Seattle Riichi Mahjong Club
| Country | USA |
|---|---|
| Location | Seattle |
| Inception | 2011 |
| Leader | Edwin Dizon |
The Seattle Riichi Mahjong Club (SRMC) is an mahjong group that meets weekly in the Seattle area. There are meetings on Mondays in Redmond on the Microsoft campus, as well as meetings on Saturdays at Seattle University. The group runs a league where the top four members each quarter participate in a quarterfinal, with the yearly finals held between the winners of all four quarters. The SRMC also runs a mahjong room each year at SakuraCon, the Seattle anime convention. The SakuraCon Mahjong Room runs 24 hours during the convention and features hands-on teaching sessions, panels, tutorials, tournaments, mahjong video games, lets plays, anime viewings, and more.
Game rules
SRMC meetups use WRC rules, the with exception of chombos penalties only being 8k instead of 20k to allow for more casual play and to be more hospitable for new players. Monday meetups feature two timed hanchan, either 90 minutes for 4 experience players, or 105 minutes for 5 player games or games that include newer players. Saturday meetups feature untimed tonpussens.
5 Player Rules
To better involve everyone at attendance at a club meeting, even if the number of people is not a multiple of four, a five player variant of mahjong was devised. Any given meeting can then be played with as many 4 or 5 player tables as is needed to seat everyone.
To play 5 player mahjong, a player is selected to sit out at the beginning of the game. When each dealership is lost, the outgoing dealer leaves the table and is replaced by the player who was sitting out, who will now sit North. Players will take their point sticks (and the round token if they are first dealer) off the table when they are sitting out. A hanchan will also feature an East 5 and South 5 to accommodate all players having a dealership.