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Ten is my favorite Fukumoto manga. A lot of people dislike it because it's "childish", something I'll never understand. Yes, it starts out a bit silly, but you have to remember that this was one of his first works and it was on-going for about 13 years... The man probably didn't know where he was going with it back then. By the time it was finished, Kaiji was at its second series already. After two volumes or so, when Akagi appears, it really picks up and only gets better from there. The mahjong is tense, the psychological aspects are powerful, and all the characters feel likeable in their own way. Hell, this might be his only manga where the villains are somewhat realistic. And don't even get me started on the finale.
I don't think I've ever been so moved by an ending before... It made Akagi, whose personality was almost kinda robotic until then, feel very human.
So yeah, am I the only one who feels this way?

I would tend to agree with you. Though it's hard to overstate that Ten is a solid enough work just counting the mahjong in the first 15 volumes, the funeral/memorial service in the last 3 is absolutely sublime, one of the 5 all-time best manga arcs out there as far as I'm concerned. Couldn't have worked without the characterization in the first 15 either, which gives each character a solid background with which to really bring the weight of their philosophies to bear.