Mah jongg enthusiasts use power of play to support charities
James Kitchens plays mah jongg at the Marble Falls Senior Activity Center, which holds competitions at 11:30 a.m. every Monday. Kitchens is co-chair of the Horseshoe Bay Foundation’s 11th annual Mah Jongg Tournament Sept. 25-26. Staff photo by Suzanne Freeman
Some of the most enthusiastic mah jongg players in the Highland Lakes had never heard of the game until they retired to Texas, where enthusiasm for the Chinese tiled-based pastime is growing.
“It is quite a thing in Texas,” said Shirley Theisen, who learned to play in 2019. “It’s booming. It’s such a wonderful game, and it keeps your mind sharp.”
Theisen plays weekly at the Highland Lakes Senior Center in Kingsland, which is holding a tournament in October for the Sharing the Harvest food pantry. She is also registered to compete at the 11th annual Mah Jongg Tournament on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 25-26, at Horseshoe Bay Resort.
A game that has been in America for about 90 years has become the go-to fundraiser for at least three local nonprofits, including one in June for Highland Lakes Canine Rescue. The Horseshoe Bay Foundation, which holds the September tournament, expects to raise $90,000 for medical equipment for Baylor Scott & White Medical Center-Marble Falls.
Because spots for the tournament sell out as soon as registration opens in June, the foundation increased the number of entrants this year.
“In the past, we’ve set the tournament at 200 players, but the demand has led us to raise that to 312 this year,” said event co-chair April Weiss. “In the last 10 years, the tournament has raised over half-a-million dollars.”
Weiss learned to play just two years ago when she and her husband, David, moved to Horseshoe Bay. She clicks tiles weekly at the Marble Falls Senior Activity Center and several locations in Horseshoe Bay.
“I really like it,” she said of the game. “I now have this enormous friend group and was integrated almost instantaneously into the community.”
The Kingsland food pantry tournament is Oct. 21 at Log Country Cove between Kingsland and Burnet. Theisen and Lauri Wicker, who are the vice president and president, respectively, of the Highland Lakes Senior Center in Kingsland, organized the event.
“We started holding a tournament for senior center improvements and have done that a few years,” Theisen said. “We heard of a need for Sharing the Harvest, and said, ‘Let’s do that this year.’”
Demand for food has increased since the Fourth of July weekend flood, said Cynthia Green, the pantry’s director. The increase is not just from local residents but also those displaced by flooding elsewhere.
“We are trying to meet the increased needs for protein,” Green said. “It’s expensive.”
Although Green does not play mah jongg, she certainly appreciates the hold it has on those who do.
“I am so grateful for this community,” she said. “It will be a fun day, a competitive day, and some serious competition.”
Mah jongg has the vibe of an ancient game, with its Chinese symbols and clunky tiles, but it didn’t became popular in China until the mid-1800s. An American living there introduced it to the States in 1920, where it became a craze through the Roaring Twenties. Popularity died down when the Great Depression hit in the 1930s.
The National Mah Jongg League was founded in 1937, giving the game a renewed boost. More recent popularity is attributed to two major motion pictures that feature mah jongg: “The Joy Luck Club” in 1993 and “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018.
For years, the tile-based game was popular among the isolated communities of Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish Americans. According to recent studies reported by the National Institute of Health, playing mah jongg with others builds community connections that benefit both the group and the individual players.
“Mah jongg has been shown to prevent depression in older adults, improve cognitive performance, such as verbal memory in patients with mild dementia, and improve higher brain functions, such as increased executive function,” reads the introduction to a Frontiers in Psychology paper reported by the NIH. “Based on this improvement in executive function, (one study) concluded that mah jongg improved higher brain function by activating frontal lobe functions, such as concentration and anticipation.”
Play and strategy are a combination of two card games, rummy and bridge, except with tiles. Suits play a big part, but mah jongg has only three: cracks (characters), bams (bamboo), and dots (like it says). Those are combined with tiles representing winds (north, south, east, and west) and flowers. The American version adds eight jokers (wild tiles) and extra flower tiles, bringing the tile total to 152 compared to the 144 tiles in the Chinese version.
Players build hands to match grouped examples on a card issued annually by the National Mah Jongg League, similar to a bridge card. Tiles can be matched in a pung (three identical tiles), a kong (four), or a chow (three consecutively numbered tiles in the same suit). Mah jongg might sound complicated, but Weiss said it is easy and quick to learn.
“And you don’t have to be an expert to compete,” she added. “So many people are intimidated by the game and only play socially, but you, too, can play in a tournament.”
At a competition she attended this year in Seguin, a 24-year-old who recently learned from her grandmother took the title.
“It was her first tournament and she won,” Weiss said.
Also co-chairing the Horseshoe Bay event is James Kitchens, who taught Weiss to play. Kitchens learned with his wife, Suzy, about five years ago on the tail end of the COVID-19 lockdown. Friends from Plano taught them.
“I love all kinds of games, and this is one my wife and I both share an interest in and it’s something we can do together,” he said.
Like Weiss, the Kitchens travel around the state to play. They plan to be at the tables for the Sharing the Harvest fundraiser in Kingsland.
“The game is very challenging,” Kitchens said. “You have to be able to adjust. You go into each hand thinking you might play this certain hand. It’s so random what you draw. You have to be able to switch directions in the middle of play. That’s a challenge.”
Kay Hales of Meadowlakes is another fan of the game. She is a regular at the Marble Falls Senior Activity Center and will compete in the Horseshoe Bay tournament. She learned the New Zealand version of the game from a friend just a few years ago.
“I didn’t know there were different versions—I had never heard of the game until I moved here (Central Texas),” she said.
She and her friend switched to the American version so they could play in tournaments. She now teaches the game at 12:30 p.m. Wednesdays at the Marble Falls senior center.
“I love the fact that I can, first of all, keep my mind sharp and challenged,” Hales said. “And, I can meet so many wonderful people. I meet people from all over the state and country when we go to these different tourneys. I love the camaraderie and fellowship.”
Local players don’t have to travel far to meet a wide array of people. Eighty percent of the 312 players coming to the Horseshoe Bay Foundation tournament live within two hours’ drive of the Highland Lakes. Ten percent are local and 10 percent from out of state.
“More and more people are playing mah jongg,” Weiss continued. “It is becoming a social event, and, in addition to that, it benefits the community.”
As a true mah jongg enthusiast, Weiss built and maintains a website, MahjonggTexas.com, that provides links to tips on how to play and lists events and tournaments across the state. MahjonggTexas.com can be found on YouTube, X, Facebook, and Instagram @mahj0nggtexas.
Community groups that want to be included in the events list may contact the website. Weiss has seen through play and website activity that the game is growing in popularity in all age groups.
“People enjoy a challenge, and I think a lot of younger people are looking for a way to get away from their screens,” she said. “You have all kinds of multi-member online games—you can even play mah jongg online—but in-person play provides a human connection I think we miss with too much screen play.”
“It is so important for all of us to stay connected,” she continued. “I have a whole new set of friends I would not have found if I had not been a part of the mah jongg group.”
Several locations in the Highland Lakes host regular mah jongg games, including at 11:30 a.m. Mondays at the Marble Falls Senior Activity Center, 618 Avenue L, and 12:30-3:30 p.m. on all but the fourth Wednesdays of the month at the Highland Lakes Senior Center, 351 Chamberlain in Kingsland. Local restaurants host the senior center group on the last Wednesday of the month.