Mah Jongg Mondays

I've started playing Mah Jongg with some women from the base. We usually meet on Monday afternoons, but have started to have additional games on Fridays. We are a fledgling group and have had trouble recruiting and keeping members. I can sort of understand why. Mah Jongg (at least with the rules we follow) is a complicated and often frustrating game. I was lured in by the beauty of the tiles and the symbols depicted on them. I found the set-up for each game of play to be enchanting: you built a (great) wall out of the tiles. Each player position is named after one of the four winds. I'm struggling with my Mah Jongg strategy. Once or twice I might win a game, but usually I lose miserably. Why do I keep up with it? Maybe in the hopes that, with practice, I'll get better at this game. If I quit the group now it may just dissolve altogether. We only have three active members. Ideally, you need four for a game of Mah Jongg, but you can play with just three. You can't play with just two players.