News
World Championship MCR
Utrecht, August 27 - 29
After three exciting days of play with 9 rounds of 2 hours, Linghua Jiao from China was crowned World Champion. She finished with 32 (table) points, 2 ahead of Olivier Boivin from France and 3 ahead of Elisabeth Frischenschlager from Austria.
The mayor of Utrecht (right) handed over the prizes to (ltr) Elisabeth, Linghua and Olivier.
China was determined to not miss another title and sent a bunch of strong players this time. In the past two OEMC's they found out that the Europeans had catched on and that they needed to 'step up'. And so they did: besides Linghua, 4 more Chinese players ended in the Top 10 (places 4, 6, 7 and 9) and with 85 table points (best 3 players) they also claimed the Country Price. Runner up here was France (78), just before Danmark with 77 points.
The complete result and other usefull links / info, you can find here (on the official WMC pages).
EMA congratulates the Dutch Mahjong Association for a virtually flawless World Championship. And to all players we say: thank you too for making the WMC a great happening!
European Riichi Championship
Hannover, July 11 & 12
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.
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.
2009
Effective immediately, the partnership between MahjongTime and EMA has come to an end. Although the late cancellation of the GMO scheduled for this weekend was not received well, this is not the reason for the break up.
MahjongTime has not been able to fulfill the expectations that were created at the time the partnership was signed. Since MahjongTime does not intend to develop (new) future opportunities together, EMA and its members now investigate the possibilities with other partners in the market.
We regret that the partnership did not work out as planned, but we expect that the MahjongTime platform remains available for players and hope that they will continue to enjoy their game(s) there.
We congratulate mr. Koji Idota (JP) with his win at the 3rd OEMC in Baden, mrs. Bo Lang (CH) with her 2nd place and mr. Luca Gavelli (IT) with his 3rd place. Mrs. Lang was also crowned new European Champion.
Left to right: mr. Gavelli, mr. Idota and mrs. Lang
Congratulations also go to Mahjongclub Baden who organized a perfect OEMC. Perhaps they would have asked for less hot weather, but anything (else) they could control, they arranged with flair.
Mr. Myslivec and mr. Martin 'Lupo' Hofmann conducted a team which put together a great experience for all particpants and visitors (non playing partners) alike.
Organizing team of Mahjongclub Baden
News from the General Assembly
President, vice presidents and presidium
During the General Assembly held in Baden, mr. Robert Rijnders (NL)
was elected president of EMA. He's successor to mr. Uwe Martins (D)
who led EMA the past four years.
Mrs. Tina Christensen (DK) was re-elected Vice President, and mr. András Boda (H) was newly elected as Vice President. Together with mr. Sébastien Berret (F) and mr. Martin Mauthner (A) they form the new Presidium.
New members
Belgium, Finland, Portugal, the Russian Federation,
Slovakia, Spain and Sweden where welcomed as new EMA members.
More MERS
It was decided that more EMA qualified tournaments are allowed by
any member country. As per 1/1/2010 every country may organize three
instead of two MERS tournaments, one MERS-2 and two
MERS-1 per year.
