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It’s Essen time again
The Christmas is coming, by which I mean Essen. There’s a pile of new games getting published, but I’m really not very interested in most of them. I mean, there’s plenty of nice stuff coming, but in the end, I don’t really care. I must say we’ve had excellent service on the Board Game Society…
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Games at Jyväskylä: Mahjong, Agricola
I went to Jyväskylä with Nooa for the weekend and as usual, it means some games too. Their collection has grown enough that I don’t really have to bring any games with anymore, so this time I just brought a pack of mahjong cards with me. So that’s what we started with, six hands of…
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Definition of skill in games
Dutch professor Ben van der Genugten has created a formula for calculating the skill level of a game. He has used it in Dutch courts to help determine that fantasy sports games are games of skill and now he’s using it to argue that poker is a game of skill, too. (See Leading Professor Rekindles…
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Thursday session: Riichi again
After a quick round of Da Vinci Code, it wasn’t hard to get a Mahjong table going. There were more than four interested players. We used the new set I had bought. It’s a cheap set, made in China but Japanese in style. That means it’s small (the tiles seemed very small the first time…
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Back to New England
I visited board game club today for a while. I had to leave early, but I did have time for a round of New England Railways. We got five players and this time, since I was carrying Age of Steam as well, we replaced the cardboard chits with actual wooden cubes. It was much better.…
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Thursday session: New England Railways
My Thursday games started with a quick 2-0 loss in Truc and a four-player game of Race for the Galaxy. It’s been a while since I played Race, but I was in good form and able to win (ok, so we had two newbies in the game). The main course for me was, however, Winsome’s…
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Another new project of mine: Mahjong-opas
Since the Finnish mahjong resources are so scarce, I wanted to fix that. Thus, Mahjong-opas was born. Currently the site has some basic information on mahjong and the rules to the Chinese Official game and Riichi, but more will come — while it probably won’t be another Sloperama Mahjong FAQ, I’m interested in developing this…
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Thursday session: Mahjong, Bausack
Our Thursday sessions have returned to Thursdays! We got our old location back now the university is again open in evenings. Actually, that happened last week, I just missed the first meeting. This time we had a nice turnout, I think we had four tables going on at the same time. My table was playing…
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4 Winds Mah Jong again
Yesterday I re-installed 4 Winds Mah Jong, now that I have a Windows laptop in addition to my Mac. It’s still as good as it was in 2002 when I bought it. The game shines when practising new rule sets, particularly those with minimum scores — always pesky for new players. Having a computer opponent…
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West Riding for sale
I’ve got a copy of Winsome Games’ West Riding for sale and it’s ridiculously cheap for something that difficult to find: just 20 euros (under $30), including economy shipping anywhere in the world. If you want it, just head to the BoardGameGeek Marketplace.