Additional info if you need it:

Starting score, as you might be starting to realize, gives teams a very big advantage since they have to be incentivized to perform well during the regular season. The Pirates in particular have been crushing it, with 271.1 more points than the number 2 team. But just what are these points, and how many matches do teams have to try and catch up?

For scoring, it's important to recognize every player in a game of riichi mahjong starts with 25,000 points. In the course of a game you will win and lose these points by completing a hand and calling "Ron" on a player, and thus stealing some of their points, or "Tsumo" which forces each player to pay part of the cost of that hand. At the end of a game, you count the total amount of points you have and subtract 25,000 from it, then divide by 1000. So if you have 60,000, your post match score is (60,000 - 25,000) / 1000 = +35, or if you were unfortunate and only have 1,000 points left, your post match score would be (1,000 - 25,000) / 1000 = -24.

But wait! There's more! M-League applies Uma as well. In order to magnify the effects of getting 1st/2nd/3rd/4th place at a table, additional points are applied as follows +30/+10/-10/-30. So if you had 60,000 points and hit 1st in that match, you'd have a total score of (60,000 - 25,000) / 1000 + 30 = 35 + 30 = +65. And in the unfortunate case where you have 1,000 points and hit 4th you'd have a total score of (1,000 - 25,000) / 1000 - 30 = -24 - 30 = -54.

So for each game of riichi mahjong, the post-match score + uma is applied to a running total including the starting score each team begins the semi-finals having. Suddenly the Pirates's lead seems reachable considering they could have an unlucky -60 game while the Drivens get some crazy +65 score.

But how many matches will be played?

30 total, and each team will participate in 20 of them, since there can only be 4 teams per table, and there are 6 teams.

Feel free to ask questions.