A new mahjong studio for both established players and those hoping to learn the popular game has opened in Falls Church.
Local mahjong player Tori Rittinger, who launched Talk Tiles to Me at 113 Rowell Court last week, said she fell in love with the game when a friend got her hooked in 2021.
“A friend in Texas mentioned the game to me,” Rittinger said. “You can’t live in Texas and not play mahjong, and a lot of the tile companies are in Texas.”
Soon, Rittinger said she started teaching group lessons and was passing the mahjong bug onto her friends.
“I got trained on how to teach people how to play,” Rittinger said. “It grew really fast and we ended up doing events at local businesses. I was getting so busy I couldn’t keep up with the demand.”
Mahjong is a game from 19th century China that involves matching open, identical tiles to clear away a stack.
Rittinger said people loved coming together to play, but finding a space for it was becoming difficult. The game has a relatively extensive spread of a mahjong mat, racks with tiles and more.
“I was finding that people love to come together and socialize and I thought, why don’t we have a space where people can do that?” Rittinger said.
The new studio offers:
- Learn to Play – lessons for people new to the game
- Open Play Hours – for people to gather and play
- League Nights – for people who want to elevate their game and play regularly
- Private Event Rentals – for private mahjong instruction parties and gatherings beyond mahjong
The game can be overwhelming to new players at the start, Rittinger said, but she and her staff teach it in a way that eases players into it. She said there’s a moment where things just click for newbies.
When you start the game, most people have the same look of ‘what did I get myself into,’ but after two hours, people are like ‘this is so fun and I can’t wait to do it again.’ About 99% of the time, people want to come back and play again.
You can see it clicking halfway through the lesson when people are starting to connect the pieces. I’m very particular about teaching in a very layered approach so it’s not overwhelming.
Rittinger said the opening night went well.
“It was such a great night,” Rittinger said. “We had over 100 people come in and walk through, between the four hours we had the event. It was everything we had wanted.”
