Big apologies to long-time readers of this blog! You may wonder why this blog has not been updated since 2015. Actually, I am still alive and still doing mahjong stuff, but a lot of the online interaction has moved to Facebook, as we have a Facebook group for Singapore Sparrows (Mahjong Network) there!
So, this blog has fallen by the wayside, as I simply do not have so much time to research and write on mahjong. For the past six years or so (since the last update on this blog), I have been busy overseeing two competitive mahjong clubs in Singapore, and organising tournaments both for the clubs and international ones based out of Singapore, and still trying to grow the player base for competitive mahjong. Now, actually, the mahjong scene in Singapore seems to have grown, as we have a much stronger riichi maajan community now, and even Singapore Style mahjong content creators on Youtube!
Anyway, my blog still appears to be a resource site, although the Singapore Style mahjong content was quite sparse in the first place. For me, MCR holds more appeal, and while the rules for competition are not perfect, they are constantly undergoing revision as a result of use during actual tournaments, especially in China. Singapore Style mahjong, on the other hand, has been stagnant, at least in terms of competition development. This is partly due to more scrutiny by the police after the initial opening up of mahjong in the community centres here. Where once it was quite easy to get permits to stage Singapore Style mahjong tournaments, it became harder and with more restrictions. As a result, the number of tournaments being planned or actually run plummeted dramatically!
I was involved in running some Singapore Style mahjong tournaments myself back in the day, although it was not exactly my preference to do so, since I wanted to focus on MCR and develop that in Singapore instead. So, I had to draw up some rules and regulations to run the tournaments fairly. However, it can be very, very tiring and frustrating to deal with the many, many, many participants who are all used to their own idiosyncratic house rules.
I am now publishing this post with my version of Singapore Style mahjong rules for competition for posterity's sake. This version of the so-called Consensus Rules was compiled and written between 2010 and 2014, and represents a middle ground of the various rules in Singapore Style mahjong, mainly doing away with rules that are overly reliant on luck or for gambling, and fleshing out rules that were fuzzy or not very well delineated in the first place. It is not the be-all and end-all of Singapore Style mahjong, but it is more than serviceable in tournaments where players of all generations have to agree on a common understanding of the game. A lot of newer innovations or adaptations from other rule-sets are naturally not considered for these Consensus Rules.
I am not going to come back and work on these rules anymore, since there is no true future for Singapore Style mahjong in the competitive mahjong sense. It will continue to exist as a very local version of mahjong, meant for casual play and maybe for small-stakes gambling, but it will never gain much standardisation or internationalisation, so serious competitive mahjong enthusiasts will have to look to other rulesets to compete in.
Interested users are allowed to use this document for running or refereeing Singapore Style mahjong tournaments in Singapore. Please do attribute me when using this document, whether in whole or in part.
You can download the file as a PDF from Google Drive: Singapore Style Mahjong Consensus Rules for Competition.
