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Old 2010-12-23, 22:16   Link #1201
merchant
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Join Date: Jun 2010
i went as high as 1330 pts and 1975 rating.
figured i test my luck even further but that failed, hahaha...got hit 2 4th places in the first 2 games. i knew my winning streak was due to end. had 6 1st's and 2 2nds in the last 8 games before the losing streak began.

dropped to 1150 pts now. back to grinding as usual ;_;.
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Old 2010-12-25, 16:57   Link #1202
merchant
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Halfway to 6 dan now.

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Old 2010-12-27, 20:35   Link #1203
Malintex_Terek
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Once I get my computer into proper shape I'm going to have to take to the grind-stone.

How many games per day do you go through and how long do they take?
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HOLY CRACKERS! SAIGAR 2008 IS HERE!
Nominations are open 19 November ~ 23 December 2007 NOW!!
It's not a tournament without "men"!
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Old 2010-12-27, 21:22   Link #1204
merchant
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i've been grinding at 5 dan for about a month now, played 121 games total, overall total is at 435.

averaging about 4 games per day.

going from new account to 4 dan takes about minimum 200-300 games assuming you are skilled.
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Old 2010-12-29, 20:03   Link #1205
flmd
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Hey guys. I haven't read this whole thread, but I just wanted to pop in and say hello and link to an excellent resource for beginners and intermediate players about riichi.

check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Mah-Jong-Handb...3669883&sr=1-7

It's called Mahjong Handbook: How to Play, Score, and Win.

While it gives out basic mahjong information and touches on the various rule sets, it is pretty much geared towards to the Japanese rules. There are chapters on making ready, offensive and defensive strategy, luck vs skill, and so much more. This is probably the best book on Mahjong out there...I found it in the games section of my local BnN after I finished watching Saki, Akagi, and Tetsuya. I rushed to find the first book on MJ that I could find, and I was lucky enough to grab perhaps the best one on the subject. I've actually reread it twice more now and I have no doubt I'll be referencing it and reading selective chapters again in the future. It's that good.


I read this book and ended up winning the Mahjong Time November RCR Global Mahjong Tournament as a complete beginner; I didn't even have a brown belt on my green belt at that time (my alias is ditn. look me up on MT if any of you happen to play there). I was going up against black belts (20,000 rating or higher on MT), multiple time tournament winners, bigshots, and basically some of the best players in the world and somehow I managed to win. While a large part of it was luck, this book really helped me up my game, especially in "pressure situations", making ready, and in my defensive play.

I really like MT, but since everyone is on tenhou, I decided to investigate it a little bit. The fact that it is in entirely Japanese is a big hurdle, as well as the completely different set up. I read that translation website posted on the first few pages and logged on and played a few hands. I ended up calling a few things accidentally, missed a ron, and I made a few other stupid screw-ups simply because it's entirely new to me and I didn't know which buttons did what. I look forward to learning tenhou.net better and playing some of you guys eventually.

I'm going to be competing in the January Mahjong Time RCR GMT on New Year's Day if anyone here is going to be playing. I doubt I'll replicate my miraculous first place finish as a complete newbie though.

I have some topics/situations that I want to ask you guys about, but that can wait for another day.
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Old 2010-12-29, 22:52   Link #1206
Malintex_Terek
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flmd View Post
I read this book and ended up winning the Mahjong Time November RCR Global Mahjong Tournament as a complete beginner; I didn't even have a brown belt on my green belt at that time (my alias is ditn. look me up on MT if any of you happen to play there). I was going up against black belts (20,000 rating or higher on MT), multiple time tournament winners, bigshots, and basically some of the best players in the world and somehow I managed to win. While a large part of it was luck, this book really helped me up my game, especially in "pressure situations", making ready, and in my defensive play.
Personal opinion and not to diminish a tournament champion, but I don't have an enormously high opinion of high-ranked MT players like JulJul or plygames. MT's ranking system ties hand size and overall rank together, and thus favours power ranked matches, short matches and repeated wins with large hands, since it's impossible to bust out. Thus, for those players, it's more of a matter of picking their battles and to avoid playing with new players at all, since they have so much to lose in terms of rating. Forcing them into a tournament like that gives more advantage to the inexperienced player if luck is against them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by flmd View Post
I really like MT, but since everyone is on tenhou, I decided to investigate it a little bit. The fact that it is in entirely Japanese is a big hurdle, as well as the completely different set up. I read that translation website posted on the first few pages and logged on and played a few hands. I ended up calling a few things accidentally, missed a ron, and I made a few other stupid screw-ups simply because it's entirely new to me and I didn't know which buttons did what. I look forward to learning tenhou.net better and playing some of you guys eventually.
Once you learn a few of the characters it gets fairly easy to navigate, welcome aboard!
__________________
HOLY CRACKERS! SAIGAR 2008 IS HERE!
Nominations are open 19 November ~ 23 December 2007 NOW!!
It's not a tournament without "men"!
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Old 2010-12-29, 23:22   Link #1207
flmd
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Malintex_Terek View Post
Personal opinion and not to diminish a tournament champion, but I don't have an enormously high opinion of high-ranked MT players like JulJul or plygames. MT's ranking system ties hand size and overall rank together, and thus favours power ranked matches, short matches and repeated wins with large hands, since it's impossible to bust out. Thus, for those players, it's more of a matter of picking their battles and to avoid playing with new players at all, since they have so much to lose in terms of rating. Forcing them into a tournament like that gives more advantage to the inexperienced player if luck is against them.
I still really don't know enough about MJ to comment on this. I only started playing in September and Mahjong Time is the only website I've played on (well, at least before today). You are right about the big hands though: dealing into a mangan or haneman can cost you 300-500 points or more (heaven forbid you deal into a baiman or greater...say goodbye to your rating), although it is the same if someone deals into your own big hand, so it does go both ways. I feel that this has really helped me in regards to defensive play; if you care about ranking and achieving the black belt (which I do), which I guess is somewhat analogous to Tenhou's dan system, you have to avoid dealing into big hands while simultaneously making your own big hands, or at least you have to have a decent win ratio.

