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Is It Really Cheating? The Japanese Mahjong Thumb-rub Explained!

By: David Hurley Most modern Japanese mahjong sets have tiles which are made of nylon with the mahjong characters stamped on the tile-face. It is not difficult to learn to read what the characters stand for, whether they are winds, dragons or the three numbered suits. However, the indentations left by the stamp mean that the tiles can be "read" in an entirely different say.

And that is just what many of the more experienced Japanese mahjong players like to do in the course of a game - use feel the concealed face of the tile next to be taken from the wall with their thumbs! Yes, many an experienced player has developed the ability to "read" tiles with his thumb by rubbing it across the tile face and feeling the indentations.

It takes hours of practice to get to the point where you can accurately distinguish each of the 34 different tile faces of a standard Japanese mahjong set with your thumb, and there seems to be little advantage in being able to do so. It is a diverting party trick and it also adds some kudos to a player's game if the player can pluck a tile from the wall, announce what it is and discard it without so much as glancing at it. Mahjong is most exciting when played swiftly, so being able to read a tile without looking at it may be said to help the cause of speedy play, but apart from that there does not seem to be much practical profit in taking the trouble to learn the skill.

However, in one instance that I can think of some small advantage could be gained about an opponent's tile by use of the "thumb-reading" technique. Experienced mahjong players enjoy playing a fast-paced game so if one player hesitates before discarding a tile, the player to his right is likely to have reached for "his" tile on the end of the wall before the first player has discarded. By placing his thumb under the tile in readiness to lift it off the wall, a competent "thumb-reader" would be able to read the tile while waiting for his turn.

But then, when the player on his left discards a tile, if another player claims it as a "Pon" the "thumb-reader" would not in fact draw the tile from the wall and it is more than likely that the tile will go to a different player. In that case the "thumb reader" will know what the tile is and will perhaps pay attention to where it is placed in the other player's hand.

Some people might object that such a practice is a form of cheating, but others counter that it is just part parcel of the Japanese approach to the game.

Of course that is not to say that the player who took the tile from the wall cannot resort to some deceptive tactics of his own by adding the tile to a random place in his hand while appearing to concentrate on placing it carefully into position so as to mislead the "thumb-reader" as to the construction of the hand.

Whatever your attitude towards players reading tiles with their thumbs may be, that it can be done at all shows you how sensitive the human thumb - or "oya-yubi" in Japanese - can be.

Article Source: http://www.lifeweightloss.com

David Hurley lives in Japan and runs a website supplying Japanese games and goods including Japanese mahjong sets and accessories direct to customers all over the world, at => Japanese-Games-Shop.com .

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