Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2003 | 9:25 a.m.
What: Marjorie Troum Mah Jongg Tournament West.
When: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday.
Where: Flamingo Las Vegas, 3555 Las Vegas Blvd. South.
Tickets: $95. For more information, call (800) 708-7677.
Mah jongg is a game whose time has come and gone and come again.
Played with tiles containing Chinese characters, the game went from being one of the country's most popular to a historic footnote in a matter of decades.
But with the proliferation of the Internet came a resurgence in interest, and dozens of mah jongg websites are visited daily by an ever-growing number of fans.
More than a hundred of those fans are expected to converge on Las Vegas next week for the Marjorie Troum Mah Jongg Tournament West, to be held Wednesday through Friday at Flamingo Las Vegas. (The tournament returns to the Flamingo in January and to the Stardust in March.)
Tom Sloper, one of mah jongg's more prominent players, will be on hand.
Sloper, 55, caught the mah jongg bug in 1992, and has helped produce dozens of video-game versions. He has also contributed information to several books about mah jongg and is currently writing a book of his own, and he speaks all over the country about mah jongg and its complexities.
His current mission is to make sure mah jongg survives into the 21st century. He has established his own website, sloperama.com, and has dedicated himself to answering any and all questions about the game for curious web surfers.
Unfortunately, according to Sloper, for most people the introduction to mah jongg isn't really an introduction at all. The most popular form of mah jongg on the Internet is actually an elaborate form of "Concentration-meets-Solitaire," in which users click on tiles, trying to clear all of them off a board.
While fun and addictive, the game could not be more different from the actual game of mah jongg, and Sloper has his hands full trying to educate people on that fact.
"I'm on a one-man crusade to try to tell people that mah jongg isn't tile matching, but an awful lot of people show up (on his website) who think that's how it's played," Sloper said in an interview from his Los Angeles home. "They do a search on 'mah jongg,' they're looking at the tile-matching game, and it doesn't give them the whole story."
Ironically, Sloper helped produce many of the now-popular "fake" mah jongg computer games. He has since created three of his own that stay faithful to the traditional game -- "Shanghai Dynasty," "Shanghai Second Dynasty" and "Shanghai Mah Jongg essentials" -- but realizes he has a long way to go.
"I think there's an awful lot of people who don't know the difference," Sloper said.
The rest of Sloper's time is spent being a mah jongg junkie, traveling to tournaments such as the one in Vegas. And Sloper definitely is seeing an increase in the number of participants, both in tournaments and on the Internet.
He gives the Internet much credit in helping to revitalize the game's popularity, but added the growing number of older adults is also a huge factor.
"The Baby Boom generation has turned into an empty nest situation where the kids are moving out, so the folks are looking for things to do. Mah jongg is a good way to do that," Sloper said. "It's a wonderful mental activity that keeps the mind agile, and the folks who play it are typically adults. It's a good way to stave off senility and loneliness and couch potato syndrome."
Different variations
While a complete explanation of mah jongg is quite lengthy, the simple explanation is that it is similar to gin rummy -- except it's played with tiles featuring Chinese characters, not playing cards with suits. Players start with a "hand" and draw tiles from a pile until they have a winning hand.
Tournaments in the United States use the "American" version, which was created in the 1930s. Before that, Americans played the "classic" Chinese version, which enjoyed its heyday in America in the 1920s. The American version flourished, enjoying the peak of its popularity in the 1950s, after which interest subsided.
"In the '60s all young women coming into adulthood were more interested in burning their bras than playing Mother and Grandmother's game," Sloper said.
The classic Chinese version is played mainly in Europe, Sloper said. In all, there are 25 versions of mah jongg -- that Sloper knows about, at least.
But no matter what type of mah jongg is played, Sloper said the game's sensory experience sets it apart.
"The main difference is the tiles and the way you play and the look and feel," Sloper said. "Tiles are very tactile, and make a very satisfying sort of 'thunk' when you put them on the table."
A good set of mah jongg tiles -- which can number as many as 160, depending on what game is being played -- can cost anywhere from $90 to $100 and on up, Sloper said. Good sets can last years.
American-style mah jongg features a shifting set of "hands" each year. Players purchase a $5 card each year, and must play change their style of play accordingly.
Ladies' night
Though mah jongg's popularity is on the rise, don't be looking for many men at tournaments, Sloper said.
"Being very generous, if I go to a tournament with 100 people, there will be one other man there besides me," Sloper said. "I hear from a lot of men (on my website) who play but don't go to the tournaments."
While Sloper didn't offer an explanation as to why the game is so much more popular with women, he did note that women invented the American version of mah jongg, including tournament organizer Marjorie Troum, whose mother, Dorothy Meyerson, wrote the first standardized rules for mah jongg in the United States in the 1940s.
Asian styles of mah jongg are much more widespread among the populace. Fans include college-age players and older, male and female.
Sloper said it's only a matter of time before the game catches on to more age groups -- and more men -- in the states.
"It is definitely growing in popularity," he said. "I probably hear from people with questions almost every day."
In the meantime, he's just going to have to get used to being surrounded by women, playing the game he loves.
"I'm just weird," he said. "I like hanging out with them and playing the game."com
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