Gemma's Journal #5

Hey again everyone!

Thank you everyone for commenting on my last entry! That was fantastic! It’s great to have everyone discussing and sharing their views, especially for a beginner like myself – getting advice from you all is going to be great way for me to learn. I’m going to do something similar again for this one, so if you’re already more than familiar with the rules of Mahjong skip to the bottom!

If we’ve all grasped the concept of Bump/Pon then this next one isn’t going to prove a problem at all.

What if you have four of a kind in your hand? Apart from being quite excited, what should you do? This is where we can shout Quad! It’s almost exactly the same as Bump, so when someone discards a tile that you could use to your advantage and create a set of four then you can shout Quad and upon showing your group of three take the final tile to create a Quad. However, you would be one tile short to make a full hand if it was left at that. Therefore, to rectify this, you have to take one tile from the far end of the dead wall (or king’s tiles) before you choose a discard. Then your Quad gets put to your right side with the tile turned appropriately just as before.

If you are not taking from someone else’s discard and instead have pulled the tile yourself then you can still Quad. This is called Concealed Quad; on your go you just say Quad, show the tiles, then pull another tile from the dead wall (or king’s tiles) and discard. You then have to place your tiles, as if you had barked them, on your right but turning the outside tiles over to indicate that you drew it yourself.

One last Quad option is; what if you Bumped a set from another player and then pulled the final fourth tile? You can add this and create a Quad! We’re calling this Add-a-Quad and then you take an extra tile and discard as above.

Apart from being quite satisfying to collect all of one tile the other exciting aspect to Quadding (It sounds a bit like some game in Harry Potter!) in all of it’s varied forms, is that you can then turn over an extra lucky tile indicator – thus increasing your chances of getting a lucky tile in your hand!

There is one last rule for Quads is that if 4 Quads are declared in a single hand by any of the players (i.e. four lucky tile indicators have been turned over) then the hand is replayed.

Jenn’s note: If only one player has Quads and they have 4 Quads then the hand is not replayed and it is instead a limit hand (4 Quads). If more than one player has Quads and the count gets to 4 Quads, then the hand is usually started over.

I managed to get a concealed Quad the other day with the red dragons and it was the lucky tile. I can’t tell you how pleased I was! Fortune smiled on me that day!

Ok, following on from last week’s popularity I have another puzzle you can advise me on. Walter kindly emailed me one that he created and I’d like to see what everyone has to say about it. I love the way he phrased it as well! It’s quite a lot like a school maths (and Americans please note – math-S not math… hehe!) textbook.

Bob got extremely lucky. He managed to make Reach with a Full Flush.

But, now he realizes it’s not easy to be so lucky. There are too many choices. Too many similar tiles. So he asks his wife, Margaret, who is a far better player than he is : “I’m waiting for a 2 or a 5 Bamboo. But it feels like there may be other ways to finish this hand. Am I missing something?”

Thank you Walter!!!

If anyone else has some more puzzles that they think might be fun and interesting, please email them to me! Or maybe you had a really exciting hand last week and want to share it with us? I know I always get confused whilst playing as to what I might be waiting on, so I jot down my hand and then look at it at my leisure later. Anything like that then email me!

Or just send me fanmail! I like to feel loved! heehee

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