(CR) Saki

[tjalorak]

Originally Posted by Taken

hmm why do they take off their skirts when they ermm take a nap?? lolz

The skirt will crease otherwise.

Edit: We know why Hisa couldn't make it to Kazekoshi but I wonder why Mihoko expected her to be there? I want more of this back story, darnit!

[Proto]

Well, because they are TH3 Mahjong high school of the area? As in, up until a year ago for them the national preliminaries were just like some trifling paperwork they had to do.

In any case, have I remarked how cool the people at Tsuruga are? Because they are. Even if they are in 2nd place by pure and unadulterated newbie luck

[4Tran]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

But Kaori sure is cute <3 Blasting off everyone with a yakuman first round lol. I wished for a meganekko round last episode and I really got it \o/

What's amusing about it is that she thought that she just had a 2-fan toitoi hand (four triplets) instead of having a suu ankou yakuman (four triplets concealed). It's easy to imagine a beginner doing this since a toitoi is one of the easier hands to aim for, and it's quite possible to have never managed to get a suu ankou. It's little details like this that make the Mahjong action all the more interesting.

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

edit: We also get more-or-less the reason for Hajimes chains (Hajime <3) so this episode was pretty cool.

What it also shows is how seriously cheating is considered, and how difficult it is to regain trust again. This is why Saki is very much a sports anime where something like Akagi isn't.

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

Also Tsuruga should be aiming for Kazekoshi, judging from the last scene this is probably the worst thing she could do. You know youre going down when youre facing twintails as your opponent (lol) Episode 11 will be epic, I can feel it.

Actually, given how much Koromo is considered a Mahjong monster, everyone should have been aiming at Ryuumonbuchi so that they get knocked out and Koromo never gets a chance to play.

Prediction time: Hisa will wipe the floor with the other players with Hajime maybe being able to make a bit of a comeback. Then Nodoka will bring out her best game and beat up on Touka. When it finally gets to Koromo's turn, Ryuumonbuchi should be trailing the rest of the teams, so as to give more of a chance for her to show off her scary abilities. Saki should either start with a lead over everyone else or she will be somewhere in the middle of the pack. The dark horses in all of this will be Tsuruga since I'm not quite sure what's up with them.

Originally Posted by Secca

Yes, I couldn't agree more. ^_^ Just reading this thread, I got to admit I didn't get it at all. Until I actually tried the game, then it makes perfect sense. Having played the game also make me view this series in different light. Like in the beginning she was doing 'plus minus zero' I got the hint that was something cool she did. But after I played the game, I realized that is something really incredible to be able to stay plus minus zero. Even a veteran will have problem to pull that off. What a strange girl she is. >_<

Purposefully getting to +/- 0 is basically impossible. A single unexpected riichi declaraction would spoil even the best-laid plans, and there's no way to control what your opponents do (or when they win hands). So far, this is the closest thing to a supernatural talent in Saki.

Originally Posted by Proto

In any case, have I remarked how cool the people at Tsuruga are? Because they are. Even if they are in 2nd place by pure and unadulterated newbie luck

Kaori is an unexpectedly fun character. She's also just about the worst kind of opponent for Mako to go up against because Mako is dependent on pattern recognition, and erratic play from inexperienced players can wreak havoc on patterns (shades of Hikaru no Go!)


I'm all but immune to the moe-factor, but I still can't get over how much fun I'm having watching Saki - it comes second here to all of the shows I'm watching that started in April. I can't wait to see what Hisa's going to be up to: she should be up to some evil/cool play that should be a blast to watch.

[tjalorak]

Originally Posted by 4Tran

Actually, given how much Koromo is considered a Mahjong monster, everyone should have been aiming at Ryuumonbuchi so that they get knocked out and Koromo never gets a chance to play.

Doesn't the game end when a team gets knocked out? If so, then only the team that's currently winning will have the incentive to knock out Ryuumonbuchi... In fact, the other teams may even want to stop the winning team from trying to end the game.

The dark horses in all of this will be Tsuruga since I'm not quite sure what's up with them.

