The Ballroom Awaits

The Draw

The week the whole table looks toward Las Vegas

There is a particular hum in the groups the week before the championship, and Prim has come to treasure it. It does not sound like the usual arguments. Nobody is fighting about the Charleston. Instead the threads fill with packing lists, and photographs of outfits laid out on beds (OOTD in sorority language: the outfit of the day), and the eternal question of whether one really needs a sweater in the desert (one does, and Prim will explain why further down). Somebody always posts that she is on the waitlist and still hoping. Somebody else always answers that she will light a candle for her.

And then there are the rest of us, who are not going, and who are following along anyway with a delight that Prim finds entirely touching. She wants to take a position on that, because it is the best thing about this week. The championship is not only for the people in the room. It belongs to everyone who has ever sat at a card table in a den and wondered how good she really is. The women walking into that ballroom tomorrow learned exactly where you did, at a kitchen table, from someone patient, one wrong discard at a time. When one of them wins, a little of it belongs to every table that ever taught anybody.

So cheer. Cheer loudly and without apology. Prim will be doing it from her own chair, with a very good cup of tea, and she has no intention of pretending to be above it.

Crak the Card

What the big room will be hunting

Prim promised excitement and not a lesson, so she will keep this short and keep it glittering. A championship room is a different animal from your Tuesday game, and it hunts different things. Here is what it will be looking for from tomorrow night.

The schedule runs twelve rounds across three days, three rounds on Friday evening, six on Saturday and three more on Sunday morning before the awards. That is a marathon made of sprints, and in a marathon the beautiful hand you almost made is worth nothing at all. The players who rise on a weekend like this are the ones who can let a gorgeous line go the moment it stalls and take the plainer hand that will actually close. Prim has watched it for years. Elegance at the table is not the fanciest hand. It is the hand that ends the game.

At home you know your friends. You know who hoards Jokers and who panics in the last third of the wall. In a ballroom you have never met the three women across from you, and you will meet three new ones next round. The players who shine are the ones who read what is actually on the table, the exposures and the discards, rather than what they expect from a face. Every rack is a first date. Pay attention.

Nobody wins a big room while arguing with herself about a rule. The players who do well have long since settled every question the card and the rulebook can throw at them, so that at the table there is nothing left to do but play. Before anyone sits down in that Las Vegas ballroom, they will have their rules settled, and Prim would have you do the same with her Learning Guide, every rule in full and the stories behind them, the ones that make you the most interesting seat at the table.

The Table Is Asking

What do you actually wear to a tournament?

It arrives every October, as reliably as the new season’s sweaters, and Prim is delighted to settle it before anybody boards a plane.

“I am going to my first big tournament and I have no idea what to wear. Is it dressy? Is it casual? I do not want to be the only one in sequins, and I do not want to be the only one in sneakers.”

Prim will give you her position plainly, and it is this. Glamour above the table, comfort beneath it. You are going to sit for a very long time, round after round, and the organizers themselves will tell you what that requires. Destination Mah Jongg’s own packing advice asks for comfortable casual attire, layers because conference rooms can be cool, a light jacket or sweater, and comfortable walking shoes. Mahj Life says much the same, to dress comfortably in clothes that do not bind, and to come layered, because you will feel hot and cold in turn all day. That is the desert sweater explained. A ballroom full of air conditioning does not care what the weather is doing outside.

But Prim did not say comfort only. From the waist up, and at the ears, and at the wrists, you may be as splendid as you please. Wear the earrings. Wear the color that makes you feel like a winner. Put on lipstick for the first round and reapply it at lunch. A soft, forgiving layer underneath and something wonderful on top is the uniform of every woman who has ever looked marvelous at hour six. And this weekend there is a Sunday gala dinner included in every championship package, so pack one proper outfit for that evening and let yourself be dazzling for it, win or lose.

So there it is. Sneakers are welcome. Sequins are welcome. The woman who wears both at once has understood the assignment entirely. Tell Prim what you wore to your first tournament, and whether you would wear it again. And because a table never runs out of questions, this week Prim also settled whether to point out another player’s mistake at the table, who gets the discard when two players call it and which way play goes in American Mahjong.

Who’s Talking

The two women who asked for something grander

This week the voices belong to the people who built the room. Tomorrow’s first shuffle on the Strip happens because of an idea two women had more than ten years ago, and Prim thinks it is high time they had the spotlight they have spent a decade handing to everybody else.

