Tournament policy
  • 1. General information
  • 2. Admittance
  • 3. Running the tournament
  • 4. Results

    • 1. General information

    What is a tournament?

    • A tournament is an organized mahjong event for 8 or more participants having shared features: simultaneous play, common ranking, etc.
    • The ultimate goal of online tournaments at MahjongSoft is to provide the closest possible to the "live" tournaments format having the highest level of competition

    Types of tournaments

    All tournaments at MahjongSoft can be divided into the following types:
    • "official" tournaments:
      • championships that is tournaments to define the champion of the continent, country, mahjong club, etc.
      • other official "open" or "by invitation" tournaments of mahjong club / association / federation
      • multi-day tournaments
    • routine tournaments
    • test tournaments — to test some functionality, as a rule, all data are removed from the statistics after the end

    Supported rules

    Currently, the following types of tournaments are supported:
    • MCR — Mahjong Competion Rules, read more
    • DMCR — Duplicate Mahjong Competion Rules, individual and teams, read more
    • SBR — Sichuan Bloody Mahjong, read more
    • DSBR — Duplicate Sichuan Bloody Rules, read more
    • RCR — Riichi Competition Rules, read more

    2. Admittance

    Eligibility

    • Participation in the tournaments can be only possible for the players having "Verified user" status. Players are welcome to complete their profiles. In order to become "VU" please fill in fields "Name", "Lastname", "Country", "City" in your user's profile with the relevant information, and confirm your e-mail address. For help, please, refer to the Site Guide.
    • Restrictions to registration may be applied to the tournaments "by invitation", tournaments with the quotas, or official tournaments.
    • In any tournament unless it is an "official" one, none of player's profile details except the player's nickname will be revealed. That will also relate to the winner's list in the "News".
    • In the "official" tournaments (country championships or any other special events tournaments) "Name" and "Lastname" instead of player's nickname will clearly identify the participant.
    Note: "Verified user" status will not be granted to the players having clairly invalid profiles (such as single letters, advertising or the same words in "Name" and "Lastname" fields), as well as to the players who has "bad" behaviour records in the tournaments.

    Registration

    • Registration does not automatically imply the play in the tournament, since there are many conditions in the preparatory stage, the most essential of them is confirmation, for details please refer to Site guide
    • Beside "full-scope" participation in the tournament there is an option to play as a replacement player (when the necessity comes), so when registering, the player has to choose which of two lists to enter
    • Registration to any tournament not having pre-set lists of participants is done in order of priority
    • For official tournaments only any player is registered not under "Displayed name" but under the combination "Country flag + Name + Lastname"

    Bots policy

    • Bot (robot) is an automated mahjong player
    • The main purpose of using bots in the tournament is to substitute an absent on the temporary or permanent basis player
    • The playing algoritm of a bot allows it to play at some average or less level; depending on settings it may be able to declare winning ("Hu" bot) or not able to do that (non-"Hu" bot)
    • In the official tournaments bots as players in the main list are not allowed, in the routine tournaments the number of bots to be used in the main list just to make the last table "complete" is equal to 1 or 2

    3. Running the tournament

  • Schedule
  • Seating schemes
  • Disconnection policy
  • Tournament cancellation policy

    • Schedule

    The essential part of routine tournaments are one-day tournaments played according to the agreed weekly schedule, see starting time and other tournament parameters in the table:
    # Rules Days Duration Moscow CET China or Singapore Japan Toronto, Canada Comfort zone* Participation
    1 DSBR Mon-Tue-Wed 1 hour 21:30 19:30 02:30 of day+1 03:30 of day+1 13:30 Europe-Canada all players
    2 MCR Fridays 4½ hours 22:00 20:00 03:00 of day+1 04:00 of day+1 14:00 Europe-Canada all players
    3 MCR Saturdays 3 hours 03:30 01:30 08:30 09:30 19:30 of day-1 Canada-Asia all players
    4 DMCR Sundays 2½ hours 15:00 13:00 20:00 21:00 07:00 Asia-Europe all players

    * Comfort zone are groups of countries with a "comfortable" time for playing in the tournament.

    The other part of the tournaments are official or "commemorative" tournaments.

    Seating schemes

    • Seating scheme is the most important thing in any tournament, that is an instruction of how players meet with each other during the tournament
    • To ensure the highest possible level of competition at MahjongSoft tournaments the following seating schemes are used:
      • non-repetitive similar performance
      • vertical quartile
      • complete round-robin
      • others

    Non-repetitive similar performance

    • That seating scheme is used for MCR and SBR tournaments when the number of players is not less than 20
    • The seatings for the first session are done randomly (as an alternative, it is based on the current rating for routine tournaments)
    • The seatings for the new session is done according to two principles:
      • players having the similar scores are playing with each other
      • any two players never play twice

