Japanese Mahjong Thread

[RegalStar]

Spoiler:

So yeah, didn't have too great a game, and I'm dealer for all last. I really don't want to end in 3rd place so I have to win this one, perferably with enough points to drag 2nd place out of reach (or blow away 4th place; that works too). At least my haipai looks workable.

No time riichi, obviously.

No time kan as well. I need the extra points. Sadly kandora indicator was 1m and no rinshan either but at least I got 10 extra fu, which raises my hand from 2600 all/4800 into 3200 all/5800. I'll take what I can get.

One turn later I drew a 5s, so of course tsumo right away. As the game lists off the yakus, I realized that the button at the bottom says END instead of the OK I was expecting. I was briefly confused for a moment, but then

[RegalStar]

Spoiler for Riichi Y/N?:

[-Kuroko-]

I started playing in Tenhou a few weeks ago and I'm loving it! I had only played 1 player mahjong games against bots (like Saikyou Mahjong 3D and such) and God the difference is huge a few days ago I scored my first sanbaiman and I was very happy I'm still a beginer but i'm having so much fun

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by -Kuroko-

I started playing in Tenhou a few weeks ago and I'm loving it! I had only played 1 player mahjong games against bots (like Saikyou Mahjong 3D and such) and God the difference is huge a few days ago I scored my first sanbaiman and I was very happy I'm still a beginer but i'm having so much fun

Oh. Wait till you get a taste of Live Tile.

===

Here's a funny question for you:

Do you "ron" here?



My answer was: I did not.

[Marina2]

I'm still on the learning process~

I want to get better at reading other player hand from their discard. i.e. what hand are they going for, which tiles they are waiting, what tile they are likey to discard (Is aiming to ron off specific tile from specific player like in Saki easy to do?)

Is there any tip or article about this I can can read???

As For myself right now,
- it seems I can only win with a hand worth 1,000 ~ 12,000. (Mostly low value hand)
- If 1st has 15,000+ or more score above me, I find it's very hard to win that match.
- I like my hand to be closed
- I have a bad habid to call Richii whenever I can :P (need to change this soon....)
- I rely to win with tsumo more than Ron. (This is bad, right?)

Seriously, I still have hard time to win againist AI. It will take a while before I have enough confident to play with human.

[RegalStar]

Originally Posted by Kyuu

Oh. Wait till you get a taste of Live Tile.

===

Here's a funny question for you:

Do you "ron" here?



My answer was: I did not.

I would have riichi'd as soon as I got this hand made, though, and THEN I would've ron'd that.

Originally Posted by Marina2

I'm still on the learning process~

I want to get better at reading other player hand from their discard. i.e. what hand are they going for, which tiles they are waiting, what tile they are likey to discard (Is aiming to ron off specific tile from specific player like in Saki easy to do?)

Is there any tip or article about this I can can read???[/quote]

It's not easy at all. There are certain times you can get a feel on what range of tiles your opponents may be waiting for, but for the most part, people defend by reading what tiles other players are NOT waiting for, rather than trying to guess what they are waiting for. Basically, use the furiten rule. You will not deal into someone if you discard a tile they discarded before, and if that person declared riichi, every single tile that have been played afterwards are also safe.

As For myself right now,
- it seems I can only win with a hand worth 1,000 ~ 12,000. (Mostly low value hand)
- If 1st has 15,000+ or more score above me, I find it's very hard to win that match.
- I like my hand to be closed
- I have a bad habid to call Richii whenever I can :P (need to change this soon....)
- I rely to win with tsumo more than Ron. (This is bad, right?)

Seriously, I still have hard time to win againist AI. It will take a while before I have enough confident to play with human.

Winning with low hand value is normal. I rarely ever see any hand goes above 12000, and those are usually oya haneman (18000). Also, depending on what you're going for when you play, it's not necessary to aim for top. When playing for ranking in Tenhou, for example, the goal is more about not getting 4th than getting 1st, so if the 1st place is too far away from you, concentrate on getting 2nd instead.

http://riichiblog.blogspot.ca/

There are some links to very good tutorial for beginners here.

