Mah-Jong (#339, Topic G)

On Lunar New Year's eve, my wife and I were invited to a dinner party, which was preceded by playing Mah-Jong for a few hours (#337). While I have written a book on this game (The Happy Game of Mah-Jong, 1996), for want of time, I rarely play. The last time I played was probably five years ago, on a cruise from Los Angeles to Mexico, with my sister, brother-in-law, and their friends. Thus, the hostess for the New Year's eve party was hesitant to invite me to play, for fear that I was too rusty. In reality, Mah-Jong is a simple game to learn and, once learned, can be played even after an absence of decades. (I am, of course, referrning to the classical Chinese version of Mah-Jong. In the American version, "rules are frequently changed, winning hands are arbitrarily determined, a simple and happy game made mercilessly rigid and incomprehensible" (quoting from the preface to my book). Mah-Jong is a good vehicle to keep one's mind active (playing Mah-Jong is encouraged in senior centers, both here and in China); conversely, a person with an active mind usually plays well. Playing well means (1) formulating an overall plan for the hand early (not unlike playing declarer in a bridge game, where one decides on a plan before playing the first card from dummy), (2) playing with little hesitation (since subsequent plays are mere executions of this overall plan), (3) pausing only when new tiles picked up offer a new challenge, requiring one to evaluate whether it is cost-effective to work toward an even higher-scoring combination (in bridge, when confronted with an unfavorable trump distribution, the declarer, to fulfill the contract, must decide whether to squeeze, to throw in, and such). In any case, on this New Year's eve, I had a good account of myself, being the big winner at our table; two of the highest scoring hands were by me. (Indeed, playing on the Mexico cruise, one of my winning hands had the highest score.) True, I made a few mistakes (discarding a tile that would have allowed me to move in a more lucrative direction and such); but, also true to the game, I never attempted to retrieve the discarded tile. I simply charged that to experience. After the game, the hostess wondered whether I could fill in (to be the fourth) as needed; I plan to play my next game in five years' time.