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Poker.co.uk - Poker News Archive
Monday 27th February 2006 IT’S ALL GONE MAH-JONG
Ladbrokes, the world’s biggest bookmakers, today announce the launch of Mah-Jong on ladbrokesgames.com. Mah-Jong is not a trendy new tea or Honda’s latest hatchback but a four player tile game which originated in the Far East over two thousand years ago and has steadily grown in popularity all around the world. The launch of the game is the first in a series of additions to the Ladbrokes site in the coming months.
To play the game, each player is dealt 13 tiles from a set of 136 with the aim of the game being the first player to make a winning hand by matching sets of tiles before the other three players.
The Mahjong tiles are divided into 108 common tiles and 28 honour tiles. Common tiles are split into three suits (Bamboo, Characters and Circles) numbered one to nine and these are duplicated four times. The honour tiles are split into winds (North, South, East and West) and dragons (Green, Red and White) and again these are duplicated four times.
To make a winning hand in Mah-Jong, players have to put the tiles in sets of three: either three identical tiles (Pong) three in a row from the same suit (Chow) or a set of four identical tiles (Kong), but they must always finish on a pair. Play continues until a player makes and reveals a winning hand or if the game ends in a draw. Due to the similarities in rules, Mah-Jong has been likened to Rummy.
The ‘lobby’ section on Ladbrokesgames.com, enables players to see how long they have to wait to play a game of Mah-Jong by showing them how many players are seated and waiting for a table to become free. As well as notification in the lobby, once a player commits to a table, the subsequent ‘waiting’ screen keeps them updated as more players join the table. This encourages players to wait until the full complement of entrants has arrived before starting to play.
Paul Austin, General Manager Ladbrokesgames.com says: “Mah-Jong is one of the best games ever. Two thousand years of play will back it up.”
Paul added, “At Ladbrokes, we’re always looking at new games that will satisfy the demands of our customers. The Far East has been responsible for many great games, it’s now time for Su-Doku to move over and let Mah-Jong stake its claim as a game fit for emperors.”
Ladbrokes is currently offering Mah-Jong on both its English and Chinese sites.
Full details on how to play Mah-Jong including a short tutorial can be found at www.ladbrokesgames.com
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For further information please contact:
Lisa Sabin 020 7025 6413 / 07811 350 600
Dan French 020 7025 6403 / 07717 618 537
About Ladbrokes
Ladbrokes was first established in 1886 taking wagers in the Gentleman’s clubs of London. Today Ladbrokes is the world’s leading retail bookmaker, taking over 350 million bets a year at over 2,500 high street betting shops in the UK, Ireland and Belgium and outlets at 47 leading football clubs and 11 horseracing tracks. It has the highest brand awareness of any bookmaker in the UK. Ladbrokes has reinvented the betting shop experience with a £25 million annual investment in design and technology since 2001. Its latest innovation — Ladbrokes Xtra — is an exclusive second dedicated betting shop broadcast channel showing a wide range of racing and sports events that other bookmakers cannot offer. Online, Ladbrokes.com has over 2 million registered customers from over 200 countries betting in 12 languages using 18 currencies. Ladbrokes.com was awarded best sports betting operator at the 2005 eGaming Awards and best innovation for its Ladbrokes Financials product which enables betting on 5 minute movements in stock exchange indices like the FTSE-100 Index. Completing the comprehensive portal offering is Ladbrokespoker.com, the most popular poker site with European players, Ladbrokescasino.com and Ladbrokesgames.com.
Source: OnlineCasinoNews
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