American mahjong

American mahjong, also spelled mah jongg, is a variant of the Chinese game mahjong. It is distinct from Asian mahjong in several ways. American mahjong utilizes racks to hold each player's tiles, jokers, and "Hands and Rules" score cards. It has several distinct gameplay mechanics such as "The Charleston",[1] which is a set of required passes, and optional passing of the tiles.

Not to be confused with Mahjong solitaire.
Mahjong tiles with Latin letters and Arabic numerals added for an American audience

American mahjong is played with four players using tiles stamped with Chinese symbols. The goal of the game is to be the first, by picking and discarding, to match one's tiles to a specific hand from the annually distributed scorecard published by the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL) and American Mah-Jongg Association (AMJA).[2] Scoring is done by matching the points assigned to each pre-determined hand on the annually distributed NMJL card & AMJA card.

History

Joseph Park Babcock, a representative of the Standard Oil Company in Shanghai, was importing mahjong sets to the United States in great numbers by 1923. To increase interest in the game, which was sometimes impenetrable to Westerners, he rewrote and published new, more simplistic rules that became the American standard. When the National Mah Jongg League, Inc. published a volume of "Official American Rules" in 1935, the American style further morphed into a very distinct form.[3]

American mah jongg tournament standards and rules were established in 1986, when the National Mah Jongg League and Mah Jongg Madness jointly conducted their first annual Mah Jongg Tournament at Sea. This tradition of championship tournaments at sea continued for over 34 years. Now there are American mah jongg tournaments conducted throughout the United States, and consist of players from America and Canada. Mah Jongg Madness conducts more than a dozen tournaments a year and an annual NMJL cruise culminates in the National Mah Jongg Convention in Las Vegas every March.

Tournaments are now played according to the STANDARDIZED MAH JONGG TOURNAMENT RULES, which were codified and published in 2005. https://mahjongg.org/index.php/rules In 2011, MAH JONGG MASTER POINTS (MJMP) were established to post an individual's tournament scores. The MJMP website formulates the scores (awarding bonus points to the top ten (10) winners of an event), and ranking the individual players. There are 10 ranks for players, based on the accumulation of these points. http://www.mahjonggmasterpoints.com

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gollark: ?remind 666d Initiating crab protocols.
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References
  1. How to Play American Mahjong
  2. Sandberg, Elaine (2010), Mah Jongg for Fun (1st ed.), Yellow Mountain Imports, p. 4
  3. The History of Mahjong Archived August 15, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
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