another gameplay question

[mrfeng]

The alternative modern theory is to use the chun as the pair and riichi

although your decision of aiming for a pinfu instead of relying on yakuhai is correct

Since you cant do both of these at the same time, which is preferred?
If I go for pinfu, I can't use the chun as the pair, so I would have to get rid of them anyway.

These are just two ways of playing. It is really up to you to choose. I personally preferred chun pair because it is my style to lock down players. Some players' hands are heavy reliance on chun, especially players who love to meld. Even playing with more skilled players, by making chun live, can paralyze their hands if they think chun is dangerous.
It only really matters to get that 1 han is if a haneman/baiman is involved.

But at this stage of hand, discarding gives you the flexibility to go for riichi chun or riichi pinfu/pair of yakuhai. Other discards only make this hand less flexible (only 1 way of playing left). Oh ya, if you really want to consider drawing in 67s, you can consider discarding 9m. This means that if 6s arrive first and you want to go for mentanpin, it will be discarding a pair of chun in the process. This is safer than discarding a pair of 9m in the process.

[or2az]

Under the shānyū rule (without sudden death), this game went to West 3 before someone went over 30,000 pts. Fortunately, it was me.
My next hand was one of those I had to stop and think on what to discard.. I was dealer now and I didn't want to blow it.

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Seeing the two on the table, including one of mine, I decided to toss the . Don't want to be furiten later. It got ponned.

Two turns later, I drew the . Keep it?..Kan it?..Discard it? I decided to kan it...(there were 3 already in the discard pool).
Wouldn't you know it, I end up drawing two in a row (one from the dead wall) and then the 4th ....Unbelievable!

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With 7 tiles left, I drew the . I can riichi but I decided not to and just toss the , staying tenpai.

This game ended in a draw. I barely held on to win the match by 900 points, less than a riichi stick.

Whew! Did I make mistakes in this hand? maybe more than one? or maybe not?

[saitym]

You definitely made a mistake in your hand for one part in my opnion

instead of kanning the , you should have kept it and thrown the . by kanning the , not only are you giving the opponent a higher points potential to overtake you are missing out on a wait from the
. the discard is because of tanyao and it being the safest tile there is for all opponents.

Another point is if you go into west (shanyu) do you have to play out the whole of the west ( west 1-4)? I'm assuming you do because your playing even though your above 30000 points. I feel like this bit is a matter of preference but If so from the first picture where you have
tsumo , I would probably throw to go for tanyao. because is furiten, and I think of the
as two seperate component of and .

is generally quite easy to pon so I think it's probably not slowing the hand down even though your going down a shanten , and it's safer in the sense that you don't need to riichi ( although you might still deal in due to lack of safe tile following an opponents riichi but winning before that is the game here)

[or2az]

from the first picture, I would probably throw to go for tanyao

instead of kanning the , you should have kept it and thrown the . by kanning the , you are giving the opponents a higher points potential to overtake you

You are saying I should have made the decision to go for tanyao immediately (1st picture), toss the safe . and keep the .
Then, (2nd picture), don't kan the , hold it, and discard the other .
Understood. I probably should have considered this as well.

(The only problem here is that when I tossed the , it got ponned, which changed the draw order of the tiles, which now wouldn't happen, and the hand would have developed differently, but let's forget about that for now.)

The hand would now look like this.

and I would not be

missing out on that wait

and when I later got one of those, I could then discard that and have a shanpon wait of for tanyao.

I like it, but it's scary. The player who would have ponned my initially might still want it, for the win!

(and then again, there could still be other possible scenarios due to that non-altering of the drawing order)

Thanks for your input. Always appreciated.

oh, by the way, shānyū rule without sudden death means you have to play the entire west round.
I thought of saying this, but wasn't sure of the usage (if it meant in use or not in use) サドンデス [sadon desu]

[saitym]

You might not have quite got it completely (maybe you have!), for the first picture there are (more than) two different paths you should take and that's why I said it's preferential and not a definite answer. Also when I talk about discard, I never take into account what actually happened (before or after) but what is best for that certain situation so drawing and kanning it in the second picture is irrelevant to my advice for the first part (going to tanyao) so think of the two parts of my answer as separate answers to the question.

