J'ai trop mangé de poutine! Event Recap: Montreal Riichi Open

It's time for another event recap! Due to being in greater Boston for work, it was quite easy to get to the Montreal Riichi Open: around a 5 hour drive with the border crossing.

I arrived late on Thursday and met up with Pio, Jeff and Max in time for me to get a late night poutine and beer. The others had already eaten (surprise! it was also poutine), so it was just beer for them! Montreal is very walkable and several of the streets had outdoor seating installed for the eateries and were completely closed to auto traffic.

On Friday morning, Mike joined us as we went to meet up with Dennis and Sylvie. We started with a trip for bagels, then to Schwartz's Deli for the local specialties. I had the smoked meat sandwich. Reminded me of Katz a bit in NYC but this time I got to enjoy it without it being a hangover meal... delicious!

Another laugh was had as we were looking at all the stuff on the walls. The mirror behind Max in the picture had 'thanks!' in a bunch of different languages. However, whoever designed it made a pretty crucial error with the Japanese:

Desu. 

After returning to the Airbnb, we got in a little bit of goomble. Home currency, CAD Tengo.

Mike looks ready to McClobber here... and he certainly did. Almost all of us lost money in our games and what he took home pretty much paid the entry fee for the tournament.

Saturday and Sunday were loaded with mahjong, of course! I can't say too much for the tournament itself. Not the best luck for me - I only took one 4th but was not able to really rack up a good cumulative score: 4 1 3 3 1 3 3 1. Two of those thirds were yakitori and the other two I only won like one hand. I didn't really do a lot of dealing in.

Notable unlucky moments for me: got headbumped out of 12k, lost a chance for any gyakuten when a player took a 1k hand and stayed in fourth, got dinged for 4k when a pon was called instead of a ron, but was rewarded with an immediate oya furiten mangan tsumo, and got a leading position completely crushed by an oya riitsumo sanankou dora 3 ura 5 12k all.

Notable lucky moments: got to feel like Koromo when I riichi'd a hell wait 5p kanchan with one draw left as dealer. A kan had shifted the haitei to me... and being able to say riichi, ippatsu, tsumo, haitei, 4k all felt like a treat and dirty lucksack all at the same time. Then, in the last game, after the cut so I'm just trying to win my table... I get a haipai that is 1233p124s123m777z (chun ankou). I'm in utter disbelief when my first draw is a 4s. Out goes the stick!

How does the daburii usually get to haneman? Ippatsu, ura dora, etc. I can certainly say not with chun ankou and sanshoku helping it. When I announced my yaku there was definitely a 'bruh wtf' moment hanging in the air. I've been playing riichi for 16 years and I'm sure it will be another 5 more at least before I see a daburii with added yaku value like this again, if not more. It was a fun and exciting hand, it played itself, and I will remember it forever.

With this hand I ended up winning my table at least for 13th place and got a fun Montreal Riichi patch. I think when I replace my messenger bag I'll apply these patches and pins I've collected from tournaments.

Big congratulations are in order for Claire, the champion of the Montreal Riichi Open. She never took a third or fourth over the entire tournament, including the finals. Max took second and Anne and Andres rounded out the top 4.

Also a big thanks to the staff: Loic and Grant were on hand to provide judge input as needed. One thing is for certain, the changes to make the WRC ruleset more strict for the world stage needs a little relaxing for opens as there were a whopping 8 (!) chombos during the tournament. 6 of them came after the cut at the lower tables where I think people were loosening up and losing focus.

After each day's games there was time for some fun. Saturday included La Banquise, where we ended up with even more poutine. Sunday was ramen, followed by karaoke. The social environment was pretty typical for me - this was an event where I met a few new people, a few in person for the first time after knowing them online through the pandemic, and seeing a whole slew of familiar faces again.

I have no idea what music was happening but I looked up in time to make this weird grin. The next event is the Riichi Nomi NYC Open, right around the corner over the 4th of July holiday weekend! Looking forward to seeing everyone then!