Saturday, March 04, 2006

Parkside Hotel All Over Again!

Parkside Hotel, scene of the last act of the Ash Wednesday Supper, glimmered and glowered at the Poor Little Still-Feeling-Rather-Delicate Cypriot as he disappeared into the Kodama mahjong parlour just across the road.

With the Poor Little Cypriot officially off the sauce the only imbiber at the table tonight was Mr Noda who drank his shochu after the manner of the natives. The whisky was nowhere to be seen. Mrs Noda is back.

Kenyon joined us tonight and was looking for a reversal of fortunes and a way off the bottom of the Grand Accumulated Results Table. In the first game, however, David made the running with a regular supply of swiftly completing hands and managed to rack up 100-
tenbo as Oya and Kenyon's Yakitori took its time about leaving the table. Thus Ray, who had arrived just after the game had started, was able to chomp his way through the yaki-meshi at his leisure... Actually, a whole hour was devoted to the first game, and then just as Ray thought he was in for the second game the starting Oya went to Kenyon who was sat to his right, so Ray was promptly out again!

The second game was Noda's alone. The evening had started with Noda looking as if he was about to give up some more ground at the top of the GAR Table after shedding some points last week (for the first time this year). At one point in the first game David had gone into treble figures on the positive side, but the Noda revival began in the South round of that game so that David went from +102 back down to +39 whereas Noda had recovered to -4 and, as I say, his performance went from strength to strength in the second game.

It has sometimes been observed that when Noda goes
Riichi he is usually waiting for suit tiles. However, David was punished twice for testing this rule, both times with the Green Dragon, Hatsu, once when it was a bonus tile... Noda also took Kenyon for a huge sum - was it 36,000? On another occasion when the hand played out with no result Noda had been lurking on Tenpai with Kokushimusou. The result of all this was that Kenyon more than doubled his losses and David gave back much of his early winnings while Ray managed to keep his losses in single figures.

Then, in the third game of the evening, it turned out that Noda had peaked as Ray emerged to repeat his act of playing just a couple of games and coming out ahead! Noda was hit the hardest by Ray's run, but he still finished in the black and well ahead at the top of the GAR Table. Ray's run sent David into the red for the evening. Kenyon finished that game second and in the black, but it was not enough to do anything for him as he had added so much lead to the anchor that holds him at the bottom.

Ray, however, has moved up into the black half of the GAR Table. Here are the results:

Ray: --, -8, +55 = +47
Noda: -4, +81, -38 = +39
===
David: +39, -29, -22 = -12
Kenyon: -35, -44, +5 = -74

With Noda and David knackered the game shut down at 11pm and each of the four players headed for home in a different direction and by a different means. Noda drove, Kenyon cycled, David caught the tram and Ray, well Ray crossed the road and straight into...

Parkside Hotel!


David Hurley
japanese-mahjong.com
japanese-games-shop.com
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