TL;DR
There’s a very interesting PhD thesis about Chinese players of Mahjong and Roulette in Manchester casinos. The key point for me is that in the main, for mahjong at least, these people are NOT gambling in the sense we – e.g. as “westerners” – would first think of, and this shapes how they play.
Many of the people interviewed aren’t in it to accumulate money from other people, or to “beat” a casino. Instead, it’s a much more social thing, with money there to add some extra excitement, but long term there’s an expectation that winning and losing will even out. Part of this is how they view the balance between luck and skill, and adjusting the balance to promote a good experience for all. Another part is how they much prefer to play in stable groups as a way to promote this balance.
The long term view and enjoyment aspects also say something to how they approach the game and the versions of mahjong they play. Put one way, it isn’t a competitive tournament, and it’s possibly more fun because of that. There’s something to learn here.
The detail
I recently found out about a PhD study on Chinese players of Mahjong and Roulette in Manchester, dating from around 2013 by anthropologist Dr Zhihong Liu. Read the full thesis at https://www.gambleaware.org/our-research/publication-library/articles/wheels-and-tiles-maintaining-social-connections-through-mah-jong-and-roulette-gambling-in-manchester/. I tried to find out more about the author, particularly to see if she undertook further studies of this kind, though found nothing.
It has been a fascinating read. Not quite the usual kind of PhD thesis I’m used to – it had no inference rules and no equations. But I did manage to read it all, and found it quite interesting throughout for various reasons – for the views and approaches to mahjong, and some of the historical and economic background to this group of people. What follows is my highlighting of key points and my understanding of the material. Also remember the study looked at players in Manchester, though from my experience, the observations may quite plausibly apply elsewhere in the UK too. It’s possible that I over-simplify a few complex issues, and am happy to be corrected if so. I think there are some interesting lessons for more “western” players to consider about how and why we are playing.
I’m using quite a few direct quotes, because Dr Liu often expresses key ideas precisely and it would be silly to paraphrase. Quotes and their exact context can be found easily in the PDF. A good early quote is this:
“At the mah-jong table, players are mostly friends, relatives and acquaintances, their social relationship is well established and they try to maintain the game as a long-term reciprocal exchange that helps to maintain existing relationships. The employment of luck at the mah-jong table is an attempt to decrease the potential conflicts that could be caused by competition between the players and so maintain the group cohesion.”
It seems rare (“generally frowned upon”) to invite strangers to take part in a [mahjong] game. Sometimes relative strangers do play, though “the two strangers often have one acquaintance in common and that acquaintance must be present at the game”. So most groups are long-running and the players know each other well. But groups can still fall out, and Liu records a few stories of people who used to play but no longer do, or that refuse to play with certain other former friends – for reasons like slow play or different views on fairness.
Within these strong groups, the stability makes it feasible to add a financial element to make it more interesting. There’s an underlying assumption that wins will roughly even out in the long term, and that the players will work together to achieve this. Even though it looks like gambling to us, it’s not really what we usually think of as gambling. There’s a reduced element of winners vs losers. Indeed, citing other studies, “All the three anthropologists who have studied mah-jong gambling point out that mah-jong gambling does not lead to unequal money accumulation for any of the players”.
In this kind of setting, the hesitation about playing against strangers is understandable.
Liu also mentions the rule of explicitly declaring ready hands (one tile needed to win), so as to warn the other players to be careful. This isn’t standard in all versions of Mahjong, and I’m not sure if it’s standard in Hong Kong style mahjong, but it does underline the idea of giving players a fair chance to avoid big losses. (“British rules” does have this requirement, but Japanese Riichi certainly doesn’t.)
Luck is often cited as a key idea here. Although we may think of mahjong as quite skill-intensive (and trying to improve your outcomes under uncertain luck…), these players appear to be down-playing that skill element and playing up the role of luck. Put another way, a big points win would be more viewed as better luck than the rest of the table for that hand, rather than any particular display of skill (or not). Longer term, everyone will be equally lucky and thus can hope to balance their winnings.
It’s worth mentioning this quote too, as a matter of politeness if you’re watching a group in play: “I have been reminded a few times before by other informants that, when someone is losing continuously, they may feel that their luck has been obstructed by the person standing nearby watching the game, at which point the onlooker should stop the observation and leave the table.”
