Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

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alban lusitanae
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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by alban lusitanae » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:29 pm

Oh man I didn\'t know THAT rule :( what a silly bum...

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by Tom Sloper » Tue Apr 14, 2009 12:52 am

alban lusitanae wrote:Can you believe they tried to sell me a Mahjong set with tiles not even 1/4 inch thick for 138€ ($185)?! The tiles don\'t even stand!! Unbelievable really... :angry:
Best place to buy mahjong sets is on the Internet.
http://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq/whereg.htm
BTW, THIS site (right here, where you\'re reading this) has nice Japanese sets for sale.
4649おねがいします。

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by alban lusitanae » Tue Apr 14, 2009 9:46 pm

Thx Tom, will definitey do some digging. Although I shop on the net (bought my chinese HaiLin e-book through it), one can never be too careful...

oh and I feel very awkward... last night I got this hand for 33000 points...

:west :west :west :north :north :north :south :south :south :east :east :east red-dra red-dra

I still think it was a bug in the game... It\'s almost impossible to get this... :ohmy:

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by HotelFSR » Tue Apr 14, 2009 9:49 pm

Congrats! That\'s not a bug, just an exceedingly rare hand!

Was it against human players or computers, and was it fully concealed?

If fully concealed and self drawn it\'s a QUADRUPLE Yakuman (if the rules counted that) because you have Big Four Winds, which is a double Yakuman in itself, plus All Honors, plus Four Concealed Sets- which could have pushed up to a QUINTUPLE Yakuman total if you were waiting on the red dragon to finish (Single Wait Four Concealed Sets). WOW! You\'d be looking at 160,000 points, or 240,000 had you been dealer.

However, it seems the game you were playing doesn\'t allow even Double Yakuman to be counted because you got 33,000 points (presumably 32,000 + 1000 stick) which equates to only a regular Yakuman.

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by carl » Wed Apr 15, 2009 1:39 am

jeez that sure is a lucky hand, i hope i can get one myself someday lol.

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by Shirluban » Wed Apr 15, 2009 3:20 pm

Wonderful!

As you said, it\'s \"almost impossible\", not \"impossible\".
So no bug in the game.

By the way, if you play on a 2-player arcade machine game, near impossible things become quite common (for or against you, depend how long since you spend a coin :lol: ).

I remember a game the opponent systematically wins 4 draws after she said riichi.
Cats don't do タンヤオ (tan-yao) but タニャーオ (ta-nya-o).
World Riichi Championship Rules 2022
Comparison of riichi rules around the world

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by alban lusitanae » Wed Apr 15, 2009 8:44 pm

@ Shirluban

Yeah, it was an arcade, but the game doesn\'t have wacky stuff. It was just good luck. I lost on the next round, since I\'ve beaten that opponent and then I go to the next with 1000c. Ah well... easy comes easy goes

@ Carl

In some parlours I actually think they would kick your butt for thinking you were cheating or something

@ Hotel

CPU, 2-player arcade, fully concealed, no riichi, self-drawn (I was shocked at the hand, didn\'t even think straight, thought I was dreaming). I was waiting for a :north and a :east I had everything else on my hand. Got it 2 rounds later. These games have very strange calculations, trust me... they sometimes go 1200 points or 24300 or something. They\'re wild. Good fun though, value for money

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by alban lusitanae » Wed Apr 15, 2009 9:01 pm

Oh, people, btw:

Instead of:

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/mahjong/mahjong_e.html

try

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/mahjong/mahjong_e.swf

It\'s a SWF flashgame, it\'s goes full screen that way :)

Cheers

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by Ruro » Sun Apr 26, 2009 5:09 am

I\'m new to Reach mahjong.com so i thought i say hi :) And i have a few questions too :P First of all, i know how to play, i know the tiles the combinations, yaku-s , furiten etc etc. But what i don\'t get is that how am i supposed to guess at what the other player is waiting for (like after he declared riichi) by seeings his discarded tiles. I know that it\'s really easy to guess it when he is going for a tan yao and such, but how can i avoid dealing into a pinfu, or a chiitoitsu?

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by HotelFSR » Sun Apr 26, 2009 9:36 am

If you look in the columns section of this site, Shintaro Konno of the JPML (Japanese Pro Mahjong League) has written a guide about spotting the signs of specific hands.

Generally more important than reading the yaku your opponent is going for is reading his waits. This is more about figuring it out by elimination than guessing outright. The first line of defense is usually just discarding into furiten waits (i.e. he has discarded 4, so you discard 1 because furiten dictates he cannot have a 1-4 wait). Most reading is based on the hope that everyone is going for two-sided waits, since they are the best.

