Looking for a Mahjong Game in Northern Colorado

What you are actually looking for is a standing afternoon. A table, the same four people, a time on the calendar that somebody would notice you missing.

The games exist. What does not exist is a directory, and that turns out to be the useful finding. Most of the groups meet at senior centers and are listed, when they are listed at all, on a drop-in calendar inside a registration system that does not show up in a search. Two of the groups we could confirm are not written down anywhere except a single line on a city web page.

So here is what we could actually verify, what we could not, and the phone numbers that will get you the rest. A few phone calls is the whole project.

Confirmed

Chilson Senior Center, 700 East Fourth Street, Loveland. Mahjong, drop-in, Thursdays from 1:30 to 3:30 in the afternoon. This is listed on the City of Loveland's own senior center page. The center is open weekdays from 8 to 5 and closed weekends. 970-962-2783.

This is the only mahjong session in Northern Colorado we found with a published day and time. If you want a game and you are willing to drive, that is the one to start with.

Fort Collins Senior Center, 1200 Raintree Drive. The city's page lists mahjong along with cards and bridge among the center's activities. No day or time is published. The center is open weekdays from 6 in the morning to 9 at night and weekends from 8 to 5, and it is accredited by the National Council on Aging with programming aimed at adults 50 and older. Call 970-221-6644 and ask when mahjong meets.

Probable but unconfirmed

Greeley Active Adult Center, 1010 6th Street. This is the most likely place in Weld County to find a game, and we could not confirm it. The center serves adults 50 and older, is open weekdays 8 to 5 and Saturday afternoons, and publishes both a program list and a drop-in schedule, but both of those live inside a registration platform we could not read. Greeley's own site search returned nothing for mahjong, and nothing for pickleball either, which tells you the search is broken rather than telling you anything about the programs.

Call 970-350-9440. This is the single call most likely to find you a game close to home if you live in Greeley or Evans.

The libraries. High Plains Library District covers Greeley, Evans, Eaton, Johnstown, Milliken and most of Weld County. Poudre River Public Library District covers Fort Collins and Timnath. Both run event calendars that we could not read. Libraries are a common host for card and tile games because the room is free and the coffee situation is tolerable, so both calendars are worth checking directly.

One warning if you go looking on your own. High Plains runs something called the Young At Heart Book Club, which sounds exactly like an older adult program and is not one. It is a young adult literature group aimed at high school students. Do not drive to Evans on a first Thursday expecting mahjong.

Not found

We found no mahjong group we could verify in Windsor, Wellington, Eaton, Johnstown, Milliken or Evans. Evans publishes its senior program list and it names lunch, fitness classes and outings, with no card or tile games mentioned. That does not prove there is no game in those towns. It proves nobody has written it down.

Ask which mahjong before you go

There is a real chance of showing up to the wrong game, and it is worth one question on the phone.

American mahjong is played with a card published each year by the National Mah Jongg League, and the hands you are allowed to make change annually. Chinese mahjong, in its several regional forms, and Japanese riichi are different games with different scoring and, in some cases, different tiles in play. A person who learned one can pick up another, but not on the fly in the middle of somebody's Thursday afternoon.

Neither Loveland nor Fort Collins publishes which variant its group plays. Ask when you call. Ask also whether there is a spare seat, because a mahjong table is four people and a group that has run for years may already be full, in which case the honest answer is usually that they will start a second table if two more people turn up.

Nobody is teaching beginners, and that is an opening

Of every venue we checked, not one advertised a mahjong lesson or a beginner session. Pickleball in this region has free four-week beginner series. Mahjong has nothing.

If you already play, that is worth sitting with. The gap between the people who know this game and the people who would like to is being held open by nothing more than the absence of somebody willing to teach a first afternoon. Most senior centers in Northern Colorado will give you a room and put it on the calendar if you offer. The Chilson lobby has open craft and game space with no fee attached. Greeley, Fort Collins, Windsor and Eaton all have coordinators whose job includes finding people exactly like you.

While you are on the phone

The centers that host these games host a good deal more, and most of it is not advertised outside the building. Chilson alone publishes cards and games on Monday afternoons with pinochle, canasta and hand and foot, chess three days a week, table tennis three days a week, billiards every weekday in the lobby at no charge, a Friday afternoon craft group, a fishing club on third Tuesdays, and community dances on second and fourth Mondays.

Eaton's recreation district runs a weekday morning Coffee Talk in the community center lobby with the coffee provided. Weld County runs a senior lunch program called Friendly Fork at twenty-one sites, including Windsor at 250 North 11th Street weekday mornings, Johnstown at 101 West Charlotte on Wednesdays, Milliken at 1101 Broad Street on Mondays and Fridays, and Eaton at 1675 3rd Street on Wednesdays. Those are meals, but they are mostly a room full of people, which is the same thing you are looking for.

Hours and days change. Call before you go.

Why a Medicare agency wrote this

Because Haven Health was started by pharmacists, and pharmacists spend a lot of years watching what actually keeps people well. A standing Thursday afternoon where four people expect you is not a small thing. It is closer to the center of the picture than most of what gets called healthcare.

We help people in Greeley, Windsor, Wellington, Eaton, Johnstown and the rest of Northern Colorado sort out Medicare. That is the work. But if this article gets one person to a table, it did something.

If you do want to talk about coverage, ask your Good Day pharmacist about us first. We mean that literally.