Greetings and salutations from Bubbe, talking about unexpected, seismic changes. Those of you on the East Coast may have heard about the 4.8-level earthquake in New Jersey on April 5th. The epicenter was 12 miles away from my house, and some of the aftershocks were even closer! Obviously, I wasn’t expecting it. It felt like my house was being hit by a truck; I couldn’t figure out why it was happening. Then I thought maybe an appliance had exploded—I just couldn’t understand what was going on! Fortunately, I have a veteran tremor expert in my house. In October, 1989, I was on the phone wi ..read more

Greetings and salutations from Quizmaster Bubbe--who doesn't love a good challenge, now and then? A lot of you have expressed enthusiasm about the new card. It's got some really interesting combinations, and opportunities to switch from one hand to another abound!  Rather than spell everything out for you, I'm going to give you a few things to work out for yourself. I will be posting answers next week, but I'm going to bet you can figure them out before then!   Scenarios, part one: NO EXPOSURES SO FAR A) You have the following tiles:     F 11223345 27 E J and you're ho ..read more

Greetings and salutations from your overbooked Bubbe, who is just now getting an article together! I spent the afternoon with my friend, Fern Bernstein, taping a podcast about the New Card. We talk about strategy and favorite hands, and of course lots of gossip about the card and new developments in the world of mah jongg. As soon as it is put online, I will send you a link!  As promised, today I will talk more about backup hands. One thing that I love about this new card is that there are all sorts of opportunities to switch, especially if you haven't made any exposures--but even if you ..read more

  Greetings and salutations from your traditionalist, Bubbe, ready to begin her usual discussion of “Backup Hands.”   This article is especially important those of you who are new to mah jongg, or new to my blog, this is a very important component of strategy. I want you to learn about backup hands because I consider them an essential subject for any player who hopes to improve beyond the “beginner” level. You need to consider a backup hand because discarded tiles or an opponent’s exposure may prove that you can’t complete your original choice of hand. For any number of reasons, incl ..read more

  Greetings and salutations from your law-abiding Bubbe, here to give you information on illegal exposures on the 2024 card!   As you know, there are certain melds of tiles, and combinations of melds, that do not appear on each year's card. The sooner you know them, the sooner you'll be able to call out someone’s hand that exposes them. Most importantly, you'll know not to make that mistake, yourself. It’s also helpful to remember “illegal” melds because, when you're trying to remember the components of a hand, it’s great to know what can NEVER be used.    FLOWERS &nbs ..read more

Greetings and salutations from your contemplative Bubbe on this Easter Sunday. I have been writing these card reviews at a breathless pace, and I think I will take a moment today to go on a different tangent. I am dedicating this column to two women who embody something very important about mah jongg. The first is well-known in the mahj world. Her name is Fern Bernstein and she has written "Mah Jongg Mondays," a book about how mah jongg provides an opportunity to make friends and support one another through good times and bad. In the book, Fern talks about how her network of mahj friends helpe ..read more

  Greetings and salutations from your Bubbe, who knows good things come in threes. That means it's time for our third panel, the right side of the card.   Let's get to it.   Abbreviation standards: WD is the Winds and dragons section, 369 is 369 and Singles and Pairs is SP.   Winds and dragons section:   WD1a and WD1b: same as last year. It's a pung and kong hand, no pairs. Every meld can utilize Jokers, any discard can be called for an exposure. Wests equal Easts, Norths equal Souths. You decide which are the pungs and which are the kongs, but once you expose a meld ..read more

Greetings and salutations from your Bubbe, who knows exactly why you're here. You want to me to talk about the middle panel of the card. Who am I to say no?  **Warning: Bubbe may or may not have been consuming hallucinogenics while coming up with some of these ideas!**   As with yesterday, I'm explaining my methods. Q means quints, CR means consecutive runs, O means the 13579 section. If a hand has a second variation I will either call it, for example, CR7.1 or CR7.2 referring to the number of suits, or if it's on a different end of the number line I will call it, for example, O2a or ..read more

  Greetings and salutations from your relatively chill Bubbe, who is grateful for a late Pesach this year. It gives me more time to pay attention to the new card.   Today I'm going to focus on the left panel. Those of you who don't know me yet will find that I like to do abbreviations. I call the 2024 section the Year section, abbreviated Y1, Y2, etc. The 2468 section are  the "Evens" part so I call hands E1, E2, etc. Like numbers are abbreviated as LN, and the lucky seven addition hands this year Will be called L7's. The other convention I use for explaining hands is to specify ..read more

  Greetings and salutations from your Bubbe, who is actually somewhat gobsmacked by the new card.   I promise over the next days I will be more specific, focusing on the three panels of the card, describing each hand in each section. I will talk about illegal exposures and ambiguous exposures, hands that are easy to use for backup of one another, all the good stuff that you are used to getting from Bubbe. But since most cards haven’t been received, I don’t want to get into too much fine detail yet. Consider this to be the 40,000-foot overview.   Hold on to your hats, quite liter ..read more