Is Mahjongtime fair???

I am starting this Blog to give members at www.Mahjongtime.com an opportunity to voice their opinions about the site.

Many of us have been members for some years. During this time we have often had the chance to voice our opinions and have on many an occasion helped improve the game.

Unfortunately over the past year many changes have been implemented including the inevitable decision to introduce membership fees. Whilst many of us have had no problem with paying to play, more and more of the long standing players have been noticing what we believe to be irregularities in the quality of the programming.

Also, since the introduction of fees to play, the quality and frequency of Player Services support appears to have declined. There hardly appears to be anyone visibly online to answer questions, listen to complaints or recommendations for improvements etc as there used to be before the introduction of fees. Even if there is the quality of their English or understanding of the game seems lacking. There appears to be no more interest in hearing the voices of the (paying) customers. Whilst there is some motion when it comes to rectifying samll bugs, serious complaints, if answered at all, appear not to interest the site. This blog will hopefully help to remind the site that we as paying customers have a right to be heard and a right to quality and fairness.

The fact that gambling takes place on Mahjongtime, all be it with small amounts, is again all the more reason for the site to prove that it is indeed interested in the integrity of the program.

Whist there is a non collusion policy in effect, cheating still takes place and we welcome any improvements to stop and ban cheaters. Players who have been caught cheating are still online and this is not fair to the honest players. We call for these players to be banned indefinitely, although we realise that it is almost impossible to rule out that they re-join under new names.

The fact that the site has been successful in obtaining the support of many of the national mahjong associations in different countries is all the more reason for these associations also to question the integrity of the site which they have endorsed.

Whilst the latest upgrade has brought improvements and although there are still bugs in it it is most certainly on the right track.

There are even new mistakes, in scoring and other areas that were not there before that were brought on by the new updates. For example, for a while SP on kong in CO is called wrong MJ. There are also other scoring errors that might not be as obvious and visible as the above examples, most players do not check the score after each game. Many of these mistakes were 'created' by updates. Which also comes to the question, why rush an update if it is not been thoroughly tested. I am sure most players would prefer the mistakes to be corrected first before new 'IMPROVEMENTS' are made. Don't you guys at Mahjongtime test your programming before going live with it? Can the programmers play MJ? Or did they all work for Microsoft before joining the site ;-)

There are however still some frequently voiced opinions from long standing high ranked players, who despite the latest update are becoming more and more disillusioned with Mahjongtime and the fact that every major new update only seems to bring superficial improvements instead of real ones. Some of these opinions I have tried to document here:

The biggest major issue regards the integrity of the randomness of the tiles in the wall, which of course is one of, if not the most, essential parts of the game. Many of the longstanding players at Mahjongtime question the integrity of the algorithms which determine whether or not the tiles are indeed mixed at random or not.

A large number of players do not believe that the tiles are mixed randomly at the beginning of the game and that they remain in that order! In fact others go even further and maintain that set patterns are sometimes visible. Later analysis of games that have been played seem to back this up. There have been no apparent changes in the latest update to improve this point.

In fact the whole dealing system at money tables seems very strange compared to points games. The are most surely set patterns of tiles being dealt in these games, which are more recognisable than in points games. This has been tested by different players and proven!

There is also the overlapping tiles, same tiles are so often stacked together. In particular when a pung is laid and later a chow which contains a tile hog of the previously laid pung. There have been occurences where a kong appears. The occurance of that is way too frequent. The sizes of the tiles dont help either. The tiles on te far side of the table are ver emall indeed. Perhaps the tiles inthe middle, a generally most welcomed new feature, should be in rows of six tiles at a time which would enable the table proportions to be newly laid out.

