The second year of the world's largest mahjong tournament, the Mahjong SuperCup, was held at the Grand Waldo Casino for two days this month.
The event drew nearly 350 mahjong players who were qualified from an estimated pool of 40,000 rivals worldwide gathered to compete for the prize pool of US$560,000.
In 2007 the inaugural event attracted 14,886 participants in Taiwan alone which set a Guinness World Record for the largest mahjong tournament.
This year the Mahjong SuperCup returned on December 13 to Macau, with online and offline qualifiers starting from July in Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China and Japan.
To play in the main event a player had to either buy in a seat directly by paying US$1,500 or be qualified through regional satellites.
There will be extensive television coverage on the tournaments with several television channels already confirmed interest to broadcast the event around the 2009 Chinese New Year period in late January.
"“We have received overwhelming feedback from players and coverage from more than 100 media worldwide”, said Desmond Chu, the director of SuperCup Entertainment (Holdings) Limited.
“Moreover, having run more than 10 qualifiers in China and Hong Kong this year is a phenomenal breakthrough both for us and for the industry. We have been approached by numerous partners from different countries looking to run qualifiers and are confident next year’s event will be even bigger and better," he added.
The large number of players having been attracted to the tournament, according to the organiser,  showed a "tremendous potential" in tournament gaming in Asia.
The company press release also said that following the success of the Asia Pacific Poker Tour for two consecutive years, the Asian tournament gaming market had grown "mature" with "Taiwan being the front runner and Hong Kong having lots of potential in the short to mid term".