Haha. By design, right?! They do have a ghost girl who's face is impossible to see.

Purposefully getting to +/- 0 is basically impossible. A single unexpected riichi declaraction would spoil even the best-laid plans, and there's no way to control what your opponents do (or when they win hands). So far, this is the closest thing to a supernatural talent in Saki.

So basically what Nodoka did to Saki in the first game? That was pretty interesting, how Saki changed her hand to meet the new conditions.

Kaori is an unexpectedly fun character. She's also just about the worst kind of opponent for Mako to go up against because Mako is dependent on pattern recognition, and erratic play from inexperienced players can wreak havoc on patterns (shades of Hikaru no Go!)

Not just Mako. The Ryuumonbuchi girl too had tons of trouble with her.

Edit: I realize that Hisa gave Mihoko tons of trouble... but that was three years ago. Were they that good in middle school? (Apparently so given how Nodoka seems to play so well in the transition between middle school to high school.) Did they not really improve in high school? I guess mahjong is a bit different from a physical sport. I mean if you don't play soccer for three years, it doesn't matter how good you used to be. It's going to take awhile to blow off that rust and play well.

And there's something about the whole trope of the real competition is different from practice. Not that I don't expect Hisa to be ridiculously good in the match, but I just wonder about the assumptions made.

[ThoHell]

Man, Hisa rocking those two side pig tail thing is major cute! Big plus to her character for me, but still the Nodoka X Saki combo is FTW!

[DmonHiro]

His is going to KICK ASS. I mean, look at the preview and tell me that pic of her with her hand glowing blue is not badass.

[felix]

Originally Posted by 4Tran

Purposefully getting to +/- 0 is basically impossible. A single unexpected riichi declaraction would spoil even the best-laid plans, and there's no way to control what your opponents do (or when they win hands). So far, this is the closest thing to a supernatural talent in Saki.

Not if she can predict the randomness in the tiles. To put it another way she doesn't know the opponents tiles, she knows every tile, at least intuitively.

No other way I can think of it being remotely possible with out knowing everyones possibility after each and every round. If you know what the tiles can do, you the gain great independence of what the opponent's hand is and what they are thinking, since you can just influence the luck factor with a small domino effect; at least that is what she would appear to be doing in the club. The only way to beat this is for everyone to purposely loose each round, but then she'd still end up +/- 0 easily.

...I think, ok not sure right now, lol

[tjalorak]

Originally Posted by DmonHiro

His is going to KICK ASS. I mean, look at the preview and tell me that pic of her with her hand glowing blue is not badass.

This hand of mine... is burning blue?! Its loud roar tells me to grasp victory!

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Cats

Not if she can predict the randomness in the tiles. To put it another way she doesn't know the opponents tiles, she knows every tile, at least intuitively.

No other way I can think of it being remotely possible with out knowing everyones possibility after each and every round. If you know what the tiles can do, you the gain great independence of what the opponent's hand is and what they are thinking, since you can just influence the luck factor with a small domino effect; at least that is what she would appear to be doing in the club. The only way to beat this is for everyone to purposely loose each round, but then she'd still end up +/- 0 easily.

...I think, ok not sure right now, lol

Well, the easy part is to aim for a hand of a certain score. Past that it becomes all luck.

You can say "I need a hand that is worth X" and know what is required to get that hand from your current hand. Getting there is the hard to impossible part. It really depends on what the field is like and what hand is needed. A slightly better than beginner player can get a decent read on what is out on the field and what is left by simple counting and logic. "Oh, that person hasn't been throwing out any circles, they must be going for mostly circles or all circles." But if you need circles, clearly it's going to be hard.

Getting +/-0 every now and then isn't hard at all if you just aim for a 5200 point hand and play defensively otherwise (adjust your score with exhaustive draws and pray nobody gets a tsumo). Pretty much, Saki has the equivalent of a cheat level super power. (Surprisingly, there aren't that many cheat level powers in the series.)

[felix]

Saki prevented tsumo hands? I though she just balanced it out, as in loose 1000 here gain 1000 there, stuff like that. I need to rewatch the club ones (didn't really understand them back then).

