Nelly Virsaladze

Nelly Virsaladze is a first year at Rinkai Girls' High School. She is from the country Georgia and was a major player during the World Junior Championship. Nelly is one of three newcomers to the Rinkai team.

Appearance
Nelly has large blue eyes and long brown hair that reaches her waist. She wears a red and white shirt and a red hat.

Personality
During her brief appearances, Nelly is very cheerful, happy, and energetic. But when she is with her seniors, she is shown to be rather rude. Nelly is often concerned about what Rinkai's sponsors think, as she needs money for a reason that has not been revealed. Also, during her match, she is shown smiling quite creepily at times and when she goes on her big win streak, her teammates call it "bluffing" when she starts counting her wins.

Prefectural Tournament Arc
During a flashback, when Hisa Takei was explaining people's different skills to Nodoka Haramura, Nelly's silhouette was shown when she mentioned people who could read the flow.

Combined Training Camp Arc
Nelly appeared at the end of the East Tokyo final when Kouko Fukuyo and Sukoya Kokaji were giving their run down on the Rinkai team.

Final Eight Arc
She is shown with the rest of the Rinkai team entering the tournament hall. Nelly and Megan Davin are then shown seeing off Satoha Tsujigaito before her match. She is later seen watching the vanguard match. During the match, Rinkai's coach says that she wants Yuuki Kataoka and Myeonghwa calls her gluttonous. Myeonghwa then laughs when Nelly says that the coach is too thin to be a glutton and that her butt and breasts are lacking. When the coach explains that Satoha would still be the ace even without the tournament rule, Nelly says even though that's true the benifactors won't think so. When Satoha returns from her match, she greets her and hugs Satoha from behind. Nelly and the rest of Rinkai then discuss Yuuki's play tatics during the vanguard match. During a flashback, she is defeated by Huiyu Hao at chinese mahjong and wonders if she came there for the money. She then listens to Huiyu tell about why she came to the country and describe her playstyle. During halftime, Myeonghwa changes the the televison station to another halftime show and Nelly says that it looks cheap.

Later when the coach says that she told Myeonghwa to play defense, Nelly didn't agree. She said that the sponsors won't like it if they just played defense all game and asks if she can go all out in the captain's match. Towards the end of Megan's match, she notices Megan's change of style and begs her to stop. When Alexandra explains that they have very little info on that style, Nelly says that since they are competitors on the world junior stage, that maybe Megan is deliberately hiding something.

When Nelly greets Megan on her way to the captains' match, she indicates that she's annoyed by Megan's play in the final two rounds, although she says Megan did a good job with the match apart from that.

During her match, Nelly is shown sitting quietly doing nothing for the first hand - while Kyouko Suehara wins with a tsumo. However in the second hand, while Kyouko and Sawaya Shishihara are battling it out, Nelly suddenly says that the hand "is already over" and declares a concealed kan which leads her to win with a rinshan kaihou.

Nelly is surprised when Sawaya calls in Hoyau Kamuy and prevents both her and Saki Miyanaga from using their abilities. Unfortunately for all of them, Kyouko uses this opportunity to win many fast hands and gains enough points to be close to first place with a direct East-Haneman on Nelly. For the rest of the match, she doesn't do much else. Hisa Takei notes that Nelly has been having terrible luck in the match, and has a bad feeling about that. Once Hoyau Kamuy's influence leaves the table, both Nelly and Saki quickly make up for lost time by winning once each.

Nelly remains quiet for much of the match and then explodes for three huge wins in a row to end the match. After winning the match, Nelly then begins to talk to her opponents. She tells Saki that her luck saved her and if it had not then she would be going home, as the extra uradora at the end pushed her win to a sanbaiman, with Kyouko paying the dealer penalty, causing Himematsu to drop to 3rd. She tells Kyouko that she made her nervous but luckily she called twice and was the player to her left. When she gets to Sawaya she says that she is still hiding something and wonders why she did not use it during the game. Despite Sawaya's protests, Nelly insists that she try her powers on her and Sawaya reluctantly does so, causing Nelly to feel extreme pleasure. Back in the waiting room Satoha asks if she is tired from the interviews and Nelly tells her that something from before made her more tired. She then listens to Megan and Huiyu's criticism of her game and says that she'll do better next time.

National Tournament Arc
Nelly wonders why Satoha chose to go to Rinkai but only Megan knows. After finding out the reason why, she says that if they can live up to Satoha's expectations, it will be an expression of Satoha's strength.

Playing Style / Abilities
Nelly's abilities appear to involve an awareness of and manipulation of the game flow, almost at will. Hisa Takei and Sawaya Shishihara both wonder about hands that appear to have been lower than expected or ended inexplicably sudden, with Sawaya implying the Virsaladze was behind this. This was further implied by the conversation between Coach Windheim and Choe Myeonghwa, saying Nelly would have shifted the play of Saki should she have called riichi. Nelly herself states she deliberately played so her best hands would occur at the end of the match suggesting a very strong level of flow control.

It's suggested by Nelly she has to sacrifice some of her hands in order to control the flow and win big hands (or waves as she calls them) and she describes this as suffering and crawling on the ground. Kyouko muses about times where Virsaladze appears to randomly deal into others hands, and Hisa becomes increasingly uneasy about Nelly's abnormally bad luck in the match. Kyouko confirms that on hands Nelly does not win, she plays defensively right from the start and on on hands she does win, she plays proactively, implying Virsaladze sacrifices some hands. At the end of the match, this is confirmed by Nelly, stating she deliberately made it hard for herself at the start and then won big at the end so as to impress her sponsors.

This control seems to give Virsaladze an awareness of things she shouldn't know: she knew she would have a win after her rinshan kaihou, she knew the exact moment Kyouko reached tenpai in the last hand and she knew Sawaya was still accompanied by one Ainu god and had deliberately not used their power. The full scope of this awareness is currently not explained but seems extreme enough that she constantly has it during play (shown by the flame in her eyes while playing) and Virsaladze was visibly outraged when Sawaya shut it off (due to receiving protection from her Ainu gods, and shown by the flame in Nelly's eyes disappearing), crying she could no longer read her. The flame and awareness returned when the god left, shown by Nelly thinking to herself, "Has it gone?".