Reach Mahjong: The Only Way to Play Paperback – July 1, 2009

I found this book to be an excellent introduction to the Japanese version of Mahjong, called reach or riichi mahjong. I especially liked the scoring section which made adding up the points very clear, as well as the section on yakus or hand points. The book discusses how the tiles are set up, building the wall and choosing the player seatings, the mechanics of play, and tactics. There is a section on playing with three players. There is also a 35 page glossary that has the words used in the game, their meanings, and the Japanese names for the terms.If you play Reach Mahjong, this book is an excellent choice. I found it to be easier to understand than Eleanor Noss Whitney's  A Mah Jong Handbook: How to Play, Score, and Win , although the Whitney book is also very good. I took a point off for some printing mistakes, but you can always look to the author's website for the corrections.

Since this is the only book of Japanese Mahjong in English, I can't complain too much. Overall I can use this book to explain the difference between Japanese and American Mahjong to our friends. However, this book does not explain the various hands available and the Yaku that comes with them. Too bad.

Finally a book all about Riichi written by a professional player.My friends that read this book were able to start playing with me right away and the 2 and 3-player explanations were great. With the full glossary we could easily play with our Japanese friends too without language barriers.Definitely the best way to learn how to play the Japanese Mahjong game!

Now, this book does explain the rules rather well, and has the most basic of strategy sections, but (even excluding the printing error with a couple examples) is simply too 'basic' to recommend.It is a Catch-22 of the mahjong world - if you are into mahjong enough to know about the book, you know enough that you don't need the book at all.The only book in english out there that has the strategy that you can't get off a dozen sites found by a simple 'reach mahjong' search on google is the Whitney "Mahjong Handbook". it's been the standard for decades for a reason.Also, although it is unfortunate, it gets docked points for the incorrect examples. I know it is merely a printer error, but if you are a beginner, you aren't necessarily going to know that something is wrong, and be thoroughly confused as to what is going on.All-in-all, I bought it, and didn't learn anything that I couldn't have gotten from the Whitney book. If you are looking for a way to teach your friends, or yourself, without access to the internet or outside input, it's worth it, but those are the only niches it fills.

Not only is the book badly written from an educational perspective, it contains downright errors when it comes to the content. The author makes good use of images to support her examples, but one chapter - the one interesting for people who actually know how to play mahjong and want to become better at it - contains severe mistakes rendering the entire chapter useless.Teaching someone how to play mahjong is difficult, and while I can appreciate that the author does her best, she falls quite short of succeeding in her endeavor.Technical details are also bad - the image quality is quite low, and the typesetting is just plain bad.Compared to Eleanor Noss Whitney's book, covering the same subject, this book doesn't stand a chance. Don't buy it.