The laying out of the tiles on the table in front of the players is total wrong. Laying the taken tile on its side to indicate who laid it is fundamentally correct, but incorrectly programmed. If the tile taken is for the middle of a chow i.e. the 6 in 567, then it is currently displayed laid on its side, which is correct, but at the sme time wrong as the order of the tiles is being kept, thus displaying a chow as having ben given by the player on the opposite side of the table - since the middle tile on its side indicates that that tile came from the opposite player. The correct solution is to abandon the order of the tiles, unless they are able to be laid in the correct order whilst at the same time still indicating who laid the taken tile -which in the above example would mean laying 657 with the 6 being laid on its side.

The replacement of flowers in OC games is also flawed. The routine to replace flowers at hte beginning of each hand is in priciple correct, but the programming is not yet complete. The timing is wring and sometimes doesnt allow players to replace their flowers. During the game itself it should NOT be allowed for a player to replaced a flower after having claimed a tile from the table. Only upon taking a tile from the wall should flowers be allowed to be replaced.

The high frequency of disconnections from the site all a further point of contention, which shows no great sign of being improved. Isnt it strange that the site casually blames the providers and the opposite is also true. Fact remains that players with the same provder dont have the same disconnection rates. The fault is most certainly with mahjongtime.

This problem gets worse of course once a player does become disconnected for any reason because then the robots take over. This is a major feature which Mahjongtime has not improved at all since the very beginning, although it has on occaision be claimed that Mahjongtime is priíud of Jerry! Jerry however has only a two track mind. He always do one of two things a) start by ruining the hand by throwing the most important tiles first, b) collect only pungs. It is fact that leaving the game with a poor hand and returning some minutes late will result in a hand at the least full of pairs if not pungs. Both these results are unfair! No requests to change this have been implemented to date. There can be no real claim for artifcial intelligence, this characteristic elludes Jerry totally.

Players in cash games are using this fact as a tactic at an alarming freguency. Is it any wonder to Mahjongtime that all hardly any of the really good players take pert in money games at all!
The apparent high frequency of self picks, which has been repeatedly brought to the attention of the site without any positive reaction, and the fact that new members appear to be extremely "lucky" and able to reach high levels in short periods of time compared to better players who have played many hours have lead to many bad feeling amongst players. It has also been observed that particular players always seem to get the wong just when needed most. This has led to rumours against the integrity of the online tournaments.

Many players all seem to agree that there are winning streaks, that 'TILES JUST COME TO ME'. Somehow however, these streaks often only appear to happen to certain players and often at the most opportune time, especially during online tournaments. This leads to speculations that the wall is not pre-determined and in fact tiles are designed to appear to the right players at the right moments, and not to appear for the 'unlucky' player.

The current rating system is obviously profoundly unfair or at the very least most disadvantageous to brown belts and above. Calls to the site to reconsider the rating system and to introduce improvements are either ignored or dismissed. Good players know how difficult it should be to get a high ranking and how long it takes.

All be it that the really good players know who they are and have no real need for a rating system, if there is one then it should at least be fair and accurate. The rating system and the player staistics should represent the number of hands (not rounds) played (the rating is calculated after each hand but the personal statistics are not), hands won or lost (given away), the quality of the hands, the quality of defensive (how many mjs thrown to others for example), numbers of self picks for/against, the quality or rating of the opponents and maybe other statistics just to name some ideas.

As with ever update to date, there have again been many hours spent on that latest version playing about with gimics like the smilies or flashing frames around the player whose turn it is. Shame that some of this time was not better spent improving the integrity of the game itself.

In order to demonstrate how many other players feel the same way or have noticed other discrepancies that are not mentioned here please add you comments to this blog.

To the Mahjongtime staff this blog is sent with the sincere belief that you will do everything possible to listen to us players and to make all the necessary improvements to keep Mahjongtime the best Mahjong site on the web.

A return to the common interest of improving the game on the site would be most welcome. After all most of us are committed to the game, are fans of the site and are more than prepared to assist (addicts ;-) ). As paying customers we do however have a right to insist on it as well.

We are nonetheless appreciative of the style of the game being offered, the main structure of the site is still the best on the web, but it is still a long way from being perfect and should do more to achieve this aim without taking this fact for granted.

Thank you in advance.