The third online tournament sponsored by the Mahjongtime platform took place over the weekend of 14th/15th January 2023.
Once again, a healthy cohort of international players joined the UK entrants to compete for the trophies and sponsored cash prizes generously donated by Mahjongtime.com Irina Spelincova, won four and took two second places from the eight hanchan, recording only one negative score on the way, emerged victorious with Katarzyna Chabelski next closest beating the leading UK player Sonia Yagi into overall third place.
As the best UK player, Sonia took the UK national trophy to add to her collection. Jay LI and Martin Lester were the other award winners in the podium positions among UK players.
Online play was certainly a boon during the times of Covid constraints and has retained its appeal for many during the cold winter evenings. The need to take quick decisions in online play is excellent training for the face-to-face game, and by eliminating the requirement for activities such as wall building and score calculation, it does enable a lot of play to be packed into a conveniently short time frame. Many hanchans finished comfortably within the 55 minutes allowed.
Back in the real world, the European Mahjong Association tournament programme is rapidly filling up. The next UK-based event will be in Twickenham, and is already full! https://www.mahjongtwickenham.com/