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by RegalStar

I would have riichi'd as soon as I got this hand made, though, and THEN I would've ron'd that.

Well. To some degree, I tend to delay my riichi these days. I got to tenpai at my 4-sou discard. So, I waited 3-full turns, before I even considered riichi.

After that 8-sou...

1. Player across pon's it.
2. Player to the left drops a 5-sou (can't ron due to temp furiten)
3. I draw, and discard (wish I riichi at this point)
4. Player to the right (don't care)
5. Player across drops a 5-sou (and I ron here)

Thing is. Player across me nailed me for a 4 han 30 fu hand. I ended up scoring the same with this one. Add riichi, ippatsu, that'd be a haneman. Just gotta time these riichi's better. Once a couple of the 5-sou and 8-sou were popping out, then that's when my signal for riichi starts to kick in.

Originally Posted by Marina2

I'm still on the learning process~

I want to get better at reading other player hand from their discard. i.e. what hand are they going for, which tiles they are waiting, what tile they are likey to discard (Is aiming to ron off specific tile from specific player like in Saki easy to do?)

Is there any tip or article about this I can can read???

Live Tile play really helped me pay more attention to discards, and this is for defensive purposes. Losing to "ron" is a lot more embarrassing in person.

[-Kuroko-]

Originally Posted by Kyuu

Oh. Wait till you get a taste of Live Tile.

===

Here's a funny question for you:

Do you "ron" here?



My answer was: I did not.

I wouldn't ron, I think waiting for 5 sou and getting sanshoku is a better idea, right? (of course I know you can't ron with that even if you want because you're not in riichi and you don't have any yaku but that's not your question, right?)

what is Live Tile? i'm such a noob, sorry

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by -Kuroko-

I wouldn't ron, I think waiting for 5 sou and getting sanshoku is a better idea, right? (of course I know you can't ron with that even if you want because you're not in riichi and you don't have any yaku but that's not your question, right?)

What is Live Tile? i'm such a noob, sorry

Term I made up to describe "real life mahjong".

As for the hand: I had 1-yaku (pinfu). The amount would have been ridiculously cheap at that point. But you're right. I wanted that sanshoku, not all that often I get it while closed.

[-Kuroko-]

Originally Posted by Kyuu

Term I made up to describe "real life mahjong".

As for the hand: I had 1-yaku (pinfu). The amount would have been ridiculously cheap at that point. But you're right. I wanted that sanshoku, not all that often I get it while closed.

oh I thought it was something Tenhou related it would be a dream come true for me playing Mahjong in real life

*facepalm* I always forget pinfu!

[RegalStar]

Originally Posted by Kyuu

Well. To some degree, I tend to delay my riichi these days. I got to tenpai at my 4-sou discard. So, I waited 3-full turns, before I even considered riichi.

Pinfu dora 1 = riichi right away is the basic of basics, according to Puyo, and that's how I learned to roll I really like the fact that once you declare riichi, you cause all opponents to start playing defensively, which definitely gives you an advantage. The difference between takame and yasume have to be at least by a difference of 6 (difference between 2000 and haneman, for example) before I'd consider damaten and waiting for takame only.

[Qilin]

Originally Posted by Marina2

I'm still on the learning process~

I want to get better at reading other player hand from their discard. i.e. what hand are they going for, which tiles they are waiting, what tile they are likey to discard (Is aiming to ron off specific tile from specific player like in Saki easy to do?)

Is there any tip or article about this I can can read???

As For myself right now,
- it seems I can only win with a hand worth 1,000 ~ 12,000. (Mostly low value hand)
- If 1st has 15,000+ or more score above me, I find it's very hard to win that match.
- I like my hand to be closed
- I have a bad habid to call Richii whenever I can :P (need to change this soon....)
- I rely to win with tsumo more than Ron. (This is bad, right?)

