Boston Bubbe--Part ONE

Greetings and salutations from Bubbe, just back from a Destination Mah Jongg weekend tournament in Waltham (just outside Boston), Massachusetts!

Who doesn’t love summers in New England? Apparently no one—that is to say, EVERYONE loves summer in New England, as evidenced by the tremendous traffic we encountered on the Mass Pike, Route 84, and the Merritt Parkway, but it was worth every minute to spend time with a lovely group of 83 women and one man, all fixated on mah jongg.

By the way, Destination Mah Jongg is one of many excellent organizations that run three-day tournaments. They are (at minimum) 12 rounds, starting with three the first evening, three (or more) round sessions the next day both in the morning and afternoon, and a final morning session on the third day. Sometimes participants also join in three-round evening “mini-tournaments.” Bubbe has been fortunate to participate in similar events with Mah Jongg Madness, Mah Jongg at the Kalahari Resort, and Four Seasons MahJongg, as well.

If you want to play mah jongg to your heart’s content, tournaments provide the perfect opportunity. Over the years, your Bubbe has used the 48+ games as a way of testing hypotheses about her own play. In fact, at every table I sat at, I whipped out my little hotel note pad and asked if the other players minded if I kept notes.

This weekend, I was a “West,” so I had a lot more liberty to take notes. It’s very hard to do so as an East, because East’s responsibility includes keeping track of everyone’s score sheet. As a West, I moved from table to table for all twelve rounds. Everyone was very friendly and some were downright hilarious; I made many new friends from New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont—and some who even travelled from as far as California, Florida, and Washington State!

Anyway…Bubbe took copious notes and will get into some heavy details in later posts, but here are some very brief examples of what I tested.

JOKERS, FLOWERS, AND THE DEAL: 

Everybody whines that they “never get any jokers,” but is this really true? Sometimes you will get none, but other times you will get one, two, or even three—based on probability and the total number of tiles available, I estimate that a player will average 2/3 of a Joker and Flower per deal.

How did this bear out in reality? In each of the 48 games, I wrote down how many Jokers and Flowers I was dealt. In total, I received 32 Jokers and 36 Flowers. Quick, get out your calculators: that’s 32/48 or 2/3 of a Joker and 36/48 or 3/4 of a Flower. Pretty spot on, I’d say!! The most Jokers I was ever dealt was THREE; the most Flowers I received was FOUR. And guess what? In each of those situations, I won the hand!!

CHANGING HANDS:

It always drives me crazy when a bettor, in making her selection, wants to know what each player is “going for.” Because I pick and throw so many tiles, and other tiles go dead because of other players’ discards, my plan after the Charleston often has little bearing on what I end up playing. I estimate that I change my hand after the Charleston about half the time (50%).

How did this bear out in reality? After the Charleston I would look at my hand and think about which hand made sense for THOSE tiles.  I also recorded where my hand actually ended up. Strictly looking at the hands I won, 46% were exactly the hand I expected after the Charleston; 54% of my winning hands were NOT what I expected when I started.

JOKERS, JOKERS, JOKERS:

This particular tournament awards a 20-point bonus for every winning hand that is “jokerless”: I don’t mean a Singles and Pairs hand, I mean a hand that includes Pungs and Kongs yet doesn’t use any Jokers (obviously a Quint needs Jokers).  That bonus is hard to get! I estimate that most winning (non-Singles and Pairs) hands include at least one joker. 

How did this bear out in reality? Of MY winning (non-Singles and Pairs) hands, 92% used Jokers!! I only got the 20-point bonus once! Of all the “regular” (non-Wall, non-Singles and Pairs) games at my tables, only two were jokerless. In other words, fully 95% of all winning non-Singles and Pairs hands included Jokers!!

WHAT WAS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL HAND?

I know everyone has inherent biases when they look at their tiles. Some of us, like Bubbe, are suckers for a Soap—if we see a White Dragon, we’re off to the Year section of the card! Others really love to play Winds, or 369, or Like Numbers. I often tell about a former student who would only play “Dots” because she didn’t understand the Bams or Craks.

In my book, Searching for Bubbe Fischer, I encourage you to know the WHOLE card, not just any one section. Don’t shy away from Quints or Singles and Pairs. Don’t let tri-color (three suit) hands intimidate you. 

So, did I stay in one section of the card? Was any one type of hand more attainable than another? I will look at this issue more closely in another article.

For now, I will talk about one specific hand that has received a lot of “buzz” this year: “CR5,” otherwise known as FFF 1111 2222 DDD with any two consecutive numbers and matching Dragons. It doesn’t require any pairs (as opposed to previous years when either the Dragons or the Flowers were a pair); it’s easy to collect. Some say that CR5 is the most popular, winnable hand.

How did this bear out in reality? Of MY winning hands, 31 percent were CR5! Among my opponents, 20 percent of the wins used CR5, so a total of 24 percent of all wins I saw were CR5. That is ONE hand of over 60 on the card, and yet it was the winning hand in almost a quarter of all games!!!

I think this kind of information is fascinating. If you do, too, please drop me a line at bubbefischer@gmail.com and ask me what else to look into. I love hearing from you!

Talk to you soon.

Bubbe Fischer