Mahjong and Maths [sic]

The scoring chart. Did you ever find a single mahjong player who said they liked it or even if they were okay with it? I’ve never found such a unicorn. The scoring chart is universally hated.

It’s easy to blame online play for making it too easy to get by without really becoming too familiar with the score chart. I’ve found players of all skill levels and experience levels who are not comfortable with the score chart. It’s one of the dirty secrets of high level mahjong. If you’re sitting there anxiously worrying about scoring in events, you’re not alone.

Dear reader, the scoring chart also makes me break out in a sweat.

We need some sort of circle where we can all sit down and tell the tales of our saddest scoring moments. The time we realized as we were shuffling that we’d forgotten to count tsumo. Or that time no one reminded you to check the ura. We’ve all been there. We need to break the silence of shame!

One tip I can reveal as part of my professional training that did help was a diagnosis of the problem from one of my mentors. Unfortunately that problem was more fundamental than just a chronic inability sit still long enough to memorise any more numbers than required for a credit card PIN. It was my latent ability (or lack thereof) with numbers.

Modern life does not encourage us to retain and manipulate numbers in our heads. Why do we ever need to do that? Despite what my Maths teacher said would be the case, I walk around with a powerful calculator in my pocket. However, mahjong explicitly challenges us and in most competitive scenes, phones are not allowed at the tables still.

Why I think you all need to get more comfortable with the numbers is less to do with the scoring at the end of the hand. Your opponent can and should wait a few seconds for you to doublecheck. But you do need to be confident with the score differences and identifying exactly what you need to achieve to secure the table position you want. You need to do that in a game where people are not obliged to give you a minute. Being able to do that is what distinguishes a great mahjong player.

Why the [sic] in the title? Everyone says they’re bad at maths and so aren’t comfortable with the scoring. What you’re being asked to do is less about maths and more about information retention and mental arithmetic. So don’t worry about simultaneous equations and those bad maths grades you got in school. This is a much easier skill to train and you can easily build that training into your day to day life.

The advice from my mentor was to total my shopping as I walked around the supermarket and see if I had it right when I paid. It seems mundane but it’s like any exercise, it doesn’t take too much to get that brain muscle working again. Depending on what you do in your life, I am confident there are many similar opportunities.

Now I score semi-happily and I am very confident in completing the score sheets in my head.

Dear reader, you can be that person too.

Any more advice on how you get more comfy with mental arithmetic to prep for the mahjong table in the comments if you have it!