Seriously, I still have hard time to win againist AI. It will take a while before I have enough confident to play with human.

I know what you mean. Reading discards is always a pain for me. Not to mention that the ever present conflict between pursuing your hand and defending. At the very least, I've stopped relying on toitoi's and yakuhai to win my hands. That's an improvement for me, although a minor one.

For defense, this article helped me a lot (though suji seems very situational):
http://www.osamuko.com/umaikeiki-def...aori-and-suji/

This one is was also helpful for defending against toitoi and yakuhai hands (the really long comment at the end was particularly helpful):
http://www.osamuko.com/yaku-defense-...i-and-yakuhai/

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by RegalStar

Pinfu dora 1 = riichi right away is the basic of basics, according to Puyo, and that's how I learned to roll I really like the fact that once you declare riichi, you cause all opponents to start playing defensively, which definitely gives you an advantage. The difference between takame and yasume have to be at least by a difference of 6 (difference between 2000 and haneman, for example) before I'd consider damaten and waiting for takame only.

Of course. Via Riichi, forcing players to trash their hand is most definitely a plus. However, damaten allows you to target specific players, who may end up falling into your trap. Quite frankly, I did not want players to know, that I made it to tenpai (not yet anyways). Personally, losing points via ron - this "ticks" me off. So, on the flipside, I want to piss others off. XD

In a sense, y'treat the different ways of play as "weapons". In b4 Saki-verse. It's all a matter on how y'use these weapons, and when.

[RegalStar]

Originally Posted by Kyuu

Of course. Via Riichi, forcing players to trash their hand is most definitely a plus. However, damaten allows you to target specific players, who may end up falling into your trap. Quite frankly, I did not want players to know, that I made it to tenpai (not yet anyways). Personally, losing points via ron - this "ticks" me off. So, on the flipside, I want to piss others off. XD

In a sense, y'treat the different ways of play as "weapons". In b4 Saki-verse. It's all a matter on how y'use these weapons, and when.

I did remember one time, when I was dealer at 3rd place, and trailing 1st and 2nd place by about 11-12k each, while 4th place had 2400 points (which went down to 1400 after he declared Riichi). I reached tenpai on the same goaround, on a yakuless doraless ryanmen wait. This is the kind of situation where you don't want to declare Riichi in, because you don't want to accidentally ron off 4th place and blow him away with 2000 points. Yeah you can't "target" the other two players without a yaku, but you can just try to hold to the end or hopefully win by self pick (500 all), and hope that the next hand is big enough for a reversal (as dealer it wouldn't be very hard). And of course if you do have a yaku (say pinfu), then damaten is in order here too.

(On that hand though, whatever I was thinking at that time - probably not something regarding the hand - I just followed my instinct of "oooh shiny button must click", and then clicked on autoron. What do you know - 4th place dealt into me a few turns after. And then I got 3 uradora and got 1st place anyways - which for some reason pissed me off even more than if I just hit for 1500 and stay at 3rd. I don't think I'll make that kind of absentminded decisions in a while )

Those kinds of situations are pretty exceptional though. Generally unless it's all last and I REALLY need to target someone to improve my placement, or it's near all last and I only need a small amount of points (leading and wants the game over fast, very small difference with nearby players like South 4 of your game - damaten is the best move there, its better to just riichi right away. The chance of winning a good shape Riichi is about the same as the chance of winning a bad shape damaten (since you're going to let 8s pass, it essentially become bad shape), but the expected value of Riichi, after accounting for Ipptasu and Uradora(s), is around same or higher. Adding in that there's less of a chance that someone else wins the hand afterwards, and declaring Riichi comes out as a good deal more profitable than staying silent and waiting for 8s.

Well, taking a look at your table, I can see that if you want to keep the possibility of getting top in mind, you may want to silent tenpai since you don't want 4th place to deal into your takame (8000 minimum 12000 maximum, 100% 2nd place game over). But then you can still let it pass and hope for tsumo, I guess.

