Nov. 8 and 9, with free play days at the clubhouse Nov. 6, 7 and 10.
‘A mind sport’
Asking mahjong players to compare it to other games is kind of like building a Frankenstein’s monster of other centuries-old tabletop games. There’s a poker body to it, built with a dominoes skeleton and some limbs that resemble bridge and rummy, all sewn together by some strategic patches of chess and go.
“I would consider it more of a mind sport,” Edward Zeng, a member of the club and Canada’s top-ranked mahjong player. “I’d consider riichi mahjong and some variations of mahjong as mind sports.”
Essentially, four players are dealt 13 suited, numbered and honor tiles from the 136 available. They then take turns picking face-down tiles from the “wall” until the first person builds a winning sequence, or “yaku,” of 14 tiles — typically four sets of three plus one matching pair —- or they run out of selectable tiles. The types of yaku have assigned values, or “han,” based on the probability of getting them (like poker hands). There are wagers and payments associated with the scoring, and keeping track of that is where the game can start to get complicated. While the game involves exchanging matchstick-style chips of various values, the club — and its lease — does not allow actual gambling.
Zeng, a software engineer with an undergraduate degree in math and computer science from the University of British Columbia and a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, said that a math and numbers background helps to understand the game, but it’s not a requirement.
“Having a mathematical background definitely helps. I would say it helps with your reasoning ability and your understanding of the game, kind of like that you’re probabilistic like intuition,” Zeng said. “But that definitely doesn’t mean that you can’t get really good at this game without a really strong math background. It’s a lot of just fundamentals, pattern recognition, and then just building that intuition through repetition, playing the game more, learning more.”
What mainly differentiates it from deterministic games like chess and go — and makes it more fun for players like Zeng — is that the players are working with incomplete information. Your potentially amazing winning hand is always at the mercy of the unpredictable draw of the wall tiles that are face down at the start of each round, 14 of which are unusable in a “dead wall” from the start of the round. That levels the playing field quite a bit.
“In games like chess it’s very hard to beat an opponent that’s better than you, because they will always see further ahead than you,” Zeng said. “But in mahjong, sometimes you can get lucky, and that’s what I think is the best appeal of the game to me.”
The group has held teaching workshops at venues, including the Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia, where children as young as 8 years old played. The game’s easy to pick up, but takes most folks a lifetime to master. This Billy Penn reporter’s first hour of open hand mahjong coached by Lee and club secretary Sarah Allen left us with a basic grasp of the tile types and how to build a winning hand.
New club member Lucas Sowa had been playing Mahjong Soul. He said that after clearing the initial hurdle of knowing when to make certain calls himself, rather than letting a virtual assistant do it for him, it was more fun seeing the game play out in a welcoming group of real people.
“It’s a lot more satisfying when you do get wins, or when you are getting what you’re looking for,” Sowa said. “I think it’s also just more fun to be around people playing it, like actually being able to see faces and being able to talk.”
That camaraderie and community around the table is what others enjoy, too.
“You get to just meet a bunch of different people, because you need four people to play. That’s like at least three other people you’re talking to, right?” Zeng said.
That sense of community has helped grow the club. Group members chip in however they can. Some donated the expensive equipment like the auto-shuffling tables. Another member designed and 3D-printed custom tiles. Others painted a mural of the club’s name and logo in front of Philly landmarks and mahjong tiles on one of the club’s walls.
The group already has a “Yakuman” board on one of its walls, which includes Polaroid style prints of the players who manage to get a special class of rare, high-scoring yaku sequences — like a wall of fame for getting a royal flush in poker or a turkey in bowling.
Other ways that Lee said the group hopes to personalize the space is by putting up photos of members’ travels to mahjong events outside of Philly. Club members were at New York’s Riichi Nomi Open, the biggest annual tournament in the nation, this past weekend.
Lee said the club aims to advertise to attract a lot of new players and expand operations. While they’re open to incorporating some of the different versions of the games, the main focus is centered on the Japanese riichi variation.
“We’re kind of unapologetically mahjong … If you want to play whatever version you want, you can play it, but it’s going to be for mahjong. That’s the end goal,” Lee said.
When and where?
Philly Mah-Jawn Mahjong Club is open from 7 to 11 p.m. on Fridays, from noon to 8 p.m. on Saturdays and from 2 to 8 p.m on Sundays. They also meet Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 10 p.m. at the King of Prussia Bridge Club.
The introductory membership rate is $20 for the whole year, then a subsequent daily fee of $10 when the members come in and play. The introductory membership payment also covers the day’s fee to play on the day you join the club. The club also has a “Mangan” membership that is $60 for the year and gets you a stampcard that builds up to a free 10th visit, as well as access to members-only tournaments, which vary slightly in rule set.
There’s a non-members time block from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturdays, where the club officers offer teaching and advice for walk-in players of all levels. The non-members pay the $10 day fee to play in that time window, and can add another $10 to secure a membership afterwards.
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