Tile game challenges GR seniors

During a friendly game of Mahjong, seniors found out that they didn't need to worry so much about other players as they did the game itself.

On Friday, four seniors were trying their luck at Mahjong at the Golden Hour Senior Center and the game was beating them all.

"It's an old Chinese gambling game," resident Ann Lowe said.

None of the ladies were having any luck trying to get a winning hand.

In fact, they were having a hard time just trying to get a hand started.

Lowe explained the game by comparing it to rummy. She said even through the tiles have various symbols on them, including flowers, dragons and winds, the object is the same as rummy -- to get a winning hand.

In order to obtain a winning hand, players have a card that shows all of the various winning hand combinations one can get. The ladies simply look down at the card and see what they have and then try to create a winning hand by drawing tiles from the pile. Once the draw a tile, they must always discard one, just like many card games.

"This is a very hard game to learn," Peggy St. Clair said. "Not everybody has the patience to learn it."

What St. Clair likes about this game is it makes her think more than other games she plays.

Lowe and the others agreed with St. Clair.

However, once one learns the game, they enjoy it just as much as any card game. They just may not have been enjoying the hand they were dealt on Friday.

"This is not a very good hand for anybody," Lowe said.

With one awful hand out of the way, the ladies put all their tiles in the center of the table to start another hand. The whole time they were mixing the tiles, the ladies were discussing just how horrible each of their hands were.