The author makes an interesting contrast with Roulette, which generally is a game of chance, but several players in the study approached it as a game of skill, quite a contrast with how they viewed mahjong. But when these players gambled, it was a different kind of activity than the circulation of money over mahjong. For one thing, roulette was a matter of players against the casino.
Roulette players can also leave the table when they want, whereas mahjong players are often committed to a full rotation at least, and more likely two rotations or even four (i.e. minimum 8 hands or even 16 if going into a North round).
One downside of playing in fairly constant groups is that you get to learn other peoples’ styles and adapt your own style to playing them. This is good for stability, but not great when playing against people you don’t know so well, with other styles. Liu hints at a few cases of this; even: “People in a mah-jong circle laugh at those who play with strangers.”
The question of luck is explored in one of the later chapters.
“I argue that luck is more than irrational mystical thought. I show that in the world of gaming, luck has pragmatic meaning and its own rationality. By transforming a game of skills and strategies into a game of chance, Chinese players reinforce the relationships between them and maintain group cohesion.”
“In this context, to employ the concept of luck is to extend a gesture of trust.”
It’s worth noting the tradition of “Luck money”, where gamblers will happily share part of their winnings with friends. It’s a way to share good fortune, and to improve social relationships. Quite often, these unconditional gifts are reciprocated later on when the recipient themselves has good fortune.
“[…] there may be an assumption that luck is distributed evenly across individuals and that we all have the same share of luck, it just comes up unevenly in one’s life.”
Let’s consider the style or version of mahjong being played. Japanese Riichi rules may be better in a tournament setting, but it seems (Old) HK style may be better for these fun games. It’s a bit less involved, easier scoring, and especially if playing to some minimum han count, more amenable to playing for luck (since getting a good starting hand is down to luck).
Exercise for the reader: where would you place “British Rules” mahjong (one version of classic Chinese mahjong) in this scheme? Discuss. [10 marks]
The style of mahjong chosen is no accident: “By transforming a game of skill and strategy into a game of luck, Chinese players claim that they have created a game that is a simulation of life.”
This reminds me of discussion of another famous Chinese game, albeit a much older one by a few thousand years – Go (or WeiQi). Some people suggest the idea of the two players sharing the board, with one player gradually getting a slight edge. It’s not a direct, adversarial competition like Chess, but growing a state where eventually one person gains an edge. Direct attack is rarely a good way to play, and between players of similar high ability, more subtlety is required. One old name for Go / WeiQi is “Hand talking” – where a player’s moves reflect their character, and the two players communicate through their moves alone. There’s a history of applying ideas from Go into other areas of life.
I’ll be honest. I started playing HK style when I first started playing, then I switched to Riichi when I realised I had more control over winning and losing in that style of mahjong. Maybe I was missing the point? Then I discovered three-player Japanese mahjong (also see Korean mahjong), and lost horribly until I realised it was a different game and needed quite different techniques. Now I’m not too bad at it, though I do mainly now play for fun. I still like winning, however, and it’s nice to see my rating go up, but I do accept losses as a necessary part of the game. It’s not too bad losing to people who are clearly more skilled, and hope I learn something in the process. That said, it’s still a cruel game at times!
Trying to conclude then. My key takeaways are how much the approach to mahjong from the players in the study is a combination of related ideas, a bit like the three legs of a stool: (a) “gambling” as a circulation of money, though levelling out in the long term; (b) trust in people they know fairly well in stable groups; and (c) treating it as a game of luck rather than outright skill. The money element adds extra depth, but the stability and appeal to luck means that over time, nobody feels hard done by, and the resulting experience is generally positive for all.
There’s an important concept here: “Pai-bun(牌品) [which] means mah-jong morality. It is about how a player reacts to winning and losing, and how he treats the other players at the table.” Expanding on this: “They trust that they are all regular players, so that even if they lose this time they will have time to win back the next time. They trust that they will make a joint effort to deemphasise the impacts of their skills instead of highlighting them. Most importantly, they must collectively acknowledge that the outcome of the game is a matter of luck.”
Watching Chinese play at my local casino, they clearly have a good amount of fun in the process. I’m slightly jealous. Do we westerners take it a bit too seriously? I think we can learn a lot here.
Finally, my favourite snippet from the thesis, regarding use of dice. How many dice in your set? “The number of dice used depends on how serious the game is and how much the players trust each other.”
free-variable.org 