I will explain the first picture in more detail.
From tsumo , you technically have two choices if you want to increase your chances of winning the hand. The first choice is discarding , this is because you can go to tanyao, and as I have said is quite easy to pon. lets say you pon the , you get

, from here you can pon , , and chi and ( ) , or get the tiles yourself to get tenpai. ( you might get other tiles which may make the hand or wait better as well) so the speed is there. You do however lose some defense in the process which is a down side but you have a good chance of getting tenpai quite quickly. also there is some flexibility in the wait itself in this route in the sense that if you don't want to throw the (as you have mentioned), you can still get tenpai with a good probability by still holding onto the (although you have to remember that you don't know if the kamicha wants the or not in that current situation)

The second choice is not discarding because of the furiten but actually discarding the to get

. This is due to the lack of as there is already two out (if there were no on board, I would probaly advise discarding ) and it is almost certain that you are going to use the as the pair or jyantou therefore leaving 3 pairs with either or discard is not optimal (3 pair theory ( it means having two pairs will complement each other and increase the tile efficiency by 4 tiles but increasing the number of pairs from two to three only increases the tile efficiency by 2 tiles and therefore in this case it's better to leave a kanchan which gives your 4 tiles to tenpai then leaving a pair which gives you in this case no additional tiles because is dead!) you don't throw the using the same theory because of furiten. The reason you don't get rid of the wait even though it's furiten is because that is still 5 tiles you can draw to get tenpai so it's worth leaving just incase you draw it first

this route is not too great in the sense that you have the wait furiten and the which can lead to awkward waits such as
( and wait) or
(furiten wait ) and even if you avoid furiten
(kanchan wait which is far from ideal)

The greatest advantage to this route is being able to hold onto the two which is a definite safe tile in which you can use to defend against riichi.

I find the discard somewhat of an intermediate to the two choices I mentioned above and feel like it's a bit indecisive on the approach that you want to take with your hand.

[mrfeng]

I suppose the mistake has been pointed out by saitym.

My side to add on. Towards the Ryuukyoku at your last picture, instead of discarding 4m, I will discard 9m.

Keeping tenpai and lengthen the han-chan is too disadvantageous to you. Let it go all-last with a 12k lead instead of pushing with a live 4m.

[or2az]

Towards the Ryuukyoku at your last picture, instead of discarding 4m, I will discard 9m.
Keeping tenpai...disadvantageous....let it go with a 12k lead instead of pushing with a live 4m.

I suppose one should never use hindsight to try to justify a move that was probably not the correct one, but sometimes, it happens.
For instance, there are times I go for that Atozuke win because I have a "feeling" that I'm going to get that dragon or wind that I need for the yaku, and if and when it happens, it feels good. Most likely, it's not the correct move, but whatever, it's a video game.
In this case, after the draw, the rest of West 3 and West 4 did not go very well and, as stated above, I barely held on to win by 900 pts and it felt good.
If I didn't keep that tenpai and get 1000 pts (instead of losing 1500 pts), I might have lost that long 3 round match (and that wouldn't feel good).
But you are right. The was much safer. I chose to live dangerously (probably because of the 12k lead) and this time I didn't get burned.
It's a good thing I don't do it all the time.

[mrfeng]

Erm..even if 4m is dangerous, I will still deliberately choose no-ten.

The best case scenario of this West 3 is ending it with a draw. (of course we exclude winning as the best case scenario)

You give your opponent chances to catch up if you give this han-chan an extra round.

