My New Year retreat at our mate's farmhouse was a great way to start the New Year. The best part of it was that I managed to teach Mahjong to my village pals. I've been meaning to learn and teach the game from when we arrived from Malaysia but it's only till now that I've sorted out the rules and learned it well enough to be able to teach it.

At first I tried to learn Mahjong through the internet and although there are several resources it seems that each document is different from the rest. The reason for this is that the game has got a lot of variants which can sometimes lead to completely different games. Working on the premise that the best way to learn a game is to play it I searched for a game to play.

My first attempt was to play Yahoo's version but the documentation of the game was akin to Jboss's documentation i.e. close to zero. The next software I found though provided the solution to all my problems. The software is Four Winds Mahjong and apart from being a great game it goes out of its way to explain the game. The game comes with a flash tutorial that introduces you to the basics of the game and the extensive documentation lists and describes most of the known variants of the game. What's more the site keeps a knowledge base with all the versions known which is much more than anyone interested in the game can desire.

If you're interested in learning and playing Mahjong my advice is to go and download an evaluation version of Four Seasons and learn the European Version which is the best versions for familiarising oneself with the game. I've create a brief summarised cheat sheet that I used to teach the game with that might turn hand especially in the beginning to provide easy reference for keeping points.