Reachmahjong.com

The time has come at last.

After a lot of brushing up on my game and close to 350 games on Toupaiou, I\'m finally a Dan player! I am willing to sign autographs on request. My rating is now pretty stable in the low 1500 region with a 2.50 average placement, which feels about right at this point. I can finally enter the fabled Dan lobby...

Had to brag about it somewhere, huh.

Looking at old replays I feel I\'ve definitely been improving more than I realized. I must say it gives me a newfound respect for how much more it takes to get up to the highest level of play where you see ratings consistently over 2000!

Not sure I\'ll ever get there.

My profit edge is still -0.25 per game, but I figure if I keep up my game at this level it will turn positive soon enough as the numbers catch up.

I feel like the basics needed to get to this point were:

* Learning the fundemental heirarchy of wait elements
* Learning the basics of Suji defense (e.g. 4 discard = 1 is safe, tiles around late discards are dangerous, early safe, etc. looking for elements that are impossible)
* Learning to watch for discards which come out of the hand
* Learning to count Shan Ten and knowing better when to fold
* Learning hand scores and weighing up your risk/reward/needs
* Learning more when to push/partially defend/totally defend
* Learning when to insist on holding on to Doras and Jihai
* Learning to restrain yourself from stealing tiles too often (!)
* Forcing yourself to hold back from Reaching sometimes and knowing when
* Forcing yourself to actually fold when you know you should (!)

Damn, though, still a long way to go keeping that game tight...


So... any related experiences or sage advice to share?

congratulations! thats impressive, as toupaiou seems tough to advance on, much harder than tenhou.

Wow, way to go!

I remember when I got up to 1 dan on Ron2. Everybody in Japan had to hear about it for a week. Well, at least anyone studying English. Of course, Ronron\'s not for money, so your accomplishment seems a little more momentous.

Makes me interested in those sites too. Anyone willing to trade a few bucks on poker stars for money on one of them?

gartheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Thanks guys!

I did notice that Toupaiou seems much harder to advance on than Tenhou. Certainly you lose rank much more readily. Not sure how it compares to Ron2 but I think it uses a similar method of calculating rating. Although I could be wrong, since Jenn\'s rating on Ron2 is in the upper 1300 region but her average place is a fair bit higher than mine.

Not sure what you mean about money, Garthe. Unless I have been missing something major, Toupaiou is not for money. Just what they call MJPoints, which I\'m fairly sure cannot be traded for cash. Would be nice if I\'m wrong though!

I do feel like somebody really needs to make a money site for Reach Mahjong, though- just not one that sucks quite so voraciously as Mahjong Time does. I\'m assuming it would be legal for Japanese players if done offshore? What\'s the situation there and why does it not already exist?

I heard there was one going for a few months called MJEnbu which quickly shut down despite demand, for no apparent reason. Also, a Japanese friend and I are working on collaborating with the Toupaiou staff to roll out an English version... maybe there is a way of getting them to integrate cash play?

I\'d actually be willing to set that up as a business, since I get the feeling it might be illegal for a Japanese company to take profits on internet gambling even if it\'s offshore. Wonder if that\'s the case, and what the related tax issues would be...

Another breakthrough:

After hitting 365 games I\'ve pushed my rating to 1550 and my average place to 2.49, which means that for the first time ever my profit edge is positive (+0.05) although by a tiny margin. I also got my first ever yakuman (suu ankou) and then promptly got it again a few games later!


Woo! Thanks reachmahjong.com! Couldn\'t have done it without you! *sniff*

OOOOOHH, I was mistaken, I guess. For some reason, it seemed to me like you were playing for money on there. My mistake.

Yeah it seems like there would be a good market for online mahjong for money. The one thing I would really worry about though is collusion. It undoubtedly goes on in poker but at least there, the worst players can do is run up bets between themselves to push other players out. Knowing 2 or 4 more cards out of the deck will generally not make THAT big a difference. In mahjong, however, knowing another player\'s hand will help you go a MUCH longer way toward figuring out what other players have. Not sure how to deal with that, though I would like to see an attempt at least.

Maybe somebody somewhere is working on something..........

Well, MJEnbu was up and running true money games for a while then disappeared altogether. Not sure what the deal with that is.

Presumably the way to beat collusion is to have an automatic matchmaking system like the one Tenhou does. That way you can\'t engineer it so that you end up playing on the same table as your fellow cheaters. Obviously you have to disallow observing in money games as well. That should solve it pretty well, no?

Also, do you know any specifics about the legal issues? Why, for example, is Tenhou not already running money games?