To commemorate the different yet similar directions we’re all taking in life, kransom, Sub, and I decided to have a couple of sessions of 3-player mahjong yesterday. We sadly could not find a 4th person, but 3P does well in a pinch; this is exactly the kind of situation it was made for.

For the Otakon mahjong panel, Sub and I mentioned that he’s a little more of a “digital” player and I’m a little more “occult,” which is to say that he looks more towards statistics and probability and I play more with intuition. At least that’s what we like to think. I’m pretty sure we’re both actually pretty bad and these kinds of distinctions don’t apply to our low level. However, please humor me for a moment when I say that yesterday’s session made me realize that I am indeed more of an occult player than Sub.

In one hand, I ended up getting 3 of the Chun, or red dragon tiles, early on. This is a good thing, as it means my hand automatically has value and the ability to win. Then kransom discarded the 4th Chun, and in most cases I would have no reason to steal the tile as the action itself doesn’t make the Chun tiles any more valuable, and in fact in many situations is a bad idea. But I had a hunch, an odd feeling, that I should take the tile.

Now when you declare “kan,” or the fact that you have 4 of the same tile, you get to draw an extra tile. This turned out to be a dud, but soon I realized that my intuition was slightly off. The real surprise was when the next dora indicator was revealed, and it turned out that Chun was the new dora (dora being a sort of supplemental bonus multiplier in mahjong).

So suddenly my 1-multiplier hand became a 5-multiplier hand, bringing its minimum potential score from about 1300 points to 8000 points, and it all had to do with a sudden feeling. In the end, I ended up having a 16000 point hand.

Sometimes I talk to people who play Poker, and from what they’ve told me, the only approach to Poker is scientific or digital. I’m sure that’s fun, but I’ll stick to mahjong.

It was really a great game, and I’m glad to have comrades in both mahjong and anime.