Currently I'm winning about 1 in 3 games on MT and I'm doing pretty well. Your rating also goes down a bit if you come in 4th place in a game and likewise it raises a little if you come in first. This naturally lends itself to defensive play if you are in the lead (i.e. no riichis and instead going for open "surprise" hands), and aggressive/risky play if you are behind and need to catch up (although this is more applicable in tournaments: if you are way in the negatives in a normal game, you might play safe to avoid further damage to your rating, and you don't gain or lose rating in a MT tournament).

If you could further break down MT vs Tenhou.net I would be really grateful as I have seen a quite a few negative comments about MT scattered over the internet, and I'm wondering what the deal is, as they were mostly vague in nature. I have to say though, I do like MT's interface over Tenhou's, even controlling for the Japanese characters. And MT's game helper tab is extremely useful; I admit though it's a bit of a crutch to be able to quickly check at a glance how many of a certain tile is on the board and which tiles might be risky...it's much easier than trying to do a quick scan of everyone's pond of discards in 8 or less seconds. And due to that you are able to avoid dealing risky tiles in certain situations, and you can even increase the chance of surviving a hand when 2 or 3 people are in riichi and there are very few safe tiles left.
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Old 2010-12-30, 02:42   Link #1208
merchant
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I was going up against black belts (20,000 rating or higher on MT)


You do realize having a high rating doesn't mean anything. Besides, MT uses the "pay to win" model which encourages players to grind until their rating is high enough to consider themselves to be "elite" when they are really not. MT does this to ensure they milk money out of players!

If you really want to truly put your mahjong skills and luck to the test, Tenhou is the better option. Tenhou is more skill oriented than luck. If you can get to 6 dan, I'd recognize you as a decent player.
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Old 2010-12-30, 10:28   Link #1209
flmd
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Quote:
Originally Posted by merchant View Post
I was going up against black belts (20,000 rating or higher on MT)


You do realize having a high rating doesn't mean anything. Besides, MT uses the "pay to win" model which encourages players to grind until their rating is high enough to consider themselves to be "elite" when they are really not. MT does this to ensure they milk money out of players!

If you really want to truly put your mahjong skills and luck to the test, Tenhou is the better option. Tenhou is more skill oriented than luck. If you can get to 6 dan, I'd recognize you as a decent player.
By "milking", do you mean the $5 dollar a month subscription? The cash games are optional and the GMT's only cost $1 or $2 dollars worth of their Gold Coins. I really don't see how that's "milking" but please feel free to correct me if I'm misunderstanding you.

I'm still only a green belt with 2 brown stripes on MT, but for the most part I find that the 20,000+ players are very skilled. I've won a bunch of games against them of course when I have the "flow", "momentum", or a good streak of luck, but playing against them in a tournament setting can be a nightmare. But the ones I look out for the most are the unranked players who have multiple tournament wins and have been playing for a few years; some of those players are deceptively good, and this one non-paying unranked player kicked all of our butts pretty badly in a 2 round game the other day and won like 7 hands in a row and had a 60,000+ lead.