EDIT: I took a look at the game log, and found that your hand was 68m 123567p 22467s tsumo 7m. In this case, I'd have definitely declared Riichi here straight away. There's not TOO much danger of blowing away 4th place with this hand, but it's still decently large and can make an impact no matter how you win it, especially since it's only East 4.

[Kyuu]

If there's one thing I am looking to figure out: balancing damaten play and riichi play. The disadvantage of riichi becomes damaten's strength. Likewise, vice-versa. So until this discussion, I never viewed the two under these terms.

Utilizing damaten has been my response to lower win rates via riichi, as defense play increases among higher level players. This is what I am sensing in both Live Tile play and in 7447. So, my focus here turned to: "How do I make defense play crack?"

===

Here's a case where damaten allowed me to win:
http://tenhou.net/0/?log=2012052611g...ca0&tw=1&ts=10

I have a feeling: Player C was defending against Player A.



With the pinfu in this hand. Getting 6-man or 9-man made no difference on the hand value. Once again, I delayed any call for riichi by 1-full turn. After that kan, I was tempted to riichi right afterwards, but I chose to remain silent. I was lucky to draw the red 5-sou.

Plus, with the hand already late, it was better off to remain silent in this case. Last thing I wanted: for anyone to play defensively against me.

[Proto]

It guess riichi play makes sense even if higher levels if you get your hand soon enough and you have anything more than a 2 sided wait.

[RegalStar]

Statistics show that in general, the winning rate of Riichi is about 60% of that of damaten's. However, unless the hand is already worth a lot, Riichi can generally triple the hand's potential (about 15-20% chance of Ippatsu, 0.3 uradoras). Declaring Riichi is more favorable even if ends up suceeding less.

Originally Posted by Proto

It guess riichi play makes sense even if higher levels if you get your hand soon enough and you have anything more than a 2 sided wait.

Puyo's tutorial, on the topic of when one is first to reach tenpai with a good-shaped (ie, 2+ side waits that aren't 2 sided shanpon with two middle tiles), concludes that "In general, unless the circumstance is very exceptional, declare riichi right away when first to reach tenpai with good-shaped waits." Exceptional circumstances he notes as when "1) when the hand is worth haneman+ even without Riichi, such as Chin'itsu, or 2) when all last leading and do not need points, and that's basically it."

[Kyuu]

[2012/06/08/般南喰赤]

A:marvins(+48.0)
B:emaNON(+6.0)
C:KyuuAA(-39.0)
D:v(´・ω・｀)(-15.0)

http://tenhou.net/0/?log=2012060810g...-a25e300c&tw=2

Called "riichi" 7-times this game, and only scored on one of 'em.

The case of West 1-0. This one was better off being held. But at the same time, the pair of wests denied me a yaku. Last hand. Chose to riichi dropping the 4-man to lure out 7-man. But alas, it was a death tile.

East 4 was hilarious though.

===

So, essentially, that was 6000 points down the drain. Though, they were not called immediately. Sometimes, just a delay of 1-turn. Anyways. My mood demanded to try riichi more often, and earlier. So, I did, and paid dearly for it.

At the same time, even had I resorted to greater use of damaten here. The result would have been similar.

Originally Posted by RegalStar

Statistics show that in general, the winning rate of Riichi is about 60% of that of damaten's. However, unless the hand is already worth a lot, Riichi can generally triple the hand's potential (about 15-20% chance of Ippatsu, 0.3 uradoras). Declaring Riichi is more favorable even if ends up suceeding less.

I don't play the numbers game. I play using "instinct", which isn't all that great to begin with. I'd rather trash a hand defensively, than declare a riichi and not get a thing out of it (which involves someone else winning). Exhaustive draws are acceptable. If anything, my declaration of riichi often entail the idea of actually winning the particular hand or forcing exhaustive draw, based on how I feel about it.

