Riichi Mahjong Strategy Books

by Daina Chiba

Riichi Book I

Riichi mahjong (modern Japanese mahjong) is a game of skill and luck, sharing some similarities with rummy and poker. After learning that riichi is quite popular in Europe, I decided to write a book on riichi strategies for European players. I then ended up splitting the manuscript into two volumes, one for beginners & intermediate players and the other for more advanced players. I have completed the first volume so far. The second volume is coming soon (hopefully by the end of 2019).

The book is a fixed-layout file in PDF. It will be best displayed on an iPad, a Kindle, or a similar tablet device. If you find a typo, please let me know via email.

Donations appreciated

I am making my book(s) freely available to any aspiring players. If you'd like to donate a small amount of money, please use the link to the right. All donations will go towards promoting riichi mahjong across the world.

Reviews and mentions

Here is a list of reviews and mentions on Book I that I know of. If you know more, please let me know via email.

• Discussion on the book on Reddit
• My interview on Mahjong News
• Osamuko
• xGeo's Mahjong Blog
• Makoto Fukuchi's blog (in Japanese)
• Tsuno's blog (in Japanese)
• Chuuren Potos Marseille (in French)
• Austrian Riichi Mahjong Association (in German)
• Playing Riichi Mahjong in Singapore
• Anki Decks based on the book

Source Codes

The original forms of these books are LATEX source codes. Compiling these LATEX source codes has the effect of generating a device-independent representation of manuscripts, which can be converted to other formats and printed. The LATEX sources for the books are available below:

• GitHub page for Book I
• Source files for Book I (This may be dated. Please visit the github page above for the up-to-date source files.)
• The piemf font package

The LATEX source files (*.tex) are in Unicode (UTF-8) format. Typesetting the files requires a pTeX engine.

The source code depends on the piemf font package (version 2.0.2), developed by Mr. Takayuki Yamaizumi, for printing mahjong tiles. Unfortunately, Mr. Yamaizumi appears to have taken down his website, where I first obtained the package from. I am keeping the package on my website, not knowing if this is completely legal...

Copyright

Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify these books under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. That is, you can freely modify, translate, and redistribute my books for noncommercial purposes, as long as you acknowledge my original contributions.

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to a lot of friends I have acquainted with through mahjong. In particular, my thanks go to Philipp Martin, Ian Fraser, and Gemma Sakamoto, who have read an earlier draft of the manuscript and gave me feedback and encouragement. Any remaining errors are of course my own.

The cover photo (© Katarína Mozóvá) is from the 2015 Bratislava Riichi Open. I thank Katarína and Riichi Mahjong Slovakia (especially Matej Labaš) for giving me a permission to use it.

Updates

• 24-Mar-2019 GitHub repository is publicized. Any further changes will be posted there.
• 8-Jan-2019 Riichi Book I version posted.
• 18-Apr-2017 Riichi Book I version posted.
• 10-Apr-2017 Riichi Book I version posted. I've made some relatively major changes, including small terminology changes and layout changes (the book is now A5 size).
• 17-Aug-2016 Riichi Book I version posted.
• 07-Mar-2016 Riichi Book I version posted.
• 10-Jan-2016 Riichi Book I version posted.
• 09-Jan-2016 Riichi Book I version posted.
• 07-Jan-2016 Riichi Book I version posted.

Last updated on 26 March, 2019, © Daina Chiba