They are Fern Oliphant and Sheryl Perry of Destination Mah Jongg, the company that runs the World Championship and a whole touring calendar of tournaments besides. Back at the end of 2015, announcing what they were planning, Fern put the ambition in a single phrase Prim has never forgotten. She wanted to turn the traveling tournament world into “a true upscale destination Mah Jongg event.” Not a church hall with folding chairs, lovely as those are. A destination. A hotel, a ballroom, a weekend you would dress for, with a real prize at the end of it. The first championship followed in July of 2016, and tomorrow’s is, by the organizers’ own count, the eleventh.

That first one, at the Westgate in Las Vegas, drew nearly a hundred players chasing a $5,000 grand prize, most of whom had earned their seats by winning tournaments back home. The title, and the very first championship of them all, went to Arlene Waite of Florida. The reporter who covered it wrote that the ballroom went as quiet as a library, the loudest sound in it the tiles being mixed in the middle of the tables. Third place, and $1,000, went to a Las Vegas woman of eighty eight who had been playing for seventy four years, since she was a girl sitting in for her mother’s friends. Prim would like that on a plaque somewhere.

What Prim admires most is how sure they were that the game deserved it. Speaking to the Las Vegas Review Journal that weekend, Fern described players arriving from their thirties and forties right up to their seventies and eighties, and she was plainly proud of the range. Sheryl, who teaches the game herself, told the same paper that the basics are not hard to learn but that mastery takes time. That is a teacher’s sentence, and it is the whole spirit of a championship. Anyone can sit down. Getting good is the adventure.

So when you see the photographs this weekend, the dressed tables and the gala and whoever lifts the trophy on Sunday afternoon, spare a thought for the two women who asked, a decade ago, why this game should not have a ballroom of its own. They were right. Prim raises her cup to them both. You can find them, and their calendar, at destinationmahjongg.com.

Tile Envy

What people carry when they want to be seen

Prim has a favorite photograph from that very first championship in 2016. It ran in the Las Vegas paper that covered the event, and it shows a player from Englewood, Florida, mid game, wearing earrings made from mahjong tiles. Just that. A small, sure, glorious statement that she knew exactly where she was and exactly why she had come. Prim thinks of it every October, because it is the whole of Tile Envy in one ear.

A championship is the one weekend of the year when the game gets dressed up, and what people carry into the room says a great deal. There are the sets that catch the light before a single tile is turned. My Fair Mahjong’s Crystal Collection is the one Prim keeps returning to this autumn, bold patterns sitting beneath a back as clear as glass, in two series they call Confetti and Prism, with every tile labeled. On a dim afternoon at home it looks like a jewelry box. Under ballroom chandeliers it would look like a small fireworks display, which is precisely the point.

And then there is the room itself, which in Las Vegas is doing half the work for you. Paris Las Vegas has stood on the Strip since 1999, with its half scale Eiffel Tower rising five hundred and forty feet, an Arc de Triomphe at two thirds scale, and a copy of the Pont Alexandre III bridge right on the casino floor. It is gloriously, unapologetically theatrical, and Prim cannot think of a better backdrop for a room full of women who have been waiting all year to be a little bit theatrical themselves. Bring the earrings. Bring the sparkly set. The Eiffel Tower has already dressed for the occasion, and it would be rude not to match.

Set Your Rack

If you are not in Las Vegas this time, here is the next glittering door

Most of us will not be in that ballroom tomorrow, and Prim wants to point you toward a weekend that you can actually book, with every bit of the sparkle and none of the waitlist. From Thursday, November 5 through Sunday, November 8, Carry On Mahjong holds its Palm Springs Mahjong Retreat at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort and Spa, and as of this writing, registration is open.

It is four days of mahjong, sunshine and a little luxury. The weekend opens on Thursday evening with a meet and greet and live music from the country rock singer Nikki Sparks. Friday brings strategy sessions and instruction in Two Player Mahjong, with open play or resort time in the afternoon. Saturday has a “What Would You Throw?” strategy discussion, tournament play with optional cash prizes, private boat tours, and a pajama party to finish, which Prim considers the single most civilized way to end a mahjong tournament yet devised. Sunday is a farewell breakfast. It is hosted by the retreat’s cofounders, Dawn Hach of The Mahjong Mingle and Lisa Waishes Cornwell of LA LA Mahjong, with the man behind My Wife Plays Mahjong as their special guest.

Registration is $795, with rooms at the resort at $354 a night plus taxes and resort fees, and you book through the Register Now button on their page. Who should go? Anyone who watched this week’s photographs from Las Vegas with a small ache of longing. The desert, a resort, a party dress and a pajama party in one weekend, three weeks from now. Prim calls that a very reasonable consolation prize.

