Out of the Red & into the Black...

The March Of Kenyon

For the first time this year Kenyon like Oswald Mosley moved from the Reds to Blacks. The end of his long march from the Cock-Eyed mahjong wilderness finally concluded with him residing in the motivational glory of the positive. Or to put it another way, he finished the night once more as top dog, with 3 figures in his win column and now is on +1 for the year. As the night ended, Kenyon seemed as content as an old man puffing a pipe and snoozing in a rocking chair contemplating his life's work.

There were 3 other mahjongers tonight, the old tough sake guzzling Noda, Jaime the mountain climber and a welcome return to the first lady of Cock-Eyed Mahjong, Eri - who was looking well. Hurley, the ringmaster, popped in briefly but was suffering a bit due to being ill. So, that ladies and gentlemen were the cast, but what of the twists and turns of the play...

The first two games have now settled into a recurring dream for Kenyon and a total nightmare for Jaime. The games follow the same pattern, Kenyon surging ahead into a commanding Devon Loch lead and Jaime getting thumped and sinking like a Russian submarine. No matter what tile Jaime chose, he got ronned. There was one particular incident when both Kenyon and Noda were stalking tiles like a lion in the Serengeti. Jaime was ducking and diving and praying that they ronned each other. Unfortunately, his safe tile options totally gone he decided that there were 3 possible tiles that looked a bit safer than his others. With a dash of bravado he threw his 4 bamboo to the wind...and got ronned by Kenyon. To make matters worse, it transpired that Jaime's entire hand contained dangerous tiles and no matter what he had thrown he would have been screwed. Change seats if you please!

As is now the custom, (usually Jaime mentions this in the first hand of the first game) everybody changes seats after 2 games. Kenyon drags his feet here as this usually starts his decline for the night. Eri had joined the table after the first game and so with Noda's totally incomprehensible system of moving seats (see earlier post) we shuffled our bottoms and re-seated ourselves. Immediately Jaime's luck changed!

The 3rd game of the night proved to be expensive for Eri and fortunate for Jaime. He had started this game -71 and was praying that his luck changed and with a cunning plan it most certainly did! Jaime had compiled a nice Kokushimsou tenpai wait, sadly it was glaringly obvious to Kenyona and Noda that was his hand. Noda wasn't playing though, so Jaime was relying on Eri having not played recently, and as such not noticing what he was doing. Sure enough Eri declared a north tile dollar and Jaime politely declared Ron. This combined with another yakuman hand left Jaime top for the game and nearly having deleted his losses. Eri decided to leave.

Two further more games were played quite quickly. Kenyon continued to finish in the positive, Noda quietly slid in the red and Jaime cam top in both games to leave him comfortably in 2nd place and eating into Hurley's overall 2nd place lead. The penultimate game was extremely close, Jaime pipping Kenyon by 1000 pts to claim top spot.

When all was said and done for the night, Kenyon like those pesky penguins had marched to top of the charts, Jaime had followed his regular evenings' play of getting himself into a hole and then managing to scramble out of it and Noda's decline continued. Eri's welcome back present was to end the night as the Hercules of Cock-Eyed MJ and hold the rest of our scores on her shoulders.

Scores for the Night

Kenyon +42 +59 +0 +2 +4 = +107
Jaime -54 -17 +64 +18 +32 = +43
Noda +12 -29 +1 -20 -36 = -72
Eri -13 -65 = -78