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“Mahjong???”, you said.

In general, there are two kinds of Mahjong game: the more popular four-player game Mahjong and the one-player Mahjong Solitaire. The original Mahjong game is a gambling game which is very popular in Hong Kong and in most Asian countries. I’m not interested in the original Mahjong game, personally I think there are just too many rules for it to be fun to play without gambling, as I’m not into gambling. Mahjong Solitaire, on the other hand, is simple yet intriguing. The version I play is GNOME Mahjongg. You can find other versions and an explanation on how to play the game in the Wikipedia article for Mahjong Solitaire.

The object of the Mahjong Solitaire game is to remove all matching tiles from the stack in a particular manner as fast as possible. After playing this game for several years, my observation is that in order to be successful in this game you have to have several characteristics that, I believe, map to the characteristics needed to survive in real life. In other words, the characteristics required to play the game successfully are the characteristics that can be trained by playing the game successfully.

• Focus and concentration. It is very crucial to focus and give your 100% attention and concentration to the game, when your mind wanders, even for a second, it will cost you a lot of time to refocus. In real life it is often inevitable to have distractions and disturbance, nothing is paper perfect. For people who are easily distracted or who have difficulty focusing, it can be frustrating and exhausting to keep refocusing, especially under pressure.
• Fast (re)action and quick thinking. Time is the most important factor in the game, so it is imperative to be fast. The mind and the body must work in unison and in a timely fashion. Fast reaction means making the correct decision given the current situation as the result of previous (potentially irreversible) decisions. In real life we encounter many situations which require fast reaction and quick thinking every day, sometimes forcing us to “make do” with whatever is available.
• Strategy, habit, trial and error. It is impossible to instantly understand something really well. The game must be played over and over by means of trial and error to develop a sense of habit in the movements. It forces you to learn to judge which decisions are right and make a habit out of it. Mistakes are incentives to be better as well as an important and inevitable part of learning, it is not a bad thing at all. By developing a good habit, you are in essence learning about the strategy on how to play the game well. In real life, almost all of the successful people started from the bottom of the ladder, they understand “the game” well by understanding how everything works. This understanding in turn allows them to develop better strategy in order for them to be successful.
• Look-ahead. Very often you will be required to picture your movements several steps ahead. The game might look playable now, but if you don’t look ahead and you make the wrong move then the game could end with no solutions. Looking ahead also provides a plan of actions, so the series of actions could be carried out quickly in order. In real life we often find out that long term solutions are always ideal than any short term solutions, however, it is not always practical to implement long term solutions to time critical problems, so a short-term workaround every now and then could be justified.
• Good eye and good memory. Some of the Chinese characters depicted on the pieces look quite similar, especially when you have to quickly scan many pieces over and over. I can’t read Chinese characters, I only know some of them, but they are still foreign to me, this makes it even harder for me. It is important to be able to distinguish all the pieces correctly, and often memorize where you last saw “that piece”. In real life we often overlook important pieces of information or clues about a certain problem that are right before our eyes. We are often required to be critical and question everything.
• Get the big picture. You must always maintain a good overview of the whole board, end-to-end, from the very start of the game. You need to keep track of all your “assets or resources” (the pieces), know where they are and when to use them. It is overwhelming at first when you start the game because you have so many pieces, but I see it as full of potential because my options are usually broader. Once the pieces are removed then the options are starting to lessen, but it won’t be as hard to maintain the overview of the whole board. In real life we are often expected to have multiple perspectives depending on the situations, and knowing when to apply the perspectives.
• Staying calm under pressure. When we panic, we tend to make erroneous decisions. I usually don’t look at the current game time while I’m playing because it puts a bit of pressure on me if I do. But in real life it is often not possible to avoid pressure. Thinking about the pressure itself too much often cause loss of valuable time and is unnecessary, it won’t help solving the problem. Confidence can also help greatly with staying calm.
• Motivation, patience and persistence. This game took me quite a while to get the hang of it. I wouldn’t recommend playing this game (or any game) for 24 hours straight, of course, that would be idiotic. Having the right motivation (e.g. to be better, prove to yourself that you can, etc. what have you) provides the justification to your persistence, perseverance and patience. Being persistent means to keep trying and not to give up easily. And it takes a lot of patience to do that. In real life we know the saying “practice makes perfect” too well.
• Instinct and faith. “But how do I know if I made the right decisison? How do I know it’s going to work out?” In any time-critical game, such as Mahjong Solitaire, you don’t know what will happen and you have to rely on your instincts that you’re making the right decisions. Your instincts will develop better when you are rewarded by your achievements to certain levels of expectations. The key to building faith is positive reinforcements. Blindly making decisions is foolish and will not get you anywhere in the game. The same goes for real life, in business investments, for example, having a good instinct often means excercising good judgments and making informed decisions, not blindly following unreliable information or rolling the dice.
• Knowing when you made mistakes. Once in a while we identify that we have made a mistake. As I mentioned previously, mistake is not necessarily a bad thing (in the long run). It is important to quickly identify that we have made a mistake and react accordingly to rectify the mistake and make amends. GNOME Mahjongg provides an Undo facility, so I could quickly press Undo and make another move when I change my mind. There is no penalty for Undo in GNOME Mahjongg other than the loss of time when doing the Undo. An Undo button for real life is wishful thinking. But the point is that we could identify that we have made a mistake and correct it.
• Knowing when to get help. Another facility provided by GNOME Mahjongg is Hint. The next possible matching pair of pieces flash for a couple of seconds when the Hint button is pressed. It is meant as a last resort when you’re stuck. This doesn’t come free, however, a 1 minute penalty is applied every time Hint is given. Enough to deter cheating. The main purpose is to allow you to still finish the game. Even though we can’t finish first (or in the top ten) we still want to finish the “race”. In real life sometimes we need to rely on the help of others, even if it means we’re losing a little bit of our pride by asking for help, it is sometimes just a minor trade-off compared to achieving the main goal. And sometimes the real main goal itself is not what we think it is (e.g. best times vs. finishing the game).

I believe that Mahjong Solitaire was designed for fun and the self improvement aspects of it is just an unexpected positive side effect. If it were designed for self improvement it would have required other equally important characteristics as well such as communications and team work. But in any case don’t let my analysis intimidates you in any way such that it takes the fun out of it. When you play, just play for fun, don’t think about this stuff, it will come to you sooner or later. If you haven’t tried playing Mahjong Solitaire, you’re missing something fun.

My personal best so far is 3 minutes and 8 seconds, and the tenth best is 3:29. I don’t have a frame of reference to compare to, so I don’t know if that’s a good personal best. I find that almost everytime I play I could put myself in the top ten list, but it is extremely hard to break the 3:10 barrier. I guess like most other games a little luck is needed. What’s your personal best? Or maybe you have a few tips that you’d like to share with us? Please post in the comments below.