Round 1 Complete!

The first round of the inaugural season of the American Riichi Mahjong League has been completed! Hopefully things go even more smoothly in future rounds as it did this round as the majority of the games were completed in the first week of the two weeks allotted for everyone!

Anyways, here’s where we stand!

There’s an early traffic jam at the top of Pool A as the top 5 are separated by just under 15 points. No one was able to win more than 2 of their games, and of course it’s early, but there is certainly more leeway to catch up if you’re behind.

Current leader Hoang Long, while carrying the lowest top score of all the pools has done it mainly through not paying in. In fact in his 4 games, he has dealt in just 4 times! It also helps when you have scored the first sanbaiman of the league:

Now, that +47 score is the majority of Hoang’s overall score, but sometimes all you need is just a couple breaks to go your way.

Kinyan Lui took over the lead in Pool B with her final 2 games, and while she didn’t finish with a clean sheet she still won 3 games. She had until the last game paid in only once to help her cause, and the majority of her points came in the first two games where of her 5 winning hands 3 were of mangan value or higher including this haneman which was caused due to an ura dora explosion.

The Pool C standings for Round 1 are not quite completed due to an adjustment, but regardless Max Suddendorf and Arthur McAnally, both well-known names in the American Riichi Mahjong scene, top the pool. They actually were paired together for Round 1 and dominated their table of 5, staying out of each other’s way while taking their points from some of the other members at the table.

Finally in Pool D we see not only the other 2 players with 3 wins to their name, but also our top scorer so far across all pools as Aaron Liao has broken the century mark with games like the following where no one was able to stop him from taking points from everyone else at the table.

Of course, as mentioned before, it’s still early and there’s plenty of games left for those trailing to catch up. We will have standings as well as player data on our website shortly, so stay tuned!