Board Members In Attendance
David Bresnick
Bichen Wang
Max Suddendorf
Claire Hernandez
Laura King
Luke Morgan
Nathanael Kozinski
Steve Augustin
Jai Srivastav
Jenn Barr
Harrison Corp (Towards End of Meeting)
Working Group Updates
Professional Organizations
World Riichi Pros
Finals for 2025 WRL Cycle in June
Pro exams coming up!
Many WRLs coming up, both Majors and Minors!
M league event in June!!!
Early bird ends May 15th!
Saikouisen
Saikouisen pro exam June 6th
Shinkisen happening soon, for new people
Ryuousen mid May
ARML
2028 WRC Cycle
Point totals based on A1
Beginning of 2026 until summer 2027 so there’s time to plan to go to the invitational
ARML numbers relatively the same as last seasons
37/50 states represented
Roughly 50 different groups/clubs.
Third of members listed as unaffiliated
Sign up for summer now! (also looking for subs)
2028 WRC Qualification Cycle
No current updates
Community engagement
Assembly reverification
Vote passed, form will go out
Give them a month or two, maybe coincide with the annual meeting
Please continue sending photos to #local-clubs
If your club is doing exciting things, please share!
Shot some content about tile shuffling in Mexico
Tech
Non-tournament events can now be added on the ARA database
Communications
ARA points updated
Please be patient when changes are happening as they could be temporarily inaccurate
Working on more accurate tracking with tournament deadlines for submitting whatever is necessary (observer report, tournament report, rankings, etc)
Some general website updates
Updating club contacts and ways to disseminate information
Education
Still working on tile image information
There is a thread to collect images on the discord, please feel free to contribute to it!
Especially if there are any non-standard tiles or weird stylized ones
Rules and judging
Filmed some videos about tile shuffling in Mexico
How to pay for hands (number of tenbo per person)
Ryukyouku being early/late and rules clarification about it
JPML rules - recently changed shouhai/taahai to be dead hand
Gives ARA other example of ruleset to be able to make it no longer a chombo with a hand reset
Observer reports uploaded
Have some blog post ideas
Incorporation
Starting now and moving forward with looking into different types of incorporation
Reach out for more info or if interested in providing support!
Open Discussion
Comms to push RFP for the ARA invitational to June
Discussion on multiple events being on the same weekend
More organizers are hosting events, so some events will be closer to each other and people will have to prioritize events
We encourage organizers to work with each other and to try and reserve weekends in the ARA DB for weekends they will host their event
ARA is not doing a schedule enforcement
Annual Meeting
Annual Meeting is May with the annual working group updates
Also will review who is up for re-election and how many seats there will be
This includes a call for nominations and applicants
Candidate introductions are June, elections for two weeks afterwards.
Board members installed in July
Event Announcements/Reminders
Riichi Nomi Open signups open at 9 pm eastern THIS WEDNESDAY!!!
Cap will be announced tomorrow!
10 ish seats left for North Texas Open in August, sign up while you can!
Closed Session
Next meeting May 18th
It’s the annual meeting, have a recap ready!
Certified several events
Adding a checkbox to the event certification form for the event to also intend to be eligible for ARAbux
Planning to reach out to clubs that do not have an assembly member even though they have plenty of people to apply
Starting plan to reach out to club contacts to make sure they are active and still best point of contact for clubs
Starting to discuss plans for IORMC 2026 with frequency of events in normal qualifying time period
Discussed a complaint about a community member
Discussed penalties and what we can suggest for fair rulesets that align with community rule friction