2018 IORMC US/Canada Qualification

Registration Pages

Hello! We are pleased to announce the qualifiers for the 2018 IORMC to be held later this year.

The IORMC is the International Online Riichi Mahjong Championships. Originally held in 2011 as an exchange between South Korea and Japan, it has now expanded to 16 countries from all around the world. The US has been steady finishing 6th/6th/7th over the three years of its participation, while Canada has finished 10th & 9th over the last 2 years. In addition, in the inaugural individual competition last year, both countries were able to send a representative with George Liu-Krason (USA) eliminated in the quarterfinals, while Simon Chen (CAN) made it to the finals and finishing 3rd after a reverse finish in the 2nd hanchan made the results very close between all 4 players.

In order to participate for the US or Canada, you must have permanent residency or citizenship.

This year, the team and individual competitions will be on the following dates:

  • Team - November 3rd at 1100 UTC (0400 PDT/0500 MDT/0600 CDT/0700 EDT/0800 ADT)
  • Individual - November 17th at 1100 UTC (0300 PST/0400 MST/0500 CDT/0600 EDT/0700 ADT - clocks fall back to standard time on November 4th)

*The individual competition will comprise of the top 16 individual finishers of the team competition.

Qualifying format will be unified for both countries. There will be 5 sessions, each session consisting of 4 hanchan. Average of all games played (in event of byes needing to be handed out) will be used to calculate the top 4 and alternates. Minimum of 2 sessions are required to qualify, and a participant's lowest session is dropped if they play at least 4 sessions.

All qualifiers will be on Tenhou.

Registration for any individual qualifying session will end at 2359 PDT the Thursday before the qualifying session. 

The US qualifiers will be held on the following dates at 1200 PDT/1500 EDT:

  • Saturday, July 14
  • Saturday, July 28
  • Saturday, August 4
  • Saturday, August 18
  • Saturday, August 25

Canada's qualifiers will be held on the following dates at 1400 PDT/1700 EDT/1800 ADT:

  • Saturday, September 1
  • Saturday, September 8
  • Saturday, September 15
  • Saturday, September 22
  • Saturday, September 29

The rules to be used for the IORMC are below and will be used for qualifying (please note that there is an error below - kiriage mangan is not in effect):

IORMC Tenhou Ruleset.jpg