I moved from Aarhus to Copenhagen in June 1998, and some days/weeks/months (the details are a bit misty) later I got a visit from a couple of college mates from University of Aarhus and we had an evening of playing board games. Then, at about 3am after I dunno how much wine, but a substantial amount, I was introduced to the game of mahjong. And I was intrigued, but several months would pass until I got a second chance at playing. That second time was at Fastaval, a gaming con, Easter 1999. One of the first hands I got on that occasion was Thirteen Orphans, or as we called it then, Thirteen Degrees of Imperial Treasure, so for several years that hand was special to me, and I made it a couple of times. It's kind of worn off by now, though, and I haven't succeeded with that hand in recent years. I think that means I've improved as a player, actually.
Back then we played Western style rules, dubbed Vanilla Western. It's a rule set that focusses on special hands, and I must say that today I have little fascination for such Western rules. Once you've become an experienced player you'll find there are only very few hands worth your while if you want to go out. And because of the requirements for hands (one suit, max. one chow), there's not much flexibilty, not many choices to make, just a lot of pick-and-discard, waiting for the few tiles that'll advance the hand. I much prefer the Asian styles of mahjong which are much more skill-based.
The trouble with bone-and-bamboo sets is that the tiles are round-backed which means they don't stack well, and they are a bit on the light-weight side for playing, in my opinion. My first mahjong set was used a lot for many years, though. On the picture at the top you can also see that some fives are coloured red, because in October 2001 I learned to play riichi from the guys in Aarhus who had regular games going with a Japanese guy living there who had taught them how to really play mahjong. In November 2001 I organized a Mahjong Day in Copenhagen and invited all my friends and contacts and collegues that might be interested, and afterwards we agreed that regular games was an excellent idea. In the beginning we played Western style, but in the late spring of 2002 we started playing riichi in Copenhagen, and almost immediately decided to play riichi exclusively. Western style was out.
2002 was the year that I first heard of MCR (Mahjong Competition Rules) or as we called it then OIR (Official International Rules). Rule booklets were sent from Japan to a friend of mine who was active on rec.games.mahjong and who had introduced mahjong to others of my friends who got really addicted and persuaded me that this was a game way out of the ordinary. After the ground-breaking world-class mahjong tournament in Tokyo in 2002, European mahjong players were inspired to get together and organize tournaments and it was clear that MCR had the potential of being a unifying rule set. Netherlands and Denmark started talking about making a European Championship. In early 2004 we started practising MCR in Denmark, and in August 2004 we organized the first MCR Danish championship. In preparation of the Open European Mahjong Championship (which took place in Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 2005) contacts between Denmark and Netherlands was strengthened and on the occasion of that first Danish championship we had a visit from four of the Dutch organizers. And here you'll see my first mahjong set starring in Martin Rep's Seven Shifted Pairs. That's a limit hand in MCR.
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