Konno’s Kolumn #5: Early Stage Play
Hello to Mahjong players of the world. I am Shintaro Konno. Last time I talked about Reach. This time I want to talk about “early stages.”
In Mahjong, the early stage is from the deal to the 6th or 7th discard. On average someone is usually ready by the 8th or 9th discard so we consider the “early stage” to be before that.
Lucky Tile:
Say you had the hand above in the first hand of the East round as the Dealer. What would you discard first? South? The Red Dragon? The 1 of bams? Probably one of those. But if you ask me, that question, I only have one answer. That’s 1c.
It may seem like a waste when you have the 1-crak and 2-crak there already, but if you think about the future, it proves to be an appropriate discard.
So, why is that? I’ll explain.
Once the hand is dealt, every player thinks about how to make their hand a winner, but in reality out of the 4 players, only one will win. On top of that if you include hands that end in draws, the chances of winning a hand are only about 20%. Given that fact, this hand doesn’t look good at all. Let’s say you discard the Honors first and your opponent calls one of them. Just by doing that you’ve given your opponent a big advantage.
How about the 1b standing alone far away from everything? There is nothing wrong with discarding this 1-bam. However, if you take another look at the hand, you’ll notice you have a 5b there. If you draw a 3b then you’ll have 1-3-5, which is just as good as an open-ended wait (in Japanese this is called a “ryan-kan” wait. In English Jenn calls it a double-gut-shot, like in poker).
So if you don’t discard Honors and you don’t discard 1-bam then the only thing left to drop is the 1-2 side wait.
When you drop a side wait, the order to discard them should be determined by the stateof the inside tile. If you have 1-2-4, then of course you will drop the 1 first. If you have 1-2-5 then you should drop the 2 first. If you drop the 1 first from 1-2-5, the you’ll be left with 2-5, holding octaves that you can’t use and increasing the danger of your future discards. If you have 1-2-6, then drop the 1 first. This is in case you draw a 4 so you can make the double-gutty.
Let’s get back to the hand at hand. You have 1c-2c-6c-8c and let’s say you discard the 1c. You’ve discarded the 1c first, but at this point your first 4 discards are pretty much decided. Generally you will discard 1b next, then 2c and then 5b. But, if you draw a 4c or a 3b, then depending on the board you may discard South or the Red Dragon instead.
Let’s say that next you get this hand on the deal:
Lucky Tile:
We’ll say it is the first hand of the East round and you are Dealer again. What would you discard? 3d? 3b? Nope. Naturally you should discard the Red Dragon. This hand is much different than the one before. If you discard the Red Dragon and someone pons, you still have a fast hand to fight with. You can go for an Inside Hand, Three-Colored Runs and get plenty of points. If you have a hand worth going for, then you should go for it.
Mahjong is a battle of winning hands. When you get a hand that is worth going for, you should go with it and aim for the win. However, when you can’t go for a win, you should not help your opponents win. In Japan we have a saying, “If pushing won’t work, try pulling.” Mahjong is not only a game of offense.
See you next time
Shintaro Konno is Grade 5 in the Japan Professional Mahjong League and runs mahjong lessons in the Kanto region. You can find him as a pro on Ron2 and Konami’s Mahjong Fight Club.
