Learning Mahjong MCR

I realized we have a Mahjong place in Stockholm called Tiger Mahjong. A few days ago, they posted a message on their Discord channel, looking for someone to fill a table. I, with a high level of confidence from one session of playing mahjong, decided to join. Although to be sure, I did check beforehand to see if beginners were welcome, and they said yes.

Little did I know that even though the people were welcoming, the game was not! It was quite different from the mahjong I knew! This version was called MCR, and boy oh boy, it was complicated!

I was handed a piece of paper filled with different rules, but I couldn’t even understand what I was looking at! As I was trying to decipher the rules, people sat down at the table, and the game started.

So there I was, sitting at the table with no idea about the rules of the game, trying to survive. I was struggling to make sense of the rules, but everything was happening so fast that I didn’t have the chance to formulate anything in my head.

As we went through the game, I decided to stick to the basics: Chow and Pung my way through the tiles, and by opening up my hand, get the chance to know when I can declare “Hu”.

To my surprise, I actually managed to win one game, but of course I lost miserably at the end.

Before leaving, I asked the participants about resources and the mobile version that I could have on my phone (since there are so many different variants of the game), and with that, I headed out.

Even though I totally sucked at the game, I really enjoyed the tense environment and the ceremonial feel. So I decided to spend a few hours and learn a bit about the game during the weekend.

How to learn Mahjong MCR

I think the best way might be first getting used to the tiles: find one of those matching tile games and train your eyes to recognize the difference between them, especially numbers and honor tiles (winds and dragons)

The best starting point for playing the real game is asking someone to explain the basics and help you to play Mahjong without the points. Just get comfortable arranging the tiles and learn how to call Pung and Chow. From what I’ve heard, Taiwanese Mahjong is simpler, so maybe you can start by looking into that.

At this point you should be ready to play MCR. It is very helpful to have someone who can help you get off the ground because, to my surprise, I couldn’t find any good videos on it. Having someone to correct your mistakes and explain the rules can save you so much time.

You can start learning about the score by looking at Beginner’s Guide to Chinese Mahjong (MCR). This should give you enough foundation so you can start counting. After that, it’s good to get comfortable with one of the cheat sheets available online. I like this one.

Now that you know about the score, it’s time to practice. You can do so by installing the Mahjong 13 Tiles app. There’s also a nice web version at Mahjongo.

When you feel a bit more comfortable, you can go and check the definitive guide, which is the Mahjong Competition Rules book. It’s rather lengthy, but I think that should be the main source.

One last link is this page, which gives you a “calculator” for the scores. This should be quite handy when you have just started.

Just jump right into it

I’m quite surprised by the great result I got from my reckless act of joining a table to play a game that I knew barely anything about. The whole time I was apologetic and worried about making the game less fun for others, but thankfully everyone was kind enough to not make me feel excluded. It was a rather uncomfortable situation to be in, but I think exactly because of that I became way more confident in learning the game by myself and practicing it. Considering the complicated set of rules, I’m delighted with my progress in the short time I dedicated to learning the game.

I have seen this pattern before: facing the difficulty without much preparation gives me a huge boost in my confidence and knowledge. It’s like going through a crash course. The outcome I get compared to the time I spent is significantly higher than when I go through a slower, more comfortable path. For example, I checked some videos before going to the event, but it would have taken me way longer to be where I am in the game if I had taken that route.

That’s a lesson to be learned here, I guess.

Anyway, let me check their Discord channel… When is the next event?