Is this tile (more or less) safe?

[Mauro]

During a game I had last week a player was in riichi, and another player discarded ; whan I asked him why he thought that would be somehow safe, he said because the riichi player discarded and early in the game (5th and 6th discard). Does this make sense?





(I asked the player who discarded to take a picture, unfortunately he only took the riichi player pond; but since was deemed safe-ish based only on that pond, I think that's enough to know if he was correct?)

[Gnom]

From that pond I don't see a strong suspicion that it would be safe (which doesn't mean it's not, just that as far as I can judge there's a lack of info).
-The only time it would be perfectly safe is if it was already discarded since the player would be furiten
-It would be safer than other tiles (although far from perfectly safe) if the player discarded the omote suji for that tile which is 5pin, since it would make them furiten if they used a ryanmen (2-5 wait). It would be also the case for a nobetan although this kind of wait is much less frequent, but they may have any other wait that would allow them to win on a 2p.
-One other hint would be if you had a suspicion the player who did riichi was doing a yaku preventing them from using a 2p (for instance a hon/chinitsu from another color). Based on the late discard of 62b and chun it's a possibility here. Note that once again it wouldn't make 2p safe, it would just make it safer than some other tiles.

Now, about the early discard of the 1 and 3, I don't feel it's really something you can base a decision upon. It may actually indicate danger on the 2p. If the player who declared riichi had this shape : 1334, and their hand made progress and they had to cut tiles from that area to go further, they would first discard the 1 (ura-suji) and then the 3 (matagi-suji). This is especially true since this player discarded the terminals from other areas before (19m and 9p) which may indicate that there was something to be done in the 1234p area. That's nothing decisive at all, and based upon that you can't deduce that the player had a 25p wait (which they hadn't since that 2p went through), however if I had to guess in that situation I'd say they are slightly more dangerous than other ones. I certainly wouldn't discard it if I was trying to defend at all cost.

[Krabman]

Just chiming in to Gnom's great analysis - 5-6th turn is by no means early. If the player keeps discarding from his hand, he could be close to tenpai at that point.

[Shirluban]

Same as Gnom and Krabman.

Also, the second 1 worries me. If it's not draw-discarded, I'll avoid discarding a 2.
The player could have 1133, discards 1 and 3 in favor of the middle wait. Later draws 4, discards 1, and waits on _34_.

[DdR_Dan]

Jumping in on an old topic, but I think it's safer here. If I wanted to hold onto my hand I wouldn't mind discarding , especially if it's not the first discard after riichi. I would also much prefer discarding over and even . But, after 14 discards I think it depends more on the tiles you can see on the table and in your hand.