[or2az]

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Although it is a hanchan, this could easily be the final hand, with West having only 500 pts. I am behind East by 10K.
My thoughts were menzen tsumo (CSD) would get me there (30fu, 4han), but I should riichi later anyway, just in case I had to ron, or else there would be no yaku, and I would need pinfu or iipeiko.
I decided to discard the . Do you see something better?
Should I have considered discarding the and aiming for (faster, maybe) tanyao dora 3 ?

[Mauro]

Since you're 10k behind East you need at least 6 han (if I'm not missing something like previous riichi bets; not sure what the kanji means, beside the round): tsumo riichi would give you five, barring ippatsu or ura dora. If I was planning to go for first place, I'd think about tanyao/pinfu/iipeiko, that would give me enough points for the first place. So maybe discarding and , willing to risk a tanki wait on , or a double wait on bams if I draw a pair (like, ) before? It's a way to aim for 6 han, if you don't want to rely on the chance of ippatsu and ura dora; but I'm not sure it make sense so late in the game.

By the way, what's CSD stands for? And what's the white tile with the red dot? (In West pond.)

[or2az]

1) CSD stands for Concealed Self-Draw or menzen tsumo

what's the white tile with the red dot?

2) Haku Pocchi, optional rule. Basically, it's a wildcard which can be used as any tile but only IMMEDIATELY after riichi to be valid.
Otherwise, it's just a regular white dragon. Do a forum search. Here's my first win with one.
http://reachmahjong.com/en/forum/viewto ... =15#p56478
(I only use 1 but I believe you can use up to 4.)
It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a blue moon.........
http://reachmahjong.com/en/forum/viewto ... =15#p58060

Note: Bart has a game which has an option to make the haku pocchi a valid wildcard on any tsumo after riichi, my game requires tsumo ippatsu.
http://reachmahjong.com/en/forum/viewto ... =15#p56785

Since you're 10k behind East you need at least 6 han

3) 30fu-4han menzen tsumo dora 3 will be enough. Remember, you get 7900 points but the dealer loses 3900. That's a gain of almost 12,000.
( exactly 12000 if the mangan kiriage rule is in effect)


(Note: The orange squares in the score boxes are yakitori markers, if you're curious. )

[Mauro]

Remember, you get 7900 points but the dealer loses 3900. That's a gain of almost 12,000

You're right, and this proves I shouldn't think about mahjong late in the evening

[Mauro]

Ok, I thought again about it, and I think I'd discard : if I plan to use (also hoping in iipeiko) I plan to have two dot runs; another run is in bams, and the last in craks, to use . This leaves me waiting for a pair, and would give me a 6 outs wait (and craks could give me a pair, too). So I'd have tanyao, maybe pinfu and iipeiko, 3 dora, and if I choose so I'd play damaten.

If I draw a pair, I can drop and wait on for tenpai. Again, tanyao and pinfu.

[or2az]

Had to pause on this for a short while.
1st hand, East round, Tonpuusen

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From what I can see, there are 4 possible discards:

All seemed reasonable, for different reasons (pinfu, iipeiko, extra dora, tanyao, etc).

I called riichi and decided on the . Seemed like the best wait. (369 bam vs 25 crack)
(Notice the dokasen wareme marker would be moving around the table. Yakitori also in effect.)

As it turned out, the was discarded shortly and I called it for the win. Ricchi dora 2, 5200 pts.
(could have been more with tsumo or the 3 bam but I didn't want to risk waiting for it)

Any comments or opinions?

[Iapetus]

369s has 7 tiles left. 25m has 6 tiles left. Discarding 3/9s, you have pinfu + tanyao/iipeiko + dora3 for 5 han, while discarding 5m you have dora2 with possible pinfu and iipeiko.

The extra value of the 25m wait is worth the one less tile. Discarding 9s is slightly better, since you can draw 3s or 6s to upgrade to tanyao and iipeiko, while after discarding 9s only 6s can do that.

With 5 han and East 1, I see no need to riichi.