[4Tran]

Originally Posted by tjalorak

Doesn't the game end when a team gets knocked out? If so, then only the team that's currently winning will have the incentive to knock out Ryuumonbuchi... In fact, the other teams may even want to stop the winning team from trying to end the game.

It does, but since it would take several go-throughs to knock a team down 100,000 points, what you'd be doing is setting it up so that Ryuumonbuchi is likelier to fall. Besides, with the way Koromo is treated as an unstoppable force, it's a lot easer to have a shot of being one of the three remaining teams than to have basically an "automatic" loss against her.

Originally Posted by tjalorak

Haha. By design, right?! They do have a ghost girl who's face is impossible to see.

Bingo. Although I think that there's something up with Yumi, the club president as well.

Originally Posted by tjalorak

So basically what Nodoka did to Saki in the first game? That was pretty interesting, how Saki changed her hand to meet the new conditions.

Pretty much. The reason they were so impressed by what Saki did was due to the sheer improbability of it all.

Originally Posted by tjalorak

Not just Mako. The Ryuumonbuchi girl too had tons of trouble with her.

True. I was concentrating on Mako because we know exactly why she was having a hard time. The thing is, Mako played fairly well otherwise, seeing as she only lost points on tsumos. The reason she was so far down was because she could win any hands either.

Originally Posted by tjalorak

Did they not really improve in high school? I guess mahjong is a bit different from a physical sport. I mean if you don't play soccer for three years, it doesn't matter how good you used to be. It's going to take awhile to blow off that rust and play well.

And there's something about the whole trope of the real competition is different from practice. Not that I don't expect Hisa to be ridiculously good in the match, but I just wonder about the assumptions made.

Hisa could have been playing net Mahjong, and she is on friendly terms with a Mahjong pro, so there would have been plenty of opportunity for her to practice. In any case, I think that Mihoko was less concerned with Hisa's skill-level per se, than that Hisa has some sort of skillset that's extremely advantageous. This is likely the reason why Hisa has taken pains to hide her true talent up until now.

Originally Posted by Cats

Not if she can predict the randomness in the tiles. To put it another way she doesn't know the opponents tiles, she knows every tile, at least intuitively.

No other way I can think of it being remotely possible with out knowing everyones possibility after each and every round. If you know what the tiles can do, you the gain great independence of what the opponent's hand is and what they are thinking, since you can just influence the luck factor with a small domino effect; at least that is what she would appear to be doing in the club. The only way to beat this is for everyone to purposely loose each round, but then she'd still end up +/- 0 easily.

...I think, ok not sure right now, lol

Nope that doesn't work. Besides, if Saki had that kind of ability, Yasuko wouldn't have been able to crush her at the cafe.

Originally Posted by bayoab

Getting +/-0 every now and then isn't hard at all if you just aim for a 5200 point hand and play defensively otherwise (adjust your score with exhaustive draws and pray nobody gets a tsumo). Pretty much, Saki has the equivalent of a cheat level super power.

From the description, it can sound easy, but when it comes to actual play, that's just about impossible. Even the best of players can't control when their opponents declare riichi, and that will throw off any calculation.

Originally Posted by bayoab

(Surprisingly, there aren't that many cheat level powers in the series.)

This is one of the reasons why I'm so fond of the show so far. While some of the scenes are very improbable (mostly just Saki's special move), they haven't been so to the point of impossibility, and it gives the show a more down-to=earth appeal than it would otherwise have.

Originally Posted by Cats

Saki prevented tsumo hands? I though she just balanced it out, as in loose 1000 here gain 1000 there, stuff like that. I need to rewatch the club ones (didn't really understand them back then).

Saki would even lose hands now and again. That's why only Hisa was able to spot her true skill.

[felix]

Originally Posted by 4Tran

Nope that doesn't work. Besides, if Saki had that kind of ability, Yasuko wouldn't have been able to crush her at the cafe.

That didn't look to me like Saki doing more then being scared.

