Mahjong

Spotted this today kicking about the house. I realised that we haven't played in ages. Realistically you need 4 players for a decent game although you can get by with three. We'll have to start teaching some of our house guests how to play as I miss playing it. It's a fantastic game. When Roz was preegnant we played it all the time as a substitute to going out drinking. Since there isn't much challenge to only playing with two we started playing special hands only. It was a great way to learn all the special hands.

If any of you play I have to point out that we don't play the full rules. Generally we have an agreement when we play of no chows. They are useful when you are playing it to gamble, but when you are just playing for fun invariably one person takes a decent lead then just starts playing chows all the time knowing that they wont score very much but then neither will anyone else.

If you don't play I'd recommend trying it. It's kind of like rummy, but with more pieces. The whole thing has a bit more ceremony to it as well given that it's tiles instead of cards and you have to build a square wall to deal from.

Each player gets 13 pieces and has pick up one piece and discard one each turn to make four hands of three pieces and a pair (you include the final tile you pick up to make your hand up to 14). That is a very basic description of the game, for a more detailed one have a look here or type mahjong rules into google. the rules always make it seem complicated, but once you get the hang of it it really isn't.

Anyway, I was forced to search round the house today as I'm really beginning to feel like I'm struggling to find images each day. With college having finished up now and the fact I will be outr of queensferry less each day you may have to prepare yourselves for some pretty dull images. Maybe it's just the pressure of getting closer to 300, but it's the first time I've really felt like this since I started. I've also kind of emptied my subconscious list of fallback images for days when I'm not inspired. I guess I'll just have to put more thought and work into it.