{"id":779,"date":"2022-09-04T16:33:28","date_gmt":"2022-09-04T16:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/neve\/?p=779"},"modified":"2022-09-04T17:00:35","modified_gmt":"2022-09-04T17:00:35","slug":"world-riichi-championships-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/04\/world-riichi-championships-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"World Riichi Championships 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The third edition of the World Riichi Championships took place in Vienna, in August 2022. There were 152 hopefuls from a record 34 countries. The event had been postponed from 2020 and 2021 due to the global health pandemic. Final numbers were a little lower than planned following the exclusion of Russian\/Belarussian players due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, plus some residual caution from a few players due to Covid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Seven UK players represented the UK at the tournament; Mickey Donaghy, Martin Lester, Chris Endicott, Russell Chan, Philip Bielby, Gemma Sakamoto and John Duckworth. Mickey Donaghy was the highest-placed UK player in 46th place after a strong finish. Martin Lester was regularly in contention as a top 20 player, and Chris Endicott was the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> UK player to finish in the top half of the table. Ultimately, however, the UK players were short of smiles from the Mahjong gods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The top two places at the event went to Japanese players Nara Keijun and Satoshi Fujisaki, who finished first and second, respectively. However, in a departure from previous finals, non-Japanese players contested the other two places. Valentin Courtois (France) and Anna Zubenko (Ukraine) finished 3<sup>rd<\/sup> and 4<sup>th <\/sup>respectively. A recording of the semi-finals and final are available on YouTube using these links:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"nv-iframe-embed\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u7b2c\uff13\u56de\u30ea\u30fc\u30c1\u9ebb\u96c0\u4e16\u754c\u9078\u624b\u6a29~\u6700\u7d42\u65e5~\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OFM1244ugIA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption>Semi Finals (Japanese commentary)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"nv-iframe-embed\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The 3rd Reach Mahjong World Championship ~Final game~\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4WI0gzJdFVM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption>Finals<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The third edition of the World Riichi Championships took place in Vienna, in August 2022. There were 152 hopefuls from a record 34 countries. The event had been postponed from 2020 and 2021 due to the global health pandemic. Final numbers were a little lower than planned following the exclusion of Russian\/Belarussian players due to&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/04\/world-riichi-championships-2022\/\" class=\"\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">World Riichi Championships 2022<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":787,"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":[22,18,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-riichi","category-tournament-news","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ukmahjong.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}