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I know that in general, calling Riichi while in furiten (or even putting yourself in furiten WITH your riichi) is a very risky idea. But in certain situations, would it be advantageous to call it anyway? I want to know to help strengthen my mahjong game and know risks that I can take and maybe get away with, since upper table players on Tenhou play fairly good defense.

Example 1: Round, Player is , 0 renchan, hand on turn 7, Dora indicator:

draw:

It's a cheap completed pinzumo with one dora, but reaching and going for the sanshoku brings it up to Haneman if you draw the good out and would help you play more aggressively with the renchan you'd get. Y/N to furiten riichi?


Example 2: Round, Player is , hand on turn 10, dora indicator:


draw: (Furiten wait due to discarding earlier)

This is a fantastic-looking hand! Pinfu+2 Dora, with potential itsuu by discarding . The problem is, you've discarded a earlier when the hand structure didn't look like you could go for itsuu and it's somewhat late in the game. Y/N to furiten riichi?


Example 3: Round 1, player is , hand on turn 4, dora indicator: , points are as follows:

East: 29200
South: 29500
West (You): 22000
North: 19300

Draw:

North has two fast open Fanpai pons (West and North). You are furiten on the 2-5-8 wait due to discarding an isolated then drawing the and in quick succession. Declaring riichi could lead to a decisive victory, but it could also easily let you fall in to last place if North wins the hand. Riichi+Tanyao+Dora on a non-furiten wait is not enough to guarantee you the win even with tsumo; with no ura-dora, you will be short of a comeback hand, but declaring a furiten riichi will give a guaranteed mangan if you tsumo. Do you riichi, play silent, or furiten riichi?

1) Making a furiten riichi and letting pass a win are two different things.
You are East and have a winning hand, so you should almost always call the win and get the renchan, even with a cheap hand.
And here the hand is not cheap: a three han hand is nice, especially when you're East.

Even if you wasn't East, waiting on a single tile is pretty bad*. So waiting on a single AND being furiten would be disastrous to the point you should think about breaking the hand to switch to total defense.

* I don't count the 5p, because winning afterward on it would render the whole strategy pointless.

2) You may declare riichi, depending on the table situation (remaining winning tiles, current score, if another player reached, or looks like tenpai, ...).
The hand is in it's final shape, and thanks to the 3-sided wait you have a fair chance to win by tsumo.
Of course, you should win on any winning tile, even if it doesn't gives you the ittsu.

3) So it's either a double wait on 6 tiles for the third place, a furiten triple wait on 10 tiles for the first place, or a hard time get a mangan in an other way.
I'm not sure if these waits makes a big difference (I think not), so I'll take the chance for the first place.

First off. With regards to Furiten, I am never comfortable with furiten. I doubt any other player would be too. Often, it is good to call the win -- to force a wind rotation.

1) As someone who plays around with Dama a little bit here and there -- often do I find cases where I'd think: "Oh, I wish that I had called Riichi earlier". Many of those cases were pinfu hands like this one. Take my word, it is depressing to just win with: Tsumo + Pinfu.

With this hand -- just call the win and move on. Pinfu + Mentsumo + Dora. For 3 and 20. That's nothing to frown upon.

2) A 3-sided wait. Even with furiten? Calling riichi will depend on how many of the other tiles are discarded -- especially the other 9-sou. If yours is the only 9-sou in the discards, then it is reasonable to hope for Ittsu; but don't count on it.

Also, being in the East round, y'can afford to call riichi here, unless y'look to get out of furiten. And that is very doable. This is a give-or-take situation.

3) Third place, in the West round. Needing at least a mangan to win; or just a plain win to keep the game going.

To call riichi here -- you're counting on Riichi + Men + Tan + Pin + Dora. There's your mangan. Another 3-sided wait. Once again, consider the number of tiles in your wait among the discards. So call the riichi here.

Thanks for the replies guys! I wanted to try coming up with interesting problems that also illustrated the situations I wanted your opinions on!

Shirluban wrote:1) Making a furiten riichi and letting pass a win are two different things.
You are East and have a winning hand, so you should almost always call the win and get the renchan, even with a cheap hand.
And here the hand is not cheap: a three han hand is nice, especially when you're East.

Even if you wasn't East, waiting on a single tile is pretty bad*. So waiting on a single AND being furiten would be disastrous to the point you should think about breaking the hand to switch to total defense.

* I don't count the 5p, because winning afterward on it would render the whole strategy pointless.

That was the question I was trying to ask though. I guess cheap is a matter of perspective, since a 3900 tsumo isn't that cheap at all. However, if you reach early (since turn 7 is fairly early), and the opponents delay their hands trying to play defense...greed could yield either twice as much (pin+tsumo+reach+dora) by picking up 5p again or almost 5 times as much (pin+tsumo+reach+dora+sanshoku) by picking up 2p, and that's assuming no uradora. Table lock can sometimes happen with early-game reaches from the dealer, as not a lot of players will try to push a hand that could easily result in a 5000+ payment. I was more curious whether the risk/reward dynamic of that situation would be worth the pay off or whether it would be better to rely on the renchan and fast wins to get your points. It's obviously safer to call the win, but I like pushing the envelope sometimes. >:3

I agree with the other two suggestions though, that the reach is is risky but worth doing because of the good wait and the desperate situation.

Kyuu wrote:First off. With regards to Furiten, I am never comfortable with furiten. I doubt any other player would be too. Often, it is good to call the win -- to force a wind rotation.

I'm not particularly comfortable with furiten either...it's a terrible situation to be in for sure. I happen to have a game though where I pushed my luck and it happened to work out nicely (in South 3rd) just to show that these situations sometimes happen and can pay off. Usually my aggressiveness is a bad habit, but I am starting to get a better sense of when to play defense and when to try and push my luck.

I believed that the dealer was going for a cheap hand to keep the renchan that I would deal in to while going for my hand anyway, and that by declaring reach I could force the other two players to play defense against me to allow me the chance to tsumo. I know it's mostly luck that I got the hand to begin with, but declaring reach was what let me win the game by taking the extra 4000 points from all the other players!

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