Upcoming events

• OpenCarry On Mahjong Palm Springs Retreat (Thursday to Sunday, November 5 to 8, JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort and Spa, $795 registration)
• OpenDestination Mah Jongg Phoenix Scottsdale (Friday to Sunday, December 11 to 13, space still available)
• OpenDestination Mah Jongg Charlotte (Friday to Sunday, February 19 to 21, 2027, Embassy Suites Charlotte, from $210 commuter to $595 single)
• Sold OutMah Jongg World Championship (October 16 to 18, Paris Las Vegas, waitlist only)
• Sold OutDestination Mah Jongg Houston (November 6 to 8)
• Sold OutDestination Mah Jongg St Petersburg (November 16 to 18)
• Sold OutMahjong in the Mountains (November, The Omni Homestead Resort, Hot Springs, Virginia, free waitlist)

And so you know to move early next year, these are spoken for:

Crak Intelligence

The designer set that counted to our number

Here is something to whisper across the table this weekend, while everyone is admiring everyone else’s handbag. Ralph Lauren makes a mahjong set. It is called the 888 Mahjong Game Gift Set, it comes from Ralph Lauren Home, and the brand’s own page says it was inspired by the modern glamour of penthouse living, which Prim considers the most Las Vegas sentence ever written about a game. The tiles are cherry wood backed in leather, each one painted and engraved. They live in a black leather box with silver metal trim and the stacked RL monogram, and the box opens out into its own game board, seventeen inches by fourteen and a half when closed. Tucked inside are a wind indicator, four push sticks, a set of dice and four sets of 29 betting coins, gilded, as Women’s Wear Daily put it, to catch the light at every angle. When that paper rounded up the designer sets in January, the price was $9,995, and the brand’s page was showing it as unavailable, which only ever makes a woman want a thing more.

Now here is the delicious part. Count the tiles. Ralph Lauren lists 152, which is the American count exactly, the same count you shuffle at home. The page does not say what is painted on each of them, so Prim will not promise you a Joker, but she adores that the number is ours. Nor is this the house’s first time at the table. Back in 2021, the lifestyle site Shout featured an earlier Ralph Lauren set called Joanna, hand painted leather tiles inset into cherry wood, in a leather and brass box, at $4,495, and reported it almost completely sold out. Prim finds the whole thing entirely charming. Penthouse glamour and the American count, in one box.

Which brings Prim to tomorrow night in a French themed hotel in the Nevada desert, where nobody will need a penthouse, or a gilded coin, to belong. The players will fill that room in their layers and their good earrings, with their own sets under their arms and their rules settled. The lights are on. The tables are dressed. The championship table is set.

The Weekly Challenge

Seven racks. Your call. Then Prim’s.

Seven new problems from the table, every Thursday, for readers of this letter. You make your call, you tell Prim why, and only then does she tell you how she would play it. Here is the first of this week’s seven. The other six are waiting for you on the site all week, until the next set opens.

Drill one · Charleston · Newly Seated

First Charleston, first pass, and it goes to the right. Three tiles leave your rack. Which three?

1. North, East and West
2. The three Eight Dots
3. One Eight Dot, North and East

No answer here on purpose. Make your call on the site, write a line about why, and Prim answers you there. Your letter email is your key; no password, ever.

Make your call

Answer all seven before next Thursday and your name goes in the month’s pot, once for every set you finish. One reader is drawn each month for a Practice Workbook of her choice.

A Closing Note

It is the thirty first letter, and the eve of the biggest weekend of the American mahjong year, and Prim has spent it doing nothing but enjoying the anticipation.

To everyone in that line tomorrow evening, Prim wishes you a kind wall, a quick first hand and a table of good sports. To everyone following along from home, she wishes you the same, because your own game this weekend is every bit as real as theirs. And to our new champion, whoever she or he may be, Prim will be writing about you next week, and she cannot wait to meet you.

Prim may write for the women at the table, but she firmly believes everyone is welcome. Everyone deserves a seat at this table.

Ask Prim a question

Don’t tap it, rack it, double stack it. Do it to it, don’t construe it. We all know that Prim won’t skew it. The Order of the Tile, pursue it.

Until next week, may your rack be blessed and your Charleston ruthless.Prim, as always

Forward this to your favorite fourth.
Everyone deserves a seat at this table.

Prim Shows Her Work

Every name, number, and event in this letter, with the receipts.