Bryan Manchez

Region
France

Joined
2025

Achievements
Met and married my wife thanks to mahjong.
Introduced all of my childhood friends to mahjong.
Founded a mahjong club (Suu Cannes Tsu).
Created an online mahjong community (semi-public Discord server) of over 250 members, with regular online tournaments and events.
Successfully maintaining 7-dan on Tenhou (R2213 personal best) in the houou lobby for over 500 hanchan, and counting.

Background
As a young child, I always had a craving for traditional and card games like chess, poker and such. As a teenager, I would spend a good chunk of my free time browsing online media in relation to my growing appeal for Japanese pop culture, namely manga, anime and video games.

At some point when I was 15, in November 2012, I stumbled upon a Touhou parody of the Japanese movie series “Shin Janki”, centered around the mahjong legend Sakurai Shouichi. The tense atmosphere instantly appealed to me. I watched more parodies of that series, then ended up researching and reading the rules. They were so absurdly complicated and my English was so poor at the time… that I was hooked!

2013 was mainly me playing offline mahjong games, trying with mitigated success to drag my family into it, getting my first small mahjong set, and creating my first Tenhou account.

2014 was when I played my very first in-person 4-player game!… A very short tonpuusen. But a much awaited one! It was also the beginning of my attendance streak at the mahjong booth of the « Festival International des Jeux » in Cannes.

2015 was when I joined my first club! Chuuren Potos, in Marseille. I had to travel almost 200 kilometres back and forth to play for just one afternoon, sometimes a weekend… But the train was free thanks to my status as a student! I was a member till 2022. I am still in great terms with the people I met there!

2018 was when I finally successfully introduced mahjong to my childhood friend group. My best friend Claude even became the current European champion! 2018 was also when I first played mahjong in Japan. I had turned 20, which is the legal age for gambling, so I obviously tried my hand at rate mahjong… and got obliterated. But I came back in 2019 with much consistent success!

2022 was when I created the Suu Cannes Tsu mahjong club! We are only 7 members, mostly long-time friends, but we love hanging out with each other and playing together, be it online or offline!

And 2023 was when I accomplished my greatest achievement to date, in mahjong and in life in general: I met my wife Jimin thanks to our common passion for mahjong. We are now living a happy life together. (We are NOT constantly playing mahjong…!)