Quote:
Originally Posted by Cats
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The rules and terminology of Japanese mahjong are completely alien to me, but I thought I might as well share a humorous bit of trivia: The winning hand that
Cats illustrated above is known in Chinese mahjong as "
shi san yao" (I have no idea what that translates into, but a rough guess would be "thirteen ones").
Popular superstition in Singapore, if not in Malaysia and Hong Kong, has it that winning with the above hand — widely considered
the ultimate winning hand — is both
extremely lucky and
unlucky. Lucky because the odds of building such a hand is extremely unlikely; unlucky because, for you to accomplish such a feat, "someone" (from the Great Beyond) must have granted you an unsolicited boon. Everyone at the table is advised to close the game, pack up and go home (and say your prayers) if someone does indeed manage to win this way.
