Maurice Demmer from the Netherlands has taken the European title in the Riichi Championship. He managed to gather 103.700 points in 8 rounds, just 700 points ahead (about equal to only 1 yaku!) of runner up Joël Ratsimandresy from France. David Bresnick from the USA took the 3rd prize with 96.600 points.

Award ceremony with the best three players

The mayor of Hannover (far left) handed over the trophies to (ltr) Joël, Maurice and David (photo Martin Rep / Mahjong News)

There were 80 players from 15 nations, amongst which Poland and Turkey as new 'mahjong nations'. The 2008 champion Thomas Kragh ended on place 48. Benjamin Boas (USA), who was runner up in 2008, Kajimoto Takunori (JP) and Norbert Luckhardt (DE) where the referees for the tournament.

Results (on the DMJL site)

EMA once again thanks 'Hannover' for the great reception and a well organized ECR!

We have reached an agreement with Mahjong Logic about a partnership. In light of previous experiences, we have decided to go about this a bit different, as Mahjong Logic is also a fairly new platform, where focus is more on playing for money.

Of course there are free roll (no entry fee) tournaments every day where you can win prize money and  you can play for free outside of these tournaments. However, Mahjong Logic does not make money from fixed membership fees, it makes money by keeping a small percentage of the tournament fees.

Therefore, we did not opt for a construction that focuses on making revenues from these tournaments, as it is also a tedious administrative process. Instead, Mahjong Logic is offering to be partner / sponsor of the major tournaments (OEMC, WMC and MERS-2 national open).

To introduce Mahjong Logic, there will be two tournaments the following two weekends with prize money to be won; later this year, we intend to organize MORSE tournaments.

We hope that the cooperation with Mahjong Logic will lead to a financial benefit for organizers of tournaments and that it will also add to the experience of players.

More about Mahjong Logic and its licensees here - all licensees offer a software (client) download, but games are played on the same server.