HANNOVER, Germany - Swiss Gérard Hêche stands victorious at the "German Mahjong Open 2018" (MERS) scoring 20 tablepoints and 439 mini-points. Dagmar Fischer is runner-up with an equal amount of table points, but less mini-points (a total of 357). Since she is the best performing German player, she is awarded the title of "German Champion MCR". Dutch Ans Hoogland claims third place with 19 table points and an impressive number of 910 mini-points.

While Germany braced for sweltering temperatures in the current Europe-wide heat wave participants engaged in seven round-robin sessions over the course of two days, breaking away from the tradition of playing EMA's minimum required six sessions at this particular event. The forty-eight competitors representing eight countries made up an interesting mix of veteran players and tournament novices.

Dagmar Fischer reports: "It was not clear if all external players could arrive on time as the airport had damages caused by the heat, but finally they managed all. Even the location was very cosy and located directly at the so called Herrenhäuser Gärten, climate control was not available. But the team of the caterer did everything to make life as comfortable as possible for all players. The extremely hot weather increased the water consumption so the organizing and caterer team started two times to get more water. During lunch break on Saturday we had short strong rain shower which several player used as a most welcome shower. In parallel to the MCR tournament we offered a "Tactile Championship". Every player took 5 tiles and had to guess or better tactile the tile. The best four made it into the final. Here all of them got the same tile and this time the fastest correct answer won. Ke Li was the winner and win a very special dragon cup. As prizes we decided not to stay with the normal trophys, Karin [Stapperfenne, ed.] (organizing team) designed some label with tiles for cookie boxes; for the highest score of each round there were some special jam, also decorated with tiles and for the last place a red dragon cup. As Pauline [van der Linden, ed.] hat two times little three dragon we honored her with some white dragon tea."

Final Results of the German Mahjong Open 2018 (MCR, MERS), Hannover