The European Mahjong Association maintains a ranking list of players of both MCR and Riichi, based on their performances in major tournaments. Just like the world golf and tennis rankings this ranking list is fluid as older results fall away to be replaced by more recent ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite being a relative newcomer to the European Mahjong scene, at the latest issue of the Riichi rankings, UK is rated 4th among the European countries based on its players\u2019 performances, behind Denmark, Russia and Germany, but ahead of much more established countries such as France and Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A major contributor to the UK\u2019s progress is Philip Bielby whose spectacular record to date shows two outright wins and two second places in just six tournaments, elevating him to Europe\u2019s currently No. 3 rated player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pride of place among the UK players\u2019 achievements of recent time however goes to John Duckworth, the Guildford based player. John was one of seven UK competitors in the World Riichi Championship recently held in Paris which was organised on a round robin basis initially, followed by a knockout stage contested by the top 32 players. John was one of nine European players to reach this stage of the competition but one of only two to progress to the quarter-final (16). John went on to contest the semi-final stage along with seven Japanese professionals, narrowly missing out on a place in the final was eventually won by Yamai Hiroshi. Both the semi-finals and final featured live on Japanese TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked about what he learned from the event, John said, \u201cPlaying in such a prestigious tournament was a terrific learning experience. The strategies deployed by international competitors\u2019, etiquette and even scoring competencies were a real eye-opener for me. I found that I had to learn and copy some of the methods in order to keep up. One feature in particular is that at this level other players do not wait for you to sort your tiles from the deal. East discards at the earliest opportunity and if you want the tile you\u2019ve got to be quick or the opportunity has gone. It was quite common for North to sort their tiles and then look at the table to find 3 discards already down!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It just goes to show that the old adage applies to Riichi too \u2013 \u201ca fast game is a good game\u201d (and vice versa).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European Mahjong Association maintains a ranking list of players of both MCR and Riichi, based on their performances in major tournaments. Just like the world golf and tennis rankings this ranking list is fluid as older results fall away to be replaced by more recent ones. Despite being a relative newcomer to the European… Read More »UK Moves Up the Rankings<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-european","category-riichi","category-tournament-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":700,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}