What I Got Wrong Running Our First Charity Mahjong Tournament

01

The attendance miss was not where I expected

We planned for 60 to 70 players, split roughly evenly between tournament entries and casual social play. What we actually got:

Planned for 60–70 players, split evenly · 38 registered, 36 played

Although it took a lot of time, the tournament side eventually got to where we hoped it would. The casual side… not so much.

I had assumed casual would be the easy sell. It is cheaper, it is lower commitment, and it does not ask anyone to feel competitive. That reasoning was wrong. A tournament sells something people cannot get at home: stakes, a ranking, a trophy, a room full of players they have never sat across from. Casual play competes directly with the free weekly game most of our target audience already has on their calendar. It also put us in competition with every other open play event around the city, which typically have much smaller ticket prices.

If you are running a two-track event, do not assume the social tier carries itself. It is the harder sell of the two (at least for us).

03

I thought I had arrived plenty early… I was wrong.

I arrived at 7:50 for a 9:30 check-in. That felt like plenty. Here is how the morning actually ran:

1. 7:50Arrived and started unloading.
2. 8:20The first guests arrived to set up their tiles — seventy minutes before check-in was meant to open.
3. 9:30Check-in officially opened, with many guests already in the room.
4. 10:00Scheduled start.
5. 10:05Last player walked in.

While I was able to get everything unloaded, set out table numbers, arrange the raffle items, and get my laptop set up for check-in before the first people arrived, I did end up a bit rushed, and things got more hectic than they needed to.

Then people started showing up early. We had asked people bringing equipment to show up before checkin, but didn’t give a specific time. In a normal event setup, this wouldn’t be as big of a deal. You acknowledge the early arrivals and continue getting set up prior to opening check in. However, since these early arrivals needed to know which tables to set their equipment up on, I had to go through the full check-in process before I was fully prepared.

So I spent the morning context switching between four jobs, over and over, per table, while more people kept walking in. Check the person in. Assign them a table. Make sure East was logged into the scoring system. Make sure East understood how to use it.

Early in the process, I accidentally hit a “check in all” button and spent a few minutes unwinding it. I have since removed said offending button.

05

Nobody does the pre-work, so design for that

We emailed every attendee ahead of time letting them know scoring would be handled digitally. Not one attendee practiced with it beforehand. The only person in the room who had touched it before was my amazing 12-year-old daughter :) She had used the scoring system for the final tournament of the Mahjong camp she hosted over the summer, so she was able to help out on the IT front.

I do not say that as a complaint. It is just what happens, and any plan that depends on attendees preparing is not a plan.

What saved us was training East only. One person per table instead of four cuts the training load by seventy-five percent, and East walks their own table through it. Every table got through every round, and when they had questions, we had the resources to help them out quickly.

Assume every single person walks in cold.

07

Have a sub ladder, and know what each rung costs

Right before we started, a player found her set was missing a tile. We had a spare set and swapped it out quickly.

For the seating scramble above, I did have a contingency plan, ranked in order of what I was willing to give up. Sara first. Then our other volunteer, who was playing. And the option I intended to avoid at all costs, which was pulling my daughter out of the tournament she was competing in and moving her to casual.

That is the honest shape of a sub plan at a small event. Every person on my ladder already had a job. It was not spare capacity; it was a ranked list of what I would break and in what order.

So make sure you have subs and contingencies for a range of total attendance.

09

The small hospitality things are what people remember

I made sure lunch had gluten-free options for an attendee with a sensitivity. I forgot to check dessert. That is the part she will remember, and it would have cost nothing to prevent.

That is not a logistics failure; it is a hospitality failure, and those land harder than a five-minute delay ever will.

What we are changing

1. 01

   Named volunteer roles, briefed the day before, with a written run of show that includes the announcements I keep forgetting to make.

2. 02

   Arriving substantially earlier and staffing check-in as if guests will turn up an hour before the posted time, because they will.

3. 03

   Reading every automated email as a recipient before the event goes out.

4. 04

   A physical kit that lives in one box: spare tile set, power strip, extension cord, gaffer tape, chargers.

5. 05

   And rethinking the casual tier completely. It did not work as a revenue line, and we’ll need to think whether to double down, or remove the casual tier entirely for next time in favor of a sub pool that can play casually if not needed.