I plan on playing both websites as I do like Tenhou, but do you really only consider someone 6 dan or higher a "decent" player? I've been reading through this thread (up to page 12 now) and I don't even think I've seen a 6 dan poster yet, just a few 4/5 dans and 1/2 dan players. Are they not decent?
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Old 2010-12-30, 14:52   Link #1210
flmd
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Join Date: Dec 2010
Well, I'm starting to get the hand of things on Tenhou. Just played a 2 round game where I ended up winning +71 with everyone else in the red. After that a little box popped up with a number 9 inserted in two lines of Japanese characters. I have no idea what it means and it's now under the first drop down box under my alias next to a Kanji. Here's a picture, can someone tell me what it means?





Also, how do I access that statistics page I've seen you guys post pictures of, and what do all them mean? Also, what do the 1, 2, 3, and 4 mean under the first drop down box?
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Old 2010-12-30, 17:53   Link #1211
Kyuu
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Age: 45
Quote:
Originally Posted by flmd View Post
Hey guys. I haven't read this whole thread, but I just wanted to pop in and say hello and link to an excellent resource for beginners and intermediate players about riichi.

check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Mah-Jong-Handb...3669883&sr=1-7

It's called Mahjong Handbook: How to Play, Score, and Win.
Hmm... I kinda want Jenn Barr's book instead.
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Old 2010-12-30, 18:57   Link #1212
flmd
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Originally Posted by KyuuA4 View Post
Hmm... I kinda want Jenn Barr's book instead.
I saw that one on Amazon awhile ago when I was browsing through MJ books. This review kind of turned me off of it though, although I might check it out in the future just to see what it contains anyway.

From Amazon review:


Now, this book does explain the rules rather well, and has the most basic of strategy sections, but (even excluding the printing error with a couple examples) is simply too 'basic' to recommend.

It is a Catch-22 of the mahjong world - if you are into mahjong enough to know about the book, you know enough that you don't need the book at all.

The only book in english out there that has the strategy that you can't get off a dozen sites found by a simple 'reach mahjong' search on google is the Whitney "Mahjong Handbook". it's been the standard for decades for a reason.

Also, although it is unfortunate, it gets docked points for the incorrect examples. I know it is merely a printer error, but if you are a beginner, you aren't necessarily going to know that something is wrong, and be thoroughly confused as to what is going on.

All-in-all, I bought it, and didn't learn anything that I couldn't have gotten from the Whitney book. If you are looking for a way to teach your friends, or yourself, without access to the internet or outside input, it's worth it, but those are the only niches it fills.
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Old 2010-12-30, 19:19   Link #1213
merchant
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dropped from 1750 to 1360.

omfg..i got slaughtered today. went from 1985 to 1959 rating and down to 1315 pts.
nothing but loser hands and tenhou kept giving me really bad tiles.

Last edited by merchant; 2010-12-30 at 22:47.
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Old 2010-12-30, 19:33   Link #1214
einhorn303
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Does anyone know of any good 2-player mahjong variants? Preferably ones that preserve the importance of chii; I really don't like the 3p mahjong rules on Tenhou because of that.
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Old 2010-12-31, 00:32   Link #1215
Malintex_Terek
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Originally Posted by einhorn303 View Post
Does anyone know of any good 2-player mahjong variants? Preferably ones that preserve the importance of chii; I really don't like the 3p mahjong rules on Tenhou because of that.
Most strip mahjong games are two player. I'm totally serious, I've played three and they were all like that, though I can't say if they were "good" or not, since the point was porn with minimal effort and it wasn't hard to utterly dominate the AI.

Quote:
Originally Posted by flmd View Post
If you could further break down MT vs Tenhou.net I would be really grateful as I have seen a quite a few negative comments about MT scattered over the internet, and I'm wondering what the deal is, as they were mostly vague in nature. I have to say though, I do like MT's interface over Tenhou's, even controlling for the Japanese characters. And MT's game helper tab is extremely useful; I admit though it's a bit of a crutch to be able to quickly check at a glance how many of a certain tile is on the board and which tiles might be risky...it's much easier than trying to do a quick scan of everyone's pond of discards in 8 or less seconds. And due to that you are able to avoid dealing risky tiles in certain situations, and you can even increase the chance of surviving a hand when 2 or 3 people are in riichi and there are very few safe tiles left.
Tenhou is free, has a consistent interface, real Japanese rules and a much more skilled player base.

I played on MahjongTime in 2007, when it looked like this. That was actually the second interface upgrade. Games were long because there was no auto-pass, so a han-chan took 1-2 hours because no one could bust out, but Ren Chan was allowed. Auto-pass made things a bit faster, but the fact that if you had the opportunity to declare a meld like a Pon or Chi, your pass would lag, revealing to everyone the contents of your hand. The webmaster also knew jack about JP rules and we had stupid stuff like someone winning on a Tsumo, then declaring Riichi to get a Riichi and Iipatsu. No Chombo penalties, and no renzo cost for declaring Riichi.

