Gemma's Journal #7 - Missed Win Rule continued |

So I’ve been wondering what I should write about this week. Jenn suggested that I write about scoring, and I started trying to but then I realised I was still completely lost! It’s the thing I’m currently working on but there are still quite a few holes in my understanding of it all. To be honest there doesn’t seem to be much logic behind it at all! Well I shall persevere and you can expect an entry explaining the basics of scoring from me soon.

Hence I thought I would use this entry instead to clear up a few little loose ends in what I looked at already and then give you some puzzles to look at.

Apart from scoring this week I’ve also been trying to introduce Mahjong to some of my classmates. (blind leading the blind perhaps!) I think/hope that they had a good time and certainly a few of them seem quite enthusiastic to play more which must be a good sign.<

Look at their confusion! I’m clearly a brilliant teacher!

Anyway, I’m hoping some of them will start reading and using this site so we can expand our community more!

Second thing I want to look at is a combination question of reach and quad. This was something I didn’t consider when I was first writing my entries about these two but whilst I was playing ron2 the issue came up. I might not have mentioned explicitly that once you had reached it was possible to still declare a Concealed Quad because in most instances it wouldn’t change your wait. But take a look at this hand:

The wait for this is 5 6 8 of Bams. However if you declare a Concealed Quad with the 7 of Bams, then your wait would become a 6 of bams only. Because reach rules mean you can’t change your wait you wouldn’t be able to do this. Just something to watch for!

I also received an email from David who asked this question:
“One last question on the sacred discard/Missed Win, if you have a ready hand and you haven’t Reach-ed, the only concern is for your own discards, you can pass up other discards from other players and it won’t effect your hand (say you’re waiting for a hand worth more points), However if you declare Reach you HAVE to take the first discard that will complete your hand, correct? The “sacred discard” doesn’t expand into the other players’ ENTIRE discards, only the tiles they discard AFTER you’ve declared Reach?”

This is something I want to pass onto Jenn. (sorry! Help us!)

>Jenn’s Note: David has it right here! I’m going to use the term ‘Missed Win‘ for Sacred Discard and ‘Lost Hand‘ for hands that have fallen into the category. First of all, if ANY of your winning tiles are in your own discard pile, your hand is considered to be Lost Hand no matter what and your only winning option is by drawing the winning tile yourself. The following explanation will be regarding the times when your hand is not yet Lost.
When you have a Ready Hand and you have not Reached, you only have to worry about your own discards and any discards in the same turn that include your winning tile. If I discard a tile, then Gemma discards my winning tile and I let it go (don’t win on it), then the Missed Win rule applies to me until after I have had another turn. Me having another turn means me discarding a tile (the taken tile can be drawn, Chowed, Bumped or Quaded). If my turn gets skipped because of someone else Bumping or Chowing, I still cannot win on the river until after I have had a turn.

After Reaching, your own entire discard and all other players’ discards after the Reach was declared determine your Missed Win. If any of your winning tiles are in those places, you have Missed your Win. You must win on the first winning tile that has come out on the river. If you don’t, you have a Lost Hand until the end of the game and can only win on a Self-Drawn tile.
It is a confusing rule. If anyone can think of a simpler way to explain it, please comment! Back to Gem!

I haven’t been able to find any other odd situations or peculiarities yet but email me if you can think of anything for me to add!

Right, this entry is going to be a little puzzle heavy. But I expect you to all be ready to learn/revise the scoring rules for next time! Especially so you can all help me!

I had some great emails as well with puzzles! (My job gets easier by the day!)

So this week’s puzzles were created for me by John. Thank you!

Puzzle One:

What’s the wait?

Puzzle Two:

And finally two questions for the more experienced players on the boards:

Question 3: This one is from Jenn.

Question 4: This was emailed to me from another beginner like myself and I think we’d all like to hear words of wisdom on this one!

“This whole “Missed Win” has always been one of the most confusing parts of the game for me. Besides a self-pick do you just have to give up in a situation like this? Or do you then go about changing your hand until all of your possibilities to go out are tiles you haven’t discarded?”

So, if we realise we’re foul of the ‘Missed Win‘ rule do we just pray that we’ll pull it ourselves, or do we try to change our hands?

Well, I’m sorry that that has been a bit of a random entry with lots of added bits of other people’s work and questions! Thank you very much everyone who emailed me. Some of the questions were really good which is why I decided to share them with everyone!

Tomorrow I’m off to Japan to spend the week with Jenn so I’ll make up for this week with an extra special Japan entry! Wish me luck everyone!

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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