MCR Marathon 2025-2026
News

FAQ

News

18.02.2025

Annual MCR Marathon 2025-2026 Launch

Mahjong International League (MIL) and MahjongSoft are pleased to announce Annual MCR Marathon 2025-2026, a long-term open online tournament, which starts on 01.03.2025 at 00:00 and ends on 28.02.2026 at 23:59 (UTC+3).
Marathon is opened to all players, with no restrictions with respect to participation, or the number of accounted games.

Periods

Annual MCR Marathon 2025-2026 is composed of four "seasons":

  • "Spring", 01.03-31.05.2025
  • "Summer", 01.06-31.08.2025
  • "Autumn", 01.09-30.11.2025
  • "Winter", 01.12.2025-28.02.2026

In turn, any "season" consists of three monthly periods, each starts on 1st day of the accounted month at 00:00 and ends at 23:59 (UTC+3) of the last day of the respective month.

Results and Ranking

All games played by a player within a monthly period are then consolidated using four-component formula to get player's score. All player's scores are then ranked accordingly to get rank (place) and basic rank for the considered period.
The player's seasonal result is a sum of TWO BEST basic rank values from the considered season.
The player's annual result is a sum of seasonal result values taken from each of four periods.
The table of results by periods is available at Marathon results by periods page.
The table of annual results is available at Results of Annual Marathon page.
Please, choose the rules and period in a drop-down menu accordingly.

Prizes

Annual MCR Marathon 2025-2026:

Each "season":

In March 2026 40 best MCR Marathon players taken from winners of "seasons" and Annual MCR Marathon 2025-2026 overall will compete in "MCR Marathon 2025-2026 Winners Duplicate Tournament" with the additional prizes from Mahjong International League (MIL). All the necessary details about such "Winners DMCR Tournament" will be provided closer to the tournament date.

Comment: organizers of Annual MCR Marathon 2025-2026 may consider some other prizes in addition to the listed above.

How to Participate?

To enter MCR Marathon, please, enter the table marked "MCR Marathon" on the starting page.

Comment: participant has to have a valid the "verified user" ("VU") status.

Disconnection Policy and MCR Marathon Games Disqualification

The disconnected during MCR Marathon game player is replaced by the system by so-called "inert" bot, which does not have any functions except to discard freshly taken from the wall tile (hence, no declarations are possible by such inert bot). Any moves made by the system while a player is disconnected are called as "automoves", AM, that concept is then used to determine MCR Marathon game possible disqualification.

To enforce "healthy" competition, and to address disconnected players issue, the following criteria for MCR Marathon games disqualification will be applied:

  • 40 or more AM for one player in deals 1-4 of the game
  • 100 or more AM "combined" for the entire game (to get AM "combined", add up the number of AM for all players)
  • 11 deals or less in the game
  • after deal 13 if MCR Marathon game has not been disqualified, then such a deal is played to its end and cannot be disqualified regardless the number of accumulated AM "combined" for the entire game (to get AM "combined", add up the number of AM for all players)

Player's Penalties and Disqualification

The ultimate value to maintain high-standard online competition is keeping in the current game ALL PLAYERS online. No penalty can be viewed as a full-fledged compensation of the disconnected player, no matter whether the solution is "technical" (replacing player with a bot), or "statistical" (scoring penalty), or "legally enforced" (suspension of player from the participation). Furthermore, the event organizer never can distinguish two cases of the disconnected player, whether the reason is "technical" (no internet connection), or "psychological" (abandoning the game for any reason). The participants of MCR Marathon are strongly advised to ensure good internet connection, to have the "backup scenario" (the second device to play, subscription for the alternative internet provider, etc), to restrain from playing in MCR Marathon having "seemingly bad" internet connection; the way to improve may be a change of browser, playing device, or even internet provider.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Any time when a player has got 80 or more AM during MCR marathon game, that player receives so-called "progressive ban" point. In addition, one more "progressive ban" point is added if that MCR marathon game has been disqualified. The player is then penalized by losing the "verified user" ("VU") status for the period in days equal to the amount of accumulated "progressive ban" points. After player receives 5 or more "progressive ban" points, the whole scale of "ban days" has been changed: 5 cases would lead to 30 days, 6 cases would lead to 90 days, 7 cases or more would lead to 365 days of losing the "verified user" ("VU") status, which would lead, in turn, to impossibility to participate in MCR Marathon, or other tournaments. It is important to know, that all records of "progressive ban" points are kept on the continuous basis. Furthermore, any "progressive ban" point expires after 365 days upon acquiring it.

MCR Marathon table parameters

Deal per session: 16, Time for session: 80 min., Time for own action: 9 sec., Time for declaration: 8 sec., Additional time: 10 sec., Time for results: 10 sec.


FAQ

What is Marathon?

Marathon is a long-term open tournament, usually played by periods. Marathon is opened to all players, with no restrictions* with respect to participation, or the number of accounted games within a period.

Player's Score

The player's score within a monthly period is a weighted sum of four components: 50%*average_TP (taken for all games) + 50%*average_TP (taken for best 10 by TP games) + 0.1%*number_of_games + 10%*average_TP_opponents (against whom player played).

To be rated, 10 games have to be played by the player. While determining the player's result, all missing to the amount of 10 games will forceably be counted as having 0 TP and 0 GP.

For the sake of simplicity, all the components are rounded to the three digits after decimal point.

Ranking

All players' scores within the same period are then ranked (including breaking-ties algorithms). Each player, who played the established minimum number of games (10), is called as "qualified player". Each "qualified player" receives so-called "Basic Rank" (BR) according to the formula:
BR = 1000*(number_of_qualified_players-player's_place+1)/number_of_qualified_players, rounded to the closest integer number

All players who have not played the established minimum number of games within a considered period (10), receive BR=0.

Further Ranking

In the big-scope events like "Annual Marathon" all the "Basic Rank" (BR) values, received in individual periods, may be subject to further aggregating with or without discarding the worst player's results. The resulting number can represent "quarterly" or "annual" player's result.

Disconnection Policy and MCR Marathon Games Disqualification

The disconnected during MCR Marathon game player is replaced by the system by so-called "inert" bot, which does not have any functions except to discard freshly taken from the wall tile (hence, no declarations are possible by such inert bot). Any moves made by the system while a player is disconnected are called as "automoves", AM, that concept is then used to determine MCR Marathon game possible disqualification.

To enforce "healthy" competition, any game with seemingly unequal opportunities to compete should not be counted (disqualified). Thus, any games having "excessive" number of "automoves" should be disqualified. Furthermore, the player who had "excessive" number of "automoves" is penalized by losing the "verified user" ("VU") status for the certain period, up to 365 days!

Miscellanea

  • any game is assigned to the period based on it's starting time
  • any game disqualification is applied only after the end of a deal
  • until MCR marathon table has not started yet, all players are "anonymized" by showing "#" instead of real "displayed names"; when MCR marathon table has started, all "displayed names" of participants are revealed
  • game statistic can be found at menu "Statistics/List of sessions", then choose "Type"="MCR Marathon"

Updated: 18.02.2025