Duke and UNC Mahjong clubs host joint tournament, connect over tabletop game

On March 29, UNC and Duke University students gathered in Duke’s Physics Building — not to partake in a heated rivalry, but in a friendly competition consisting of chatter, boba tea and Mahjong tiles.

The universities’ Mahjong clubs kickstarted their first-ever joint tournament featuring the East Asian tabletop game that relies heavily on luck and probability.

UNC senior Charmaine Cheng said that you can tell a lot about an individual’s personality by how they play the game.

Mahjong has been a frequent family bonding activity for Cheng since she was a child. She said the game has helped her discover more cultural meaning as she has made friends, taught people and brought parts of her Taiwanese culture to UNC.  

“The game itself isn’t too complicated,” she said. “So it’s nice to chat over it, perhaps trash talk your family.”

Ali Awan, one of the founders of UNC’s Mahjong Club, said the organization previously hosted local tournaments but had not thought of holding a joint competition until Duke created their own Mahjong club last fall.

“Doing a joint tournament would allow a larger scale than what either school could muster on their own," Awan said.

In Mahjong, tiles are shuffled into rows, called walls, and placed facedown. The dealer rolls a set of dice to determine where one of the walls is split, forming a dead wall.

Players are dealt 13 tiles each. At the start of a player’s turn, a tile can be drawn from the wall or from a discarded tile from the person to the left. To have a winning hand, a player must have a total of 14 tiles almost always containing one pair and four sets. 

There are three types of sets: a sequence with three tiles of the same suit, a triplet with three of the same tile and a kan with four of the same tile. For a kan to work, the player must take an extra tile from the dead wall to make up for the additional tile within the set.    

If the dealer wins or the game ends in a draw, then the position is possessed by the same person in the next game. If not, the dealership passes to the player to the right. 

In a game of Mahjong, the goal isn’t to accumulate the most points, but to be the first to form a winning hand, which must contain a yaku. If no player has a yaku by the time all tiles are drawn — excluding those in the dead wall — the game ends in a draw, or the player with the highest fu, a type of point system, wins. 

The tournament’s first round had three groups of four playing a minimum of eight games each, with each person required to deal twice for the round to be completed; most matches ended in minutes. The player in each group of four with the highest set of points collected from their winning hands moved on to the next round.

Mahjong is luck-dominated, but there is a lot of skill and strategy involved, UNC first-year Mike Zhu said.

“I think there’s competition in the game," Jacob Bastian, a senior at UNC, said. "The club itself? Not terribly competitive." 

Zhu and his fellow club member Bora Leilabady highlighted the club's social aspect, which helps to create a relaxed ambience for all players. 

“That’s like the best part about the club. Not actually playing Mahjong, but being with the other guys here,” Leilabady said.

Mahjong-related prizeswere available for the top five players in the overall tournament, and all 21 participants would receive a keychain. 

The next rounds are expected to be held on both UNC and Duke’s campus. Due to player availability, the number of rounds is unknown, but Awan expects the tournament to end in the third week of April.

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