Friday 6th July: "I Do Not Create, I Transmit."

In this evening's first game Noda and David were completing hands at the expense of Jaime until Jaime finally completed a hand to get rid of his Yakitori tessera and become the last Oya. At that point fortunes reversed. Fortune now shone upon Jaime and presented him with a series of hands that swiftly set themselves up while David and Noda wilted before the heat. So the final score of the first game was an unexpected +91 for Jaime with the other two sharing the pain more or less equally.

Hide-san slotted into the spare chair for a more evenly fought second game in which David managed to finish a few thousand points up, enough to grab all the points as the other players were all slightly down.

Everybody changed seats for the third and fourth games, with David and Jaime both ending up sitting opposite their starting seats and therefore still sat in a similar relation to each other, with Jaime on David's right, Noda opposite (instead of on the left) and Hide-san on the left (instead of opposite). David ended up in the seat he had deliberately avoided on arriving at the parlour, preferring the security of the corner seat even if it did mean sitting on Noda's right and having to play while he was Oya, the compensating advantage being that Noda would be out of the games in which David was Oya. However, the seat that David had rejected turned out to be chief corner stone of his evening.

But first, Hide-san made his presence felt in the third game. One of the hands he won drew a cry of anguish from Jaime, who had given away the winning tile to preserve a Tempai wait on a potential Suuanko hand. Hide was the only winner of the third game.

We turn now to the fourth game. Confucius, who is credulously affirmed by some to be the inventer of mahjong, was once heard to say,

I do not create, I transmit.

It was rather like that in the fourth game. Fortune now smiled on David. He did not do anything, it was done through him. He was merely the transmitter. The transmitter nearly blew a fuse once or twice, which is to say that although David did not create his fortune he did almost destroy its transmission through his hands in the fourth game.

David was the starting Oya and just a few tiles into the hand he went out on Jaime's discard for a Haneman score. Just a few tiles into the second hand, exactly the same thing happened.

There then followed a farcical moment when David popped out a tile without having got all their tiles in his hands, but he just as quickly popped it back into his hand again and Chombo claims were not pressed home...

Hide-san, who was not in the game, started to take an interest in David's hands and marvelled at the way hands formed themselves. A potential Ichitonkan (1-9) eventually completed itself when the 5-Coins plopped into place setting up a two-tile Bamboo wait, which duly appeared from off the wall. In the next hand a "Bamboo forest" grew almost spontaneously and when the 7-Bamboo appeared it was only with a nudge from Hide-san that David realized that he had completed another hand!

Jaime then did the honours for the completion of a Chitoi hand and I forget what else. At one stage in the game Jaime was in debt to David to the tune of 65,000 points, and then began to slide into debt with Noda who went out on the eighth hand of David's reign.

Jaime's last shot as Oya was short lived, and David gave away a tile to Hide-san and then a red 5-Bamboo to Jaime to wrap the game up as the only winner on +116.

Jaime would have stayed for a fifth game and a chance to recover losses, but Noda and David both wanted to shut up shop and so that was that.

In tonight's session, each game ended with only one winner, with David winning two, Jaime and Hide-san one each and Noda none. So David pushes ahead into new territory and Noda falls back but nobody changes places on the Grand Accumulated Points Chart.

David -48, +21, -6, +116 = +83
Hide --, -9, +33, -4 = +20
===
Jaime +91, -3, -22, -98 = -32
Noda -43, -9, -5, -14 = -71

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