Is It Really Cheating? The Japanese Mahjong Thumb-rub Explained!
Published: 01st April 2008

Most modern Japanese mahjong sets have tiles which are made of nylon with the mahjong characters stamped on the tile-face. It is not difficult to learn to read what the characters stand for, whether they are winds, dragons or the three numbered suits. However, the indentations left by the stamp mean that the tiles can be "read" in an entirely different say.

And that is just what many of the more experienced Japanese mahjong players like to do in the course of a game - use feel the concealed face of the tile next to be taken from the wall with their thumbs! Yes, not a few seasoned hands have become competent at tile-reading by rubbing the indentations on tile-face with their thumbs.

It takes hours of practice to get to the point where you can accurately distinguish each of the 34 different tile faces of a standard Japanese mahjong set with your thumb, and there seems to be little advantage in being able to do so. It is a diverting party trick and it also adds some kudos to a player's game if the player can pluck a tile from the wall, announce what it is and discard it without so much as glancing at it. As mahjong is best played at a fast and furious pace, being able to read and discard tiles swiftly does help the flow of the game, but beyond that there seems little practical advantage to be gained in learning the skill.

However, in one instance that I can think of some small advantage could be gained about an opponent's tile by use of the "thumb-reading" technique. Experienced mahjong players enjoy playing a fast-paced game so if one player hesitates before discarding a tile, the player to his right is likely to have reached for "his" tile on the end of the wall before the first player has discarded. An experienced tile-reader places his thumb under the tile on the wall that he is about to take so that he can "read" it while waiting for his turn.

But then, when the player on his left discards a tile, if another player claims it as a "Pon" the "thumb-reader" would not in fact draw the tile from the wall and it is more than likely that the tile will go to a different player. In that case the "thumb reader" will know what the tile is and will perhaps pay attention to where it is placed in the other player's hand.

Some people might object that such a practice is a form of cheating, but others counter that it is just part parcel of the Japanese approach to the game.

It might also be pointed out that there is nothing to stop the player who received the tile from practising some deception by placing it somewhere in his hand where it does not really belong in the hope that the "thumb-reader" will draw the wrong conclusions about the make-up of his hand.

Whatever your attitude towards players reading tiles with their thumbs may be, that it can be done at all shows you how sensitive the human thumb - or "oya-yubi" in Japanese - can be.

On 2012-03-05 20:55, tommy wrote:
Five minutes from a little restaurant bar in Birmingham, St Pauls Square, in The Jewellery Quarter, http://stirlingsbar.co.uk/news--whats-on if you want a bet mate.

On 2012-03-06 07:53, AMcD wrote:
@tony,

I suppose you're talking about cards like these?

http://blog.korea.net/?p=1011