Nobuyuki Fukumoto

Kaiji Ito moves to Japan after graduating from high school. Unable to find a job and frustrated with society at large, Kaiji spends his days gambling, vandalizing cars and drinking booze. Two years later and his life no better, a debt collector named Endo arrives to collect money, offering two choices to Kaiji: spend 10 year paying off his loan or board a gambling boat for one night to repay his debt and possibly make a whole lot more. (film.com)

Soon after having his debt cleared, Kaiji Ito is soon deep in the red again, and as is sent underground to work off what he owes. Always a gambler, when given the chance to return to the surface for a mere 2 weeks, he takes up the challenge with the intention of earning the 200,000,000 yen he needs to help his friends still imprisoned. But can he beat a game that is obviously rigged?

Akagi is a mahjong genius who plays the game against shadowy underworld figures where the stakes are more than just money.

Kaiji Itou is a good-for-nothing loiterer who spends his days drinking beer and stealing hubcaps--that is, until he ends up being tricked by his former co-worker. Unable to suddenly repay his friend's huge debt all by himself, Kaiji is offered a shady deal to participate in an illegal underground gamble on a cruise ship. This turns out to be nothing more than the beginning of his new life of hell--thrown headlong into a life-threatening roller coaster of mind games, cheating, and deceit. (MyAnimeList)

A man finds himself deep in debt and is coerced to board a ship that hosts a risky gambling party.

Kaiji experiences the biggest adventure of his life. He encounters four different games: "Babel no Tou", "Saigo no Shinpan", "Dream Jump", and "Gold Janken". (imdb)

A kid named Akagi plays mahjong for the first time and shocks everyone in the underworld