It’s not too often that the HUmaniac gets to write a blog post, because his cycling alter ego, Cyclopaat, is getting most of the attention…
However, this weekend the maniac took over by winning the German Mahjong Open, so (t)his post is well earned.
It has mostly been about cycling this year, but every now and then, Paula and Robert do play an international mahjong tournament. Last July they were present at the Open European Mahjong Championship in Mestre (Venice, Italy) and Robert reported on that at the time. However, the results were not worth mentioning and he was glad he could get back on his bike…
This weekend, the HUmanaicas traveled to Edewecht for the 6th German Mahjong Open. Traditionally, this tournament is dominated by the Dutch players and this time was no different.
From the very first round there were Dutch players in the lead and Désirée Heemskerk was topping the ranking after day 1 (4 rounds) – she only lost 2 table points to… Robert who won the table where they played together. The intermediate score after day 1: 1 Désirée, 2 Robert, 3 Harry Kal; Paula was on position 27 and Ton Rijnders on 15th.
The next morning Robert started with 1 table point and ‘Dees’ took 4 again; Robert still remained 3rd, being overtaken only by Janine Scholtemeijer. The next (6th) round he played Janine and he won that table, albeit that there were at least two miracles involved.
(For those of you that know mahjong: the first one being the game where he declared a Kong on the before last tile of the game and then making mahjong – after a Kong – with the replacement tile, logically also being the last tile of the game. He then repeated that trick in the final game, although that was ‘just’ a regular self pick with the last tile of the game…)
Having taken that table from – as he described it – the depths of hell, after being way at the bottom of the ranking during 3/4 of the session, he found himself in the lead because Dees scored 0 table points and Janine took 1.
So, he needed 2 table points to be fairly sure he would at least land on the podium, but winning his table would bring him victory. And again the final session didn’t go well and he had to fight his way back up.
Winning the penultimate game (with a self pick) he found himself in a position to actually win the table, because there was only a 34 point difference with the leader (Uwe Pekau). And – another miracle! – he did win that game, with a full flush to top it off (and being fed the winning tile by Uwe, although that didn’t make a difference as just winning would have been enough).
So, he remained in 1st position – Dees ended up empty handed as she scored another zero, Janine claimed 2nd and Chris Scheffler jumped to 3rd place. Paula ended 17th and Ton earned a top 10 spot, ending 10th.