[Jiyuu]

there is another explanation for saki's "powers"

if you assume she is able to read people, and have a very good grasp of the tiles in the game what she does is possible.

basically we have been shown that most of saki's power come into play when she is playing face-to-face, thus basically saying that she relies allot more on how people act then on "reading the tiles" by itself.

if you assume her ability of reading people is extremely good(which is still in the realms of reality) and her understanding of the tiles is just as good.
and you add to that some luck you get what she does.

she may not be able to see her opponents hand but she can judge what they are by reading for example their reaction to a certain tile being thrown.
this is actually possible on the theoretical level, it would just require huge amounts of processing and we do it every second of our awakeness, then again so does recognizing a shape from an image, so it's not completely impossible.


if you assume that then even her special move is made possible because if she can pretty much "sense" what the tiles -in- the game are and the wall is near its end then she can, with a pretty good probability, know what she's gonna get from there.

that would also explain why saki lost to someone like fujita pro who is able to hide her reactions better then the rest.

[Bonta Kun]

hmm think I'll just stick with simply calling it "The Force"

[tjalorak]

Originally Posted by 4Tran

Hisa could have been playing net Mahjong, and she is on friendly terms with a Mahjong pro, so there would have been plenty of opportunity for her to practice. In any case, I think that Mihoko was less concerned with Hisa's skill-level per se, than that Hisa has some sort of skillset that's extremely advantageous. This is likely the reason why Hisa has taken pains to hide her true talent up until now.

Hrmmm. Well, the anime team has taken pains to hide it from the audience, but given that Nodoka has said, paraphrased, that nothing left in the hands of Hisa goes badly, we can assume the club itself knows how well Hisa can play. I do wonder if they know her back story though -- that she was a very strong contender in middle school mah-jong.

I think Mihoko is also concerned because Bundou-san doesn't seem great. She's not on the level of Mihoko - that's for sure. Kiyosumi's lineup tends to get stronger whereas it seems both Ryuumonbuchi and Kazekoshi sent out relatively strong first round players to get a good lead off with a middle sag and finish out strong.

Oh. This reminds me. There was a very intriguing line from Bundou on how both the chuuken and taisho (i.e. Hisa and Saki) had very strange hands and that she hoped the coincidence didn't come up when she played Hisa. I want to know what that means. Why does she think it's weird? I think / hope we'll get some sort of flashback from Bundou on this -- actually, given that she copied it out and already noted the strangeness of Hisa's style, she might be more wary than usual of her.

[tjalorak]

Originally Posted by Jiyuu

if you assume that then even her special move is made possible because if she can pretty much "sense" what the tiles -in- the game are and the wall is near its end then she can, with a pretty good probability, know what she's gonna get from there.

that would also explain why saki lost to someone like fujita pro who is able to hide her reactions better then the rest.

But she's sensing almost all of the dead wall. In the episode against Fujita pro, she says very clearly that some tile that Fujita took from the dead wall was supposed to be HER tile and she names what the tile was. That's pretty impressive, esp. since the dead wall didn't seem to be near the end.

[Quarkboy]

Hisa's "special power" has been foreshadowed multiple times in the show, including the preview for the next episose... Mako complained about how Hisa always "Chooses the waits with the worst odds". Not sure how that is a special power instead of just an unconventional playing style, but maybe it's exactly that unconventional playing style that is what throws off her opponents.

[tjalorak]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Hisa's "special power" has been foreshadowed multiple times in the show, including the preview for the next episose... Mako complained about how Hisa always "Chooses the waits with the worst odds". Not sure how that is a special power instead of just an unconventional playing style, but maybe it's exactly that unconventional playing style that is what throws off her opponents.

If I'm guessing her power right, with that kind of "special power," she really should go to Vegas and gamble away.

[SagaraSouske]

She can't use her power in video majong.

[Secca]

Saki is really strong when she can face to face with another player. But since she was doing +- 0 to avoid conflict in her family in the first place, that's probably her weakness, she can't play againts players that terrorize or preasure other players like her sister, that's why she lost in the cafe. It's almost like she was being dead stared by a snake.