forged tenhou names

I knew I could do try this months ago but I only just tried.

Names on Tenhou have a maximum length of 8 characters *1. Registering IDs is done over http by http://b.mjv.jp/regid?uname=# where # is the desired name. There isn't the 8 character limit here, though. I found a while ago that with a longer name, only 8 characters are displayed in-game and in the #START/#END etc. messages.

Given this, consider an existing 8 character name, is it possible to register that name plus another character, so as to create the illusion in-game that the original is in fact playing. It turns out it is, but only on names that are of only ASCII characters originally. I tried this with kyonko11 (some high level player I got from http://tenhou.net/sc/?rate4). Adding another 1 allowed registration and it came up as kyonko11 in-game. On the lobby screen it was kyonko111, though. Strange.

No harm done, though; the player keeps their rank. I have no idea whether it comes up as kyonko11 or 111 on the ranking list thingies.

*1:actual limit: 24!