Next up in our interview series is a player based out of Melbourne Victoria. Charles or better known in the community as “Kataru” joined ARMA in early 2023 and has since become a well known and liked member of the community. He is commonly found to be participating in many community events ranging from weekly Wednesday night friendlies all the way to large scale national events such as the Australian Riichi Mahjong Open where in 2024 he placed an impressive 2nd place.
Q: What is your name and how long have you been playing mahjong?
My name is Charles, I’ve been playing mahjong for just under 3 years now and have been playing IRL with VRMA for around a year and a half now.
Q: What type of mahjong do you like to play? What is your play style?
I’m very push orientated. I really enjoy using a mawashi focused playstyle to push for 1st place even at the risk of falling to 4th.
Q: You had a very strong finish at ARMO2024, despite the unfortunate result how did you find the experience?
I found ARMO24 a strange event overall in terms of what actually happened in my games. I kind of just got gifted top 8 because people my team league’s captain (who had 0 chance of top cut) killed someone’s chances.
I had a very high stakes table 6 where all I could do was ensure a last place for the current 7th player and I made top cut with mediocre rentai (2nd,4th,3rd,2nd,1st,3rd if I remember correctly).
I was looking forward to the double pro table in top 8 but that got shuffled unfortunately.
After winning game 1 in the finals and landing a direct dealer mangan on Trevor, I got lazy game in game 2. I miscalculated his gyakuten situation thinking it was sanbaiman tsumo when it was actually baiman tsumo because I missed honba. But mistakes happen, we go next.
Q : What are your current goals for mahjong?
In terms of where I want to be with mahjong; I just intend on showing up to events and doing my best. The Melbourne group had been preparing for ARMO24 for like 6+ months in advance where we had only been playing WRC rules and whilst for others just taking it casually as it is friendlies; I try to keep a running track of uma, not for performance sakes but just to keep in mind how bad a “not last” really is in a non-ranked setting and to re-affirm zentsu behaviour.
What would it mean for you to qualify for WRC?
Qualifying for WRC would coincide with my plans to travel to Japan early 2025 and it would be nice to play more tryhard games. I intend on meeting some former colleagues from Japan and also attending comiket with a few friends from the Melbourne group.
As of the writing of this interview, Charles currently ranks 3rd in the Aussie WRC Qualifier League. He holds an extremely thin difference between himself and 2nd whilst leading 4th by a considerable amount. We look forward to see Charles continue to push his mahjong to the limit chasing the coveted WRC seat.
Interested in what others have to say? Check out our last interview with West Australian player Shikin Sasaki here.
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