Mahjong

Mahjong, sometimes spelled Mah Jongg, is a game that originated in China, commonly played by four players with some three-player variations found in Korea and Japan. The four player table version should not be confused with the popular Western single player tile matching computer game Mahjong solitaire, which is a recent invention and completely different from the table game. Similar to the Western card game rummy, mahjong is a game of skill, strategy and calculation and involves a certain degree of chance. In Asia, mahjong is also popularly played as a gambling game though it may just as easily be played recreationally.

The game is played with a set of 136 tiles based on Chinese characters and symbols, although some regional variations use a different number of tiles. In most variations, each player begins by receiving thirteen tiles. In turn players draw and discard tiles until they complete a legal hand using the fourteenth drawn tile to form four groups melds and a pair head. There are fairly standard rules about how a piece is drawn, stolen from another player melded, the use of basic numbered tiles and honours winds and dragons, the kinds of melds, and the order of dealing and play. However there are many regional variations in the rules; in addition, the scoring system, the minimum hand necessary to win varies significantly based on the local rules being used.

All tiles are placed face down on the table and are shuffled. By convention all players should participate in shuffling using both hands moving the pieces around the table, loudly, for a lengthy period. There is no fixed rule on how to deal or how to treat tiles which flip over during shuffle, though possible solutions include turning back over the pieces at the moment they are seen, turning over all revealed pieces at intervals or doing so at the end of the shuffling and forming of the wall.

Each player then stacks a row of 18 tiles two tiles high in front of him for a total of 36 tiles. Players then push each side of their tiles together to form a square wall.

The dealer throws three dice and sums up the total. Counting counterclockwise so that the dealer is 1 or 5, 9, 13, 17, so that south is 2 or 6, 10, 14, 18, etc., a player's quarter of the wall is chosen. Using the same total on the dice, the player then counts the stacks of tiles from right to left. Starting from the left of the stacks counted, the dealer takes four tiles to himself, and players in counterclockwise order take blocks of four tiles until all players have 12 tiles, so that the stacks decrease clockwise. Each player then takes one last tile to make a 13-tile hand. Dealing does not have to be this formal and may be done quite differently based on house rules.

Each player now sets aside any flowers or seasons they may have drawn and takes replacement pieces from the wall.

The dealer takes the next piece from the wall, adds it to his hand. If this does not complete a legal hand, he then discards a piece throwing it into the middle of the wall with no particular order in mind.

Local play on the street in Lanzhou

Each player takes a turn picking up a tile from the wall and then discarding a tile by throwing it into the centre and, if desired, announcing out loud what the piece is. Play continues this way until one player has a legal hand. At this point a player will call out mahjong and reveal their hand. There are four different ways that this order of play can be interrupted which is mentioned below.

During play, the number of tiles maintained by each player should always be thirteen tiles meaning in each turn a tile must be picked up and another discarded. Not included in the count of thirteen tiles are flowers and seasons set to the side and the fourth added piece of a kong mentioned below. If a player is seen to have more or less than thirteen tiles in their hand outside of their turn they are penalised.

Gambling Disorders

The beliefs of a society about a health condition can have a huge impact on the people who suffer from the disorder. Public opinion can influence public health policy, public and private harm minimization efforts, research funds and treatment support. At the individual level, negative public views of a disease and the stigma it creates can strongly discourage individuals from admitting that he or she has the problem and seeking treatment for the condition. There is little data available on public opinion of gambling disorders; however, a new study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies fills this void with a systematic examination of public opinion on gambling disorders.

Researchers conducted telephone surveys with 8,467 adults in the Toronto area and questioned people about their opinions of how to best understand gambling disorders. Researchers asked if gambling disorders should be treated as a disease or illness, a wrongdoing, a habit, not disease or an addiction similar to drug addiction. Researchers also inquired if people with gambling disorders can get well on their own or must seek treatment to improve and polled adults on whether people with gambling disorders can reduce their gambling to that of a social gambler or if they need to quit altogether. The survey also gathered information on the gambling behavior and demographics of the respondents.

The researchers found that most people viewed gambling disorders as an addiction similar to drug addiction, with one-third seeing gambling as a habit and 17 percent viewing gambling as a form of wrongdoing. Responses to whether gamblers needed treatment to recover showed a split jury, and three out of four thought that abstinence from gambling activities must happen for recovery. Examining the demographics, the researchers found that being female, married, younger and without gambling problems paralleled believing that treatment and abstinence were necessary. In addition, people who viewed gambling problems as a disease or addiction also believed that treatment and abstinence for recovery are necessary.

The researchers noted that public perceptions reported in their study mimic the results of a 2003 study that examined the views of the public on alcohol use, with 71 percent of respondents saying that abstinence must occur for recovery. This popularly held belief is also the view of much of the scientific community as reflected by the upcoming changes the American Psychiatric Association is making.

Finally, researchers concluded that people with gambling disorders were less likely to think that treatment and abstinence were necessary for recovery. This may be because many people who meet the clinical guidelines for a gambling disorder do not think they have a problem and even those who believe they do have a problem are unlikely to seek treatment.

Poker Tournament

A poker tournament is a tournament where players compete by playing poker. It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table called a "heads-up" tournament, and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on thousands of tables. The winner of the tournament is usually the person who wins every poker chip in the game and the others are awarded places based on the time of their elimination. To facilitate this, in most tournaments, blinds rise over the duration of the tournament. Unlike in a ring game or cash game, a player's chips in a tournament cannot be cashed out for money and serve only to determine the player's placing.

To enter a typical tournament, a player pays a fixed buy-in and at the start of play is given a certain quantity of tournament poker chips. Commercial venues may also charge a separate fee, or withhold a small portion of the buy-in, as the cost of running the event. Tournament chips have only notional value; they have no cash value, and only the tournament chips, not cash, may be used during play. Typically, the amount of each entrant's starting tournament chips is an integer multiple of the buy-in. Some tournaments offer the option of a re-buy or buy-back; this gives players the option of purchasing more chips. In some cases, re-buys are conditional for example, offered only to players low on or out of chips but in others they are available to all players called add-ons. When a player has no chips remaining and has exhausted or declined all re-buy options, if any are available he or she is eliminated from the tournament.

In most tournaments, the number of players at each table is kept even by moving players, either by switching one player or as the field shrinks taking an entire table out of play and distributing its players amongst the remaining tables. A few tournaments, called shoot-outs, do not do this; instead, the last player sometimes the last two or more players at a table moves on to a second or third round, akin to a single-elimination tournament found in other games.