    Vertical quartile

    • That seating scheme is used for DMCR individual tournaments when the number of players is not less than 20
    • The seatings for the first 4 deals are done randomly (as an alternative, it is based on the current rating for routine tournaments)
    • At the end of this first round, the intermediate classification makes it possible to distribute the players according to the vertical quartile system:
      • the players ranked in the 1st quartile are seated in the East, in the order of the ranking
      • players classified in the 2nd quartile are seated in the South, in reverse order
      • players ranked in the 3rd quartile are seated in the West, in order of ranking
      • players classified in the 4th quartile are seated in the North, in reverse order
    • After that algorithm interchanges the seatings of players in adjacent tables within the SAME wind to minimize (ideally, to avoid) repetitive horizontal seating
    • The players thus change tables at each change of turn, that is to say after 4 deals

    Сomplete round-robin

    • That seating scheme is used for any tournaments with exactly 16 players
    • The main reason is there exists seating scheme for 5 session so that any player will meet during the tournament with all 15 opponents only one time
    • Сomplete round-robin seating scheme for 16 players is thus is used for any individual tournaments having no more than 5 sessions and in DMCR teams having 4 sessions

    Other seating schemes

    • There are some cases under which none of the above-mentioned seating schemes cannot be used (for instance, 12 players)

    Disconnection policy

    • A player missing in play is the most severe mahjong "crime" since it violates principles of fair play, any replacement of the player by another player or bot, alongwith changes in the player's results are artificial and can influence the flow and results of the tournament
    • Confirmation prior to start of the tournament is a measure to restrict players not presenting on the server from participation
    • During the tournament, the system checks the presence of a player in the deal, depending on duration of disconnection the system marks the status which can be used for making a decision:
      • if the player doesn't join the table before the end of the deal, the cell with the deal result is marked in red
      • two "red" cells in a row is a sign for the player to be replaced, in official tournaments it is done without player's consent
      • if the player is replaced by another player for the whole deal, the cell with the deal result is marked in yellow
    • When disconnected, for any types of games and tournaments so-called "inert" bot is used, which does not have any functions except to discard freshly taken from the wall tile (hence, no declarations are possible by such inert bot).
    • For DMCR individual tournament, any "red" or "yellow" cell will lead to the "modified" player's result of "-2 IMP"
    • For MCR tournament, any "red" or "yellow" cell will lead to the "modified" player's result of "-20 GP"
    • For SBR tournament, any "red" or "yellow" cell will lead to the "modified" player's result of "-4 GP"
    • For MCR or SBR types of tournaments, if the player is not playing for the whole session, such a player forcefully is placed to the last table when determining new seatings

    Tournament cancellation policy

    • At the beginning of the confirmation phase, if the number of registered players in a "routine" / "non-titled" / "training" tournament (i.e., the tournament is neither a championship, nor a club tournament) is HALF or less than the required minimum of participants, then such a tournament can be CANCELLED by the system or site admins due to low attendance.

    4. Results

  • In the tournament
  • Statistics
  • Ratings
  • Tournament winners rating

    • In the tournament

    Typical tournament page in the course of the tournament contains the following information:
    • Tournament type, number and title
    • General information
    • List of the participants
    • State of the gameplay by table:
      • timers
      • number of the current deal played
      • number of tiles left in the wall
    • Results by tables, players and deals (no links)
    • Summary table updated after each completed deal

    Statistics

    • After the end of the tournament the information about it one can find in the tournament statistics page
    • Typical tournament page contains the following information:
      • tournament type, number and title
      • summary table
      • results by tables, players and deals (with links)

    Ratings

    • Individual rating is an estimate of the player's strength of play expressed in numbers
    • MahjongSoft tournament rating for any rules is a list of individual ratings as a result of processing all tournaments of the specified rules
    • Calculations of all eligible tournaments are done recursively, in strict chronological order
    • Only tournaments for the last two years from the tournament rating issue date are eligible
    • Any tournament has "tournament weigt" (TW) which drops from starting value of 100% by 4% for each 30 days from the issue date
    • At step 1 the "tournament coefficient" (TC) is calculated:
      • the main indicator of a player's success in a tournament is the "basic ranking" (BR) which is a number from 0 to 1000 points, it is calculated by the formula: BR=1000*(Number_of_players-Player's_place)/(Number_of_players-1)
      • "coefficient by players" (CP) is calculated based on the previous individual ratings of players who have played 10 or more tournaments, or the average of basic ranking of players who have played 9 or less tournaments
      • "coefficient by deals" (CD) is calculated by the formula: CD=Number_of_deals/64
      • TC=CP*CD
    • At step 2 the "individual rating" (IR) for each player is calculated:
      • best 10 tournaments by BR are chosen, if the number of all tournaments played by the player is less than 10, then for all "missing" tournaments it is considered BR=0
      • "weighted ratio" (WR), the ratio of two sums of products, is calculated by the formula: WR=sum(BR*TW*TC)/sum(TW*TC)
      • finally, "individual rating" (IR) is a weighted sum of two WR: IR=50%*WR{taken for all tournaments}+50%*WR{taken for the best 10 tournaments}

    Tournament winners rating

    • Tournament winners rating is calculated across all rated tournaments of any rules and any types
    • In marathons the minimum number of "qualified players" (who played required minimum of games for ranking) should strictly be not less than 12 players
    • In any tournament, top quarter of participants is awarded 1 VP (victory point)
    • Furthermore, top quarter of top quarter of participants is awarded one more VP, and so on
    Updated: 10.10.2023