Saki (Saki- The Player)

Saki tells the story of a girl's mental and emotional growth as she and her fellow teammates battle fearsome rivals, all gunning for the national high school mahjong tournament, and is a cross between sports action and high school drama. But unlike more traditional mahjong themed shows, the characters are all colorful and cheerful, without the usual dark or cowardly personalities. The story begins with the sudden arrival of Saki at the school's mahjong club, where she demonstrates her almost magical, instinctive ability to play the game so that she always ends up scoring exactly zero points, neither winning nor losing, a feat even more difficult than winning itself...

© Ritz Kobayashi/Square Enix, Kiyosumi High School Mahjong Club






More About Mahjong:

Mahjong (also called mah-jongg by the American association, Vietnamese: mạt trược) is a game for four players that originated in China. It was called 麻雀 in ancient China and the name is still in active use in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Japan. Most Chinese, especially the Mandarin-speaking ones, however, now call the game simplified Chinese: 麻将; traditional Chinese: 麻將; pinyin: má jiàng.

Mahjong involves skill, strategy, and calculation, as well as a certain degree of chance. Depending on the variation which is played, luck can be anything from a minor to a dominant factor in success. In Asia, mahjong is also popularly played as a gambling game. In the Japanese version of the game, each player is dealt thirteen. On their turn, players draw a tile and discard one, with the goal of making four sets and one pair. Winning comes "on the draw", by drawing a new or discarded tile that completes the hand. Thus a winning hand actually contains fourteen tiles.

More info on Mahjong, (including game play and rules) can be found on Wikipedia
For information on Japanese Mahjong, also known as Riichi Mahjong, including a complete rule guide, look here European Mahjong Association Riichi Mahjong Rules