The Birth of Mahj MATters™

It all began with a problem (as many things do): how do you easily and quickly determine who’s turn is next? Who gets the next tiles? Who pushes out their wall next? And who’s turn is it to deal? We all know the rules: everything goes counter clockwise, except for the next wall, which is clockwise. But when you’re staring at your rack, trying to make a hand out of that mess of tiles, putting those rules into practice is just annoying. There had to be an easier way.

I started with a rough sketch of a circle with some words and arrows, printed it on a piece of paper, and put it in the middle of the table. Well, that didn’t work! The tiles kept wrinkling the paper, and the paper just got in the way. But there was the germ of an idea there.

Around that time I discovered mah jongg mats (yeah, a little slow to the party; I had been using a vinyl French Provençal tablecloth--serviceable, but not optimal!). I looked around at available mats to determine if there was a way to superimpose my graphic on an existing design. From this exercise I learned two things: most existing mat designs are boring; and mats are, in fact, really useful! Mats grip the table, but provide a great surface to slide tiles around. The desire to bring both a little style and a lot of convenience (avoidance of annoyance) to the game resulted in the birth of Mahj MATters™.

But then came the Shufflers: Mixing the Mah Jongg Tiles between games, so that the tiles of a played hand don’t remain together, is an important part of the game. But Mah Jongg Tiles can’t be shuffled like a deck of cards in bridge or poker, so how do you make sure that they are mixed thoroughly? (Merely moving them around the surface of the table--or mat--doesn’t do much to change their relationship with their neighbors.) That’s where Shufflers come in: they are pieces of acrylic that you slide under a group of tiles to pick up the tiles and move and mix them much more effectively.

Never played Mah Jongg? Need a refresher? Here's the Mah Jongg...The Basics Brochure that we include with every Mahj MATters Mat we sell.