A good introduction to defense and wait reading is on this page:

http://www.osamuko.com/index.php/2009/0 ... -and-suji/

Read parts 1 + 2.


Generally, the tiles around early number discards are safe, whereas the tiles around late number discards are dangerous. More complexity is discussed in the guide above.

There are some basic things that guide doesn\'t make entirely clear though. When reading the hand of a suspicious opponent, you need to watch for whether a discarded tile was taken out of the hand or discarded right when drawing it. i.e. was the player holding on to that tile because he needed it until that point, or was it completely useless (discard without keeping)?

If it was discarded right away, surrounding tiles are probably fairly safe. If it was discarded out the hand, surrounding tiles are probably dangerous. Bear in mind this applies only to discards BEFORE the player has declared reach or hit silent tenpai.

If the discard came out of the hand, you can start applying the basic principles in that guide, such as ura-suji. You can see if the discard implies a certain dangerous wait, and whether subsequent discards reinforce the idea that a particular wait is dangerous. Often you can wait for your other opponents to make riskier discards, which in turn will suggest safer ones for you. If tiles of a particular suit have no pattern or seem to suggest a particular wait or wait(s) which turn out to be safe (someone else takes the risk for you), then that might mean all tiles of that suit are safe. You can start focusing your attention on suspect tiles in other suits.

Generally it is difficult to figure out which suit the final wait is in, because it may or may not have been created last. A good basic rule is not to discard any red fives, doras or other powerful tiles in the late game, period. Tiles which have not been seen on the board at all can be very dangerous.

On it goes. Maybe other players better than I can give you more advice!

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by Ruro » Sun Apr 26, 2009 12:03 pm

huh omg thanks HotelFSR your reply IS insightful. Up til now i was tring to discard furiten waits and tried not to deal into obvious semi-called chin and hon-itsu hands. I also tried the 1-4-7 type defense but it was almost ineffective at like 7 out of 10 cases. But yea the real hard part comes from that the players own styles can differ in at a really high scale. (f.e. I really like hell wait-s for some stupid reason, i like the thrills that it gives to me :D ) my personal insight was (from watching a bunch of replays) that one hits tenpai with an avarage hand at like the 6 to 9th turn, and then if he has 6or more ones , nines and honors in his/her discarded tiles then its obviously some kind of hand combined with tan yao. I would like to hear more from you ppl cause you have the experience that i lack :)

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by HotelFSR » Sun Apr 26, 2009 8:17 pm

The 1-4-7 defense is more effective than you think. It just depends on which tile is discarded. For example, a 7 says nothing about 1 being safe. However, if you see a 4, both 1 and 7 are very often safe. With 2-5-8, a discarded 5 very often means 2 and 8 are safe, and so on. It\'s just that 2 does not mean 8 is safe.

Nothing wrong with liking single waits. Negligible chance of self draw, but if you pick well they can be very effective. You can nail tiles that are likely to come out (ones that are furiten for other players) or tiles that are generally unused (like player winds which already have one copy on the board). The great thing is other players basically can\'t tell that you are hiding a single wait. Hell waits, on the other hand, just aren\'t great statistically. The tile you want may well be in the dead wall, especially late game. You probably won\'t want to rely on hell waits except in very rare circumstances.

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by Monadology » Sun Apr 26, 2009 9:48 pm

A cut 7 is also not the best indicator that 4 is safe, since one can cut a 7 and still be on a 1/4 wait without chance for furiten.

However, tiles discarded upon tenpai are more likely to be close to the wait, so it is less likely that a 1/4 wait is being used if a 7 is cut in those situations than that they are on a 6/9, 3/6 or 5/8 wait, for instance (cut from 778, 754 or 776 formations respectively).

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by HotelFSR » Sun Apr 26, 2009 10:27 pm

True that.


Ruro:

Also, reading that your opponent is going for tanyao is not very useful except as a last resort, unless the opponent has an open hand with no other yaku- but may have a bunch of dora.

The reason for this is simple. You will often see opponents reach on a 1-4 or 6-9 wait, which gives only a partial chance of tanyao- a possibility that is nothing more than optional. You will still lose if you discard a 9 into a 6-9 wait even though you deny your opponent their tanyao. Because of this, you only want to avoid tanyao when you have no other defense or just want to insist on pushing your hand.

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Re:Greetings from a newbie with questions :)

Post by Ruro » Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:40 pm

Yea this is reasonable, but i only go to avoid tan yao if its really obvious (like the player declares riichi at the 10-11 turn and almost all of his discards are 1-9 and honors up till that point)1-4-7 defense is good now that i read more about it :D Thanks for the tips guys, i didn\'t get better at an epic level, but i still improved a bit for wich im thankful.

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