I'll throw in my two cents as well :--)
Tetsuya is set in post-war Japan, and the story revolves around a bunch of guys trying to make a living playing mahjong in an era(?) when cheating was the norm and not the exception. Tetsuya shows you a ruthless world of gambling where anything can happen.
What I simply love about Tetsuya is the sheer decadence of it all. The drinking, the drugs and the general atmosphere... These people expect that all the good opponents cheat somehow, so they figure that the only way to beat them is to cheat even more themselves!
The show really shows you how it must've been like to gamble for a living back then. There are many great insights given about the mentality of gambling, which apply even today. (think about playing poker for a living...) You'll also notice that all the main characters have these crazy pre-internet era misconceptions about luck, randomness etc, in which they really believe in... Think that's stupid? You should see how many people believe in that BS even today! Read a book by the top pro (?) Sakurai Shouichi, where he goes on for hundreds of pages about how to predict what you will draw next from the wall by reading how the "luck is flowing" in the game... It's infuriating to see that crap written in books that are meant to help you learn the mechanics of the game, but when you see that in Tetsuya, it's more like "it's funny because it's true!"
To sum it up in one sentence, I kind of think Tetsuya has this weird realism to it that many other mahjong shows lack. Maybe it's just me? :--)
The major difference between Tetsuya and Akagi is the mahjong scenes. In Tetsuya, they're pretty fast paced, and revolve more around different forms of cheating than psychology or "basic game strategy", if you will. Watching it won't make you a better mahjong player, but then again, I really wouldn't recommend any anime for that purpose.
The show has many levels, and as an avid mahjong and poker enthusiast, I've watched it many many times and I just never seem to get enough of it
Kind of like the movie Rounders, in a sense.
Malintex_Terek> Thanks, and getting raws of this quality wasn't easy, I can tell you that :--)