Once the game credits were introduced, which limited the ability of free players to participate, most of the 4chan players who came to MT following Akagi's run in SaiGar 2007 just stopped. It wasn't until nearly a year later, during SaiGar 2008 when Tenhou renewed interest.
__________________
HOLY CRACKERS! SAIGAR 2008 IS HERE!
Nominations are open 19 November ~ 23 December 2007 NOW!!
It's not a tournament without "men"!
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Old 2010-12-31, 08:37   Link #1216
Peanutbutter
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Quote:
Originally Posted by merchant View Post
dropped from 1750 to 1360.

omfg..i got slaughtered today. went from 1985 to 1959 rating and down to 1315 pts.
nothing but loser hands and tenhou kept giving me really bad tiles.


On my previous account (2nd one), I actually made it to 1600 pts on 5th-dan before the Tenhou client decides to give me a good beating and I went down to 15 points before calling it quits.

As previously said, on my last account (3rd one), I managed to went up to 5th-dan once again, but before I can go beyond 1000 pts, I slide and got stuck at around 600 pts before sliding all the way to 45 pts. I'm still done with Tenhou (haven't touched it for a month+)

I do hope you can break out of this cycle.
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Old 2010-12-31, 15:34   Link #1217
flmd
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Join Date: Dec 2010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Malintex_Terek View Post

Tenhou is free, has a consistent interface, real Japanese rules and a much more skilled player base.

I played on MahjongTime in 2007, when it looked like this. That was actually the second interface upgrade. Games were long because there was no auto-pass, so a han-chan took 1-2 hours because no one could bust out, but Ren Chan was allowed. Auto-pass made things a bit faster, but the fact that if you had the opportunity to declare a meld like a Pon or Chi, your pass would lag, revealing to everyone the contents of your hand. The webmaster also knew jack about JP rules and we had stupid stuff like someone winning on a Tsumo, then declaring Riichi to get a Riichi and Iipatsu. No Chombo penalties, and no renzo cost for declaring Riichi.

Once the game credits were introduced, which limited the ability of free players to participate, most of the 4chan players who came to MT following Akagi's run in SaiGar 2007 just stopped. It wasn't until nearly a year later, during SaiGar 2008 when Tenhou renewed interest.
Ah, I see. Wow, that is ugly...MT has apparently changed a lot over the years. I've only been playing since this September so I've only known MT in it's current incarnation.

As for the pause when someone discards a tile you can meld, there really is no way around it though is there? That is, besides having auto pass on, which I do not think I would like as that would restrict your hand to only self drawn, when you might have a hand that can be easily completed with a few melds.

True, the pause when someone discards a possible melded tile reveals some of the contents of your hand, but I don't mind all that much and I like to think of it as an extra challenge; i.e. can you win the hand even when someone knows that you have a character hand, or a pinfu, or whatever? It brings an extra element of strategy into play, and if you can get someone to deal into your hand even when people know what you're going for, that gives you all the more satisfaction, doesn't it? Well it does for me at least.

Still though, I try to hit the pass button on MT or Tenhou as fast as possible after someone discards one of my tiles when I'm not going for melds. I've got it down to the point where I can manually hit the pass button with virtually no time delay, so the contents of my hand are not so easily guessed at, but I'm pretty sure everyone is able to do that. I was probably extremely transparent when I first started playing though.

I'm dying to play a real life MJ game. It seems to me there are vast differences between real and online play; I think Saki even touched on that at various points regarding Nodoka and her play style. Unfortunately there are no MJ clubs or get-togethers around where I live, and I don't have any friends that play and I doubt I can get people I know into it, so real play is an impossibility currently .
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Old 2010-12-31, 22:07   Link #1218
merchant
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peanutbutter003 View Post


On my previous account (2nd one), I actually made it to 1600 pts on 5th-dan before the Tenhou client decides to give me a good beating and I went down to 15 points before calling it quits.

As previously said, on my last account (3rd one), I managed to went up to 5th-dan once again, but before I can go beyond 1000 pts, I slide and got stuck at around 600 pts before sliding all the way to 45 pts. I'm still done with Tenhou (haven't touched it for a month+)

I do hope you can break out of this cycle.
im back up above 1500 but i don't think it will last long. only won once in the last 9 games. feels like i will lose more games.
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Old 2011-01-01, 16:51   Link #1219
merchant
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What the fuck?
Spoiler:


Thank god!
Spoiler:
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Old 2011-01-01, 21:00   Link #1220
Peanutbutter
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Originally Posted by merchant View Post
What the fuck?

Thank god!
I believe it's simply because seating wise, you're before him, that's all.

EDIT: Just noticed that you're using the Windows client. Unless I'm mistaken, that means you actually subscribe to them. I was a free user, so conditions between us are different then.

Last edited by Peanutbutter; 2011-01-01 at 22:45.
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