Students crowded around square tables of four people, watching fast-paced games of Mahjong, a popular game in Asia, during the first ever Mahjong Fest on Friday night.

The Asian American Association, Chinese Undergraduate Student Association, Hong Kong Student Association and Singapore Students' Association sponsored the event that was held in the Colonial Room of the Illini Union.

Mahjong is typically played between four people and uses tiles that are similar to American cards in that they are numbered and in different suits.

The tiles are in three suits — circles, bamboos and characters — and are numbered one through nine with four tiles of each number and suit combination. But Mahjong has additional tiles, such as four winds representing each cardinal direction; three dragons, colored red, green and white; four seasons and four flowers.

The season and flower tiles are sometimes excluded, depending on the style of the game.

Different styles have developed within Asia, mainly varying by the point system. The participants at Mahjong Fest played Cantonese style.

Each player makes a wall, made up of 17 stacks of two tiles, to start the game. Then each player is given 13 tiles from one of the walls, depending on a roll of the dice. In order to win a hand, a player must get four sets and a pair. A set can be made by having three identical tiles, three consecutive number tiles from the same suit or four identical tiles.

Players must draw a tile and discard either that tile or one of the tiles they already have. A player can either draw a tile from the remaining walls or draw one from a discard pile in the center of the table, as long as it has just been discarded by the last player.

At the end of the hand, the winner will get a certain number of points, depending on the types of combinations he or she has. The more complex the combination, the more points the player gets.

Though Mahjong is often associated with gambling, the participants did not use money or chips in the Fest. But those who had registered for a competition being held at the event were playing for prizes.

Even without the added stakes of gambling, can be a very active and spirited game, many participants said.

Wuisiew Tan, junior in engineering, said she was just watching the games because the fast, competitive nature can make it hard to play.

One minute the players could be intensely looking at their tiles to determine a strategy. The next minute, they could be yelling in excitement after a player had won by putting together a difficult combination.

"You have to think defensively and offensively at the same time," said Shan-Quing Yin, freshman in aviation. "There is a lot of strategy involved."

The amount of effort a player puts into it gets him or her excited when they succeed, Yin said.

Freddy Lee, graduate student, said he remembers Friday nights during the summer when he would play Mahjong for six hours.

"It gets addictive, even if you aren't playing for money," Lee said. "It's really a game you sit down and play from night until dawn."