Friday 16th April: Mister Nobu Rising...

The first time Jaime and I met Mr Hanada he was in the company of the former's trouble'n'strife, or rather more correctly, that esteemed lady was in the company of Mr Hanada since he, being her boss, might well be the owner of the company which employs her.

Be that as it may, the plain and simple fact of the matter is that the Lord and Master of that lady's work space was perfectly pie eyed, quite frankly fried to the tonsils and not in full control of his ambulatory facilities.

So it will be understood that it was through no lack of charity on our own part if we failed to take him entirely at his word when he declared (several times as I recall) that he would like to join us one Friday evening around one the mahjong tables at Kodama jansou.

A week or so later the word went around that Hanada-san really did intend to come along for a game of mahjong on Friday and so Noda, David, Jaime and Nobu were in attendance against his arrival.

I must admit that there was a degree of scepticism as to whether or not he would let his countenance shine forth among us, right up until Hanada-san breezed into the parlour without a totter to be discerned in his gait.

Hanada-san was just in time for the second game. After the usual preliminaries in which the conventions of the game were checked out and the new player apologized for his hopeless ineptitude, Hanada-san entered the lists and within about 60 seconds of play had taken Noda for a 12,000 point Ron to the delight of the foreign party!

The jubilation was not to last, however, as Noda turned out to be the only winner of the second game (+51) and after a flat zero in the third, retired for the evening. 

It was during this game that David was Oya for less than a minute as Noda declared Double Riichi and went out on Ippatsu Tsumo.

One can only wonder what would've happened had Noda elected to play on, but what did happen was one of the most remarkable events in the whole history of the Hiroshima Cock's Eye 3-Player Mahjong Club and Noda had the devil's own luck not to get caught up in it.

The event to which we allude is this, videlicit, that Nobu started winning, and once he had started he just woudn't stop! Now that was an event which we had thought was beyond the event horizon and as such it pretty much disproves everything we've been told about general relativity.

The first person to succumb to the rise of the Nobu was poor old Hanada-san, who had been sinking gently to the mezzanine floor up to that point was swiftly deposited in the coal cellar thereafter. It was Nobu's achieving his first ever Ryanshi as Oya that did it. Hanada-san declared Riichi forgetting that it was Ryanshi, confessed his error and thereby committed his first Chombo of his hitherto brief career at our tables.

Mr Hanada's tray is as empty as the rest of the mahjong parlour...

It may have been David who triggered the change in fortune. David was Oya when Nobu declared Riichi and was able to discard a couple of safe tiles but would need to get rid of the 6-Bamboo Dora if the hand took the fast route to Tempai. With 3s and 9s pretty much out in the open he had already decided to take the risk if the hand developed. It did, and so he did - and lost the bet!

Nobu took over as Oya and went on to rack up +102 in a single game, and then pulled in a further +34 in the final game of the evening, turning a -50 deficit into a +86 victory.

Mr Nobu rising out of the event horizon....

Mister Nobu rising
Nobu rising
Got the Nobu rising
Mister Nobu rising
Got to keep on rising...

Yes, Nobu must keep on rising if he is to excite the discomfiture of a certain lady just above him on the 3PMJ Grand Accumulated Results Table 2010.

The scores for the evening's play were as follows:

Nobu --, -34, -16, +102, +34 = +86
Noda -16, +51, 0, --, -- = +35
Jaime -4, --, +36, +5, -36 = +1
===
David +20, -8, --, -49, 0 = -37
Hanada --, -9, -20, -58,* +2 = -85

* Chombo 

DH
Japanese-Mahjong.com

Going With The Flow At Jeff's Texas Hold'em Party...

How many times do you have to come second at a game before you can win it? When it comes to mahjong, I'm quite happy with "second and in the black", but at Jeff's Texas Hold'em party there is only one winner unless the last two agree to split the pot. I never think of doing that when I'm one of the last two and until now I hadn't got my mitt on the loot...

There were only five players on Saturday evening and so the odds were not too bad, but the winnings were not so huge either... Joe was the first to go out, followed by Jeff's son, Kenta and then Jeff. Atsuko was hoping to fund her family's Sunday barbeque party but the luck was with me.

My game strategy was to build large towers of the colour of the moment and then let it flow away. Call it the wave strategy. It usually involves waving goodbye to your cash. But tonight the tide turned one more time and I escaped with the mula.

David with his winnings...

Thanks for the party, Jeff. I look forward to the next one!

DH
Japanese-Mahjong.com

The Wolf And The Lamb Shall Graze Together...

On Friday 2nd April we were able to have two mahjong tables in action at Kodama mahjong parlour with seven people playing. Noda, David and Jaime were joined by Kenyon, who made his 2010 debut. Tonight was also Ladies Night, with Hatsue-san and Aimi-san in attendance. The seventh player was Nobu who beetled in just as play had started, but not to late to take the fourth seat at the Ladies' table where Noda was holding court and resisting all attempts to elicit from him a gentlemanly promise not to clean up at the ladies' expense...

David thought it might not be such a good thing to let a wolf play among the lambs, but as Jaime sagely noted, it was better to have the the wolf lying down with the lambs of another sheepfold than to have him graze together with us in our own...

Table 1: Noda, Hatsue, Aimi, Nobu
Table 2: David, Jaime, Kenyon

After a couple of games we drew lots once again for tables: The situation was that Noda had built up a commanding lead at the expense of the ladies.

Table 1: David, Kenyon, Nobu
Table 2: Noda, Jaime, Hatsue, Aimi

By the end of the evening Noda was approaching +200 points while Hatsue suffered two Yakitori games and was in minus triple figures. Aimi had also suffered severe losses but was able to recover some ground in the second game.

Meanwhile, Nobu, who had been holding his own, suffered at the hands of Kenyon, who finished the evening in the +90s. David also took advantage of Nobu's generosity and in one case Nobu obliged David with a 5-Character when he had deliberately opted for a tricky Kanchan wait (4_6) on a Oya Riichi with only two 5-Character tiles left in play....

Noda +75, +27, +6 = +108
Kenyon +24, +22, +20, +28 = +94
David -15, -3, +49, -12 = +19
Jaime -9, -19, +3, +37 = +12
===
Aimi -90, +62, -9 = -37
Nobu +12, -69,* -16 = -73
Hatsue +3, -92,** -34** = -123

* Chombo
** Yakitori

So, at the commencement of the second quarter of 2010 the Grand Accumulated Results Table looks like this:

Name	Played	Chombo	Yakitori	Score
Noda	33	0	2	+465
David	38	1	2	+154
Kenyon	4	0	0	+94
Aimi	5	0	0	+26
Ray	4	0	0	-1
Neil	6	2	0	-9
Hide	10	0	0	-68
Jaime	28	0	1	-108
Hatsue	6	0	2	-205
Nobu	16	3	2	-348

David Hurley
Japanese-Mahjong.com