Important complex shapes (Part-2)

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. We also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.
From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/508.htm

In the last article we introduced a few good shapes for reach mahjong that are easy to overlook, today we will introduce other commonly seen shapes.

6. Double or triple gutshot
Double/Triple gutshot are shapes like 468 or 2468 which include more than one gut-shot wait, back-to-back.
Many beginners may think a gut-shot is a bad wait, and they don’t really like this shape. But we should keep in mind: a 246 double gut-shot waits on the same number of tiles as an open ended wait, the difference is that the former requires three tiles, while the latter only requires two, making the former fall a little short.
Even in view of this demerit it’s a good shape and early in game when we don’t have enough candidates for sets a double gut-shot can be very useful.

7. 3556 shape
The 35+56 incomplete set looks similar to the 35+67 shape that we mentioned last time, but in fact they are far different. The reason is that the useful tiles for 35,56 are redundant (as the 4 is required by both shapes). Under this situation, the value of the 35 shape is low, so if you already have enough sets, this 35 could be of your first discards. The remaining 56, or 556 are sufficient enough.

8. 5566 shape
Everyone may say 5566 are open ended waits, and that they also have the chance for a double-run. But in my consideration, it’s a very poor shape. 5566 is completely redundant, the repeated wait on 47 may look good, but when you have better shapes in your hand you may take care of this one first.

Concerning incomplete sets, this is as far as we go. If you have questions, they are all welcome. In the next article we’ll go over a pile of examples.

Comments from Garthe:
The assessment there of 5566 as a “poor” shape is certainly open to debate. Poorer than what? I would still value it over any shape including gut-shots, e.g., the two mentioned first 2468 or 3556. It’s going to take a pretty special gutshot to increase its value over the 5566, for example, if it included dora or were part of a 3 Colored Runs or Full Straight group. There simply are still more tiles making this group complete than others.

Devaluing it simply because of its redundancy ignores a lot of the other potential value it has to offer. One reward for that redundancy obviously is the possibility of a Double Run. Also, I like pairs because they sometimes turn into triples and I love going for 3 and 4 Concealed Triples.

Finally, it’s not chess but that doesn’t mean we can’t think more than one draw into the future. It’s a common mistake with many players, me included. How about an example:



Ok, so the uses 12 tiles now whereas only uses 8. I say throw the (or ), OneDrawThinker throws (or ). But what happens when the next tile to come is , about 40% of the time? He’s still got 2 crappy gutshots and has no possibility of double run. Another 40% I’m still just as happy as ODT when the comes and only disappointed 20% when the comes. And I still might get a Double Run. And of course this reasoning completely ignores ‘s possibility of tripling up. That gives me another 4 useful tiles, in the end making it just as useful as the other combination in the first place.

My rule of thumb, “Open-ended, good. Gutshots, bad.”

And our translator, xKime’s thooughts:
About the 5566, I would just like to add that while the blog comment is entirely true for a concealed hand, it is a extremely good shape for a hand you’re going to play open. You can call 4 or 7 and still have an open ended wait, or also call the 5 or 6 to complete a set and still be left with a pair. More so, if the person to the left discarded a 4 or 7 and that got you to ready, even so there is still a good chance that he will throw that 4-7 again for you if he drew it.

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