Sweet set! Have a closer look, the all green painted bamboo tile has 6 pieces of bamboo, the bamboo pieces just are not separated. The bamboo tile with the red, blue and green has 9 pieces of bamboo, also no separation in the bamboo pieces. Just count the lines and you can tell the 6 bam from the 9 bam. In this case it is just a little bit harder to see, the different color in the paint sure helps.

Thanks, K!

There are no jokers, legal hands are listed in a book which generally does not change more than every 5-10 years.    It is not played with flowers in the hands, but the flowers give bonus’ and the scoring system is like the complex  Chinese scoring system.  I believe WP is the game imported to the US originally –   that first popularized mahjong in the USA – so it is probably  mahjong American style about 1914-15.

Now,  I believe it is quite popular with the various branches of armed forces because of its long length uniformity.  Wherever one is stationed, you will play mahjong the same with very few changes occurring. (No new card every year). The problem with this style-no matter how interesting,   is that few people realize it exists. No one really plays it unless you have some exposure to a base or are from the south.  I learned it from a southern  army brat because it was the game of the officers wives and she learned from her mother.

I began teaching WP, thinking it was a whole new undiscovered mahjong territory  – to discover I had more requests for League mah-jongg. Everyone wanted to play what their neighbor was playing – not this exotic “not real” mahjong. So I became a League style teacher and it blossomed.”

It seems that Ling shares my love for the Pung Chow sets and when she teaches or plays with one of these beautiful black and white sets she also plans her menu and table settings to match the set using a Black & Cream theme. As she describes it: