In Garthe’s Hands #18: Quad Hands

Dec 23rd, 2007
by garthe

Here they are, the final two hands that haven’t been covered so far. I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath for a chance to learn how to use these very important hands. Sorry to disappoint. As with the hands in the last column, the reason these are being introduced so late is that the likelihood of ever seeing them is so very very low. It’s not that they’re very complicated, in fact, they’re exceedingly simple. It’s just that they involve kongs which are rare enough without requiring there to be more than one of them.

Three Quads: 2 Hand Points
So dipping back into the extremely rare category, we have 3 Quads. The name should say it all, it’s just a hand with 3 declared quads, worth all of 2 hand points, concealed or open. This is another one I have yet to see, at tables behind me or anywhere else (I noted last week that the one time I ever “saw” Heavenly Win was on a table behind me). You’d think with its rarity it would be worth a little more. I guess maybe the thinking is it would be awarding too much for just dumb luck. I’ve seen hands here and there where someone Quadded 3 times but never where someone actually finished the hand. Given that, it should come as no surprise that today’s other hand has never even been seen ready, anywhere, in the history of the world. Well, not by me anyway.

Four Quads: Limit Hand
4 Quads is as easy to figure out from its name as its little brother but that 4^th quad takes the hand from 2 points all the way up to UNLIMITTED points! Alright, just the limit but still, it’s pretty good for dumb luck. Normally when 4 quads have been declared in a hand, it’s instantly declared a draw. This is the one time, however, that play will continue unless someone else declares another quad after that. And finally, it probably goes without saying, the wait is going to be a single tile sitting all by itself while the all the declared quads languish off to the right. Choose that tile carefully as it’s going to make all the difference between limit glory or unlimited sorrow at having come so close, only to wind up one tile short.

Here are a couple examples of the Quad hands:

3 Quads

Winning Tile:
Green dragon and 3 Quads for 3 hand points, which would normally only be around 5200 points but with all the base points from Quads it goes up to 8000 for a non-dealer or 12000 for the dealer.

4 Quads

Winning Tile:

As always, limit hands are worth 32,000 for non-dealers and 48,000 for dealers.