World Series of Mahjong Updates

Within the last five years, and with the help of a televised program on ESPN, the game of poker has become a world-wide phenomenon. Millions around the world have watched the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event, experiencing for the first time in their lives the excitement of a variant of poker known as Texas-Hold-Em and a lucky 20-something accountant named Chris Moneymaker winning a whopping $2.5 million as well as a coveted World Series of Poker Bracelet. Now, the entertainment group known as World Mahjong Limited is trying to do the same for the game of mahjong.

Boasting high stakes gambling, the World Series of Mahjong's first annual competition was held in June 2007, hosting 270 players at the Wynn Macau playing for a top prize of 500,000 USD. This year, that number is estimated to double to 1,000,000 USD for first place. Of course this number is of no comparison to the whopping amount of 180,660,773 USD of total prize money up for grabs in the 2008 World Series of Poker and the 9,100,000 USD going to the winner of the series' Main Event. It is apparent, though, that the World Series of Mahjong is well on its way to becoming a much bigger event.

With the efforts of mahjong professional Jenn Barr's website ReachMahjong, the 2008 World Series of Mahjong will now include a 2nd event, in which a bracelet can also be won. This event is a 1,000 USD buy-in Riichi-rules tournament that will be held the day before what can now be called the Zung Jung-rules "main event". With the addition of this event, the World Series of Mahjong is now actually a series of games. The WSoM website also claims that other events will be announced in the future.

The media will also be playing a huge role in the World Series of Mahjong's growth. It can be assumed that the televising of the series will follow the same format for the 2007 broadcast, with several hour-long episodes airing on multiple Asian networks. It has already been announced that the World Series of Mahjong will be televised in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. Hopefully, the WML will choose to also televise the smaller events--even if in a much shorter program--as well as choose to bring the whole televised series to Europe and the US.

Well it's been a while since the 2008 WSOM ended, but there's still not a lot of media on the official website. Aside from the tournament results and one news article, all the other media else seems to be from last year.

http://world-series-mahjong.com/mahjong-english/home.htm

From the wsom website:

Are they given necklaces now instead of bracelets?

Anyone know if this will be on television again?