Review of Mahjong Illustrated

Most people are familiar with Mahjong, at least the versions found on the computer, matching two tiles to eventually clear the board, interesting enough, but nowhere near the real game.

This starts with an overview of how the game evolved, from the game of Madiao as it was originally, to the variants played as the game went on and the changes of rulers blocking the playing of games (which I’d never realised, thinking of games as harmless), all the way to the creation of social clubs for it and playing in new countries.

Care is given to explain the difference between the types of tiles, the Characters, Circles, Bamboos, Winds, Dragons, Flowers, Seasons, Animals, and of course, the bonus tiles.  The setup and social traditions of the game are detailed, the washing of the tiles, the stacking and the selection of tiles, and the terminology, such as “Stealing” tiles from other players, referred to as Claiming in this book.

The objectives of the game and the scoring of Pungs, Chows, and Kongs (and Concealed Kongs and other variants) are explained well, this is the part that most people familiar only with computer Mahjong as a matching game fall down, but it also takes the time to go into the nature of strategy and how and why games are played in a certain way, why watching your opponent pays dividends and more importantly, why watching what they throw away pays dividends even moreso.

It even goes so far as to describe proper etiquette, all the way to covering the best types of food to eat so as not to damage the tiles and the superstitions that go with the game.

Superb book, great introduction to the game and easy to understand.

Thanks to the publisher and authors for the free copy in return for the review, my thoughts and words are my own, no incentives were offered or accepted.