Mahjong Players Need to Remember

Author: Neha Agrawal

In the game of Mahjong your memory is very important. Since there are specific tiles in sequences of four and nine, among other numbers, you know what tiles are in the game to start. So as you see tiles being discarded, it is very advantageous if you can remember them. Keeping track of which ones have been discarded and claimed will let you play the game in a much more efficient and successful manner.

Of course, even if you knew every tile in play, there are still games where you won’t be able to make a winning move. Luck will always be a factor in Mahjong. But the more knowledge you have through remembering the tiles, the more likely you are to be successful and increase your score and your potential profits.

Memory is important in many games besides Mahjong. In poker, the best players will remember the way others at the table played other hands and they utilize that information to plan their strategy. In Blackjack, players want to know how many aces and tens are still in the deck. They have developed numerical systems to help with this aspect of card counting.

Memory is just as important in Mahjong, but it is much more of a problem. The task of memorization is much more daunting because there are well over a hundred tiles to keep track of, and many of them are in your opponent’s possession. So you can’t see them but can only guess at their identity.

Whatever type of memorization you want to use - be it straight visual memorization or some other approach - should improve as you get more experience playing Mahjong. You’ll get used to the patterns forming and pairing and the counting in your head will become easier. Be careful, however. You need to remember things correctly. Having the wrong information in your head will cause more problems than having no information on the tiles.

If you find, for whatever reason, that you are not good at memorization, you might try to find ways to minimize the importance of this in your game. You’ll need to build up other parts of your Mahjong game, such as disguising the strengths of your hand, as best you can.

But even if you are not that good at memorizing, you can’t just ignore it in Mahjong. You still need to remember what you can, because there is no escaping the importance of knowing what tiles have already been played.