Mahjong Guide

In the spring of 1922, a New York importer named Joseph Babcock started handing out small green booklets with a strange request attached. Play this Chinese game the way the booklet says, he wrote, not the way your friend in the next town learned it. Within two years, Americans had bought somewhere north of a…

Tournaments scare people who only know the weekly game. The casual table is forgiving. Someone miscounts, you laugh, you fix it, nobody cares. A tournament is the same game with a clock on the wall, a scorekeeper at the table, and three strangers watching your discard. It is also, honestly, the most fun a lot…