Yet, leave it to me, to use one instance to prove a point. XD

[RegalStar]

Generally speaking, I only damaten if either I have a bad shape wait, the wait is easily improvable and either the hand is worth a lot to begin with (thus reducing the effect of Riichi) or worth very little (thus... also reducing the effect of Riichi), the hand is already haneman minimum (which I never encountered yet, other than a couple of instances of san'ankou + two pairs hand, which I want to riichi anyways to improve the chance of getting suu'ankou), or if the score situation calls for it.

I think that in lower level tables, it's probably also acceptable if someone riichi's, you reach tenpai and your wait is one of the riichi player's discards, since this is a form of lure as well. This is strictly for lower table however; on tokujou people will notice that "this guy is discarding a lot of dangerous tiles for no reason, so he must be in tenpai" and guard you anyways. I'm aiming for tokujou (and I do think I have the skill needed to reach it, since I had a previous account that almost hit 4-dan but had a crappy R due to me playing like crap for about 50 games before encountering Puyo's tutorial), so I don't want to get in that habit. It's something to consider though I guess =P

Double post: I've been wondering for a while, but are there any English speaking 7th dan or above?

[Kyuu]

Ranking is not relevant in this discussion. Besides, if I were to become self-conscious of ranking, I'll end up quitting after a demotion. Only to return once again.

This pattern is true in Starcraft, which I gave up on for a couple months. Getting demoted there sucked. Just recently, I decide to play it again. And I haven't even started doing 1v1's there yet.

Tenhou ranking is not in my interest right now, as I am too cheap to pay into it. I might do it in Ron2 instead, when I get around to it. Unfortunately, games there are East only, for all I know, when it comes to using the site for free. In the meantime, I just play and post my games, which I find interesting. This is how I have been doing so for 2 years.

===

Now. As to why I use damaten. I developed a fairly good taste for it lately. It's what my mood dictates. Most of my game decisions revolves around this mood. So, if my mood is outright cruddy, then I'm screwed. And unfortunately, I'm going through somewhat of a slump in that department these past couple days.

So, if you want to kick me when I'm down, now is a good time to do it.

In any case. I am focusing on two things regarding my play right now:
A) Minimizing losing by Ron
B) Hitting players by Ron, though manipulation of discards

Again. I hate losing to Ron, but I love winning by Ron. So, I center my game around that due to the psychological effect of Ron. For now, Tsumo is not a weapon for me. I just treat it as something that "happens".

Anyways. I enjoy being "sneaky", regardless of the odds. The sneakier, the better. Nevertheless, yes. I acknowledge the need of assessing the situation when it comes to choosing a particular tactic. Yet, often times, my mood plays a large factor towards decision making, which may lead to some great decisions or outright catastrophic ones.

As y'note here:

Originally Posted by RegalStar

Generally speaking, I only damaten if either I have a bad shape wait, the wait is easily improvable and either the hand is worth a lot to begin with (thus reducing the effect of Riichi) or worth very little (thus... also reducing the effect of Riichi), the hand is already haneman minimum (which I never encountered yet, other than a couple of instances of san'ankou + two pairs hand, which I want to riichi anyways to improve the chance of getting suu'ankou), or if the score situation calls for it.

Generalization can bring about trouble, in principle. By generalizing, one limits use of tactics to particular situations, and only in those particular situations. Sometimes, a closed wait is actually better than an open 2-sided wait by virtue of suji.

Originally Posted by RegalStar

Double post: I've been wondering for a while, but are there any English speaking 7th dan or above?

Not that I know of. I'm not sure where Jenn Barr or Garthe Nelson would fall under. And yes, I watch some of the pro-games once in a while. It is amusing guessing which tile they look to drop, as video moves along.

===

Finally. I have a bigger objective than my own gameplay with regards to this game. My ultimate goal is to spread this game, particularly in America.