(CR) Saki

[Proto]

damn thats lucky. btw how many points are 1,9 of the suits, with the 4 directions and honors? from wat i remember it was all hidden and a self draw to win that turn non dealer and no richi declared bc i wasnt aware of alot of 80% of the scoring system. lol i even remember it was a 9 of circles i drew to to complete it. im rather interested in that server, so far i have to go to yahoo and win with 3 han. i dont know enough to really go for +3 han

You can read on Japanese Mahjong Yaku and Fu scoring rules. That and playing is the best way of getting a hang of it, as you say.

generic comment: It seems to be overly complicated from watching it on the series, but one can always think of it as a little more complicated combination between poker and dominoes. Other than memorizing the scoring rules, it's not that difficult to get a hang of it. And if you play with a computer/online server the computer does the fu and yaku counting for you so it's only a matter of knowing which hands are better than others. After that it's the tortuous process of getting experience and learning to read the game.

[X207]

Originally Posted by Proto

You can read on Japanese Mahjong Yaku and Fu scoring rules. That and playing is the best way of getting a hang of it, as you say.

generic comment: It seems to be overly complicated from watching it on the series, but one can always think of it as a little more complicated combination between poker and dominoes. Other than memorizing the scoring rules, it's not that difficult to get a hang of it. And if you play with a computer/online server the computer does the fu and yaku counting for you so it's only a matter of knowing which hands are better than others. After that it's the tortuous process of getting experience and learning to read the game.

ty for the help. its so true that memorising the scoring rules the hardest part of the game itself.

[Proto]

Well, it's the hardest part one has to learn in order to get started for sure. But the hardest part to learn is to read the flow of the game itself (eg knowing what your opponents are going for, the most possible discards, constructing your hand around them ,etc.)

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by Proto

Well, it's the hardest part one has to learn in order to get started for sure. But the hardest part to learn is to read the flow of the game itself (eg knowing what your opponents are going for, the most possible discards, constructing your hand around them ,etc.)

I may sound noob, or naive, but can I ask....people can actually read the flow of the game? I always thought it's just the manga is exaggerating.
Being an Mahjong-game player, I don't even know what it feels like to predict the enemy hands, let alone reading game's flow.

[Proto]

Oh, well it never goes to the point of knowing who has exactly what hand. however you can make very good estimates by checking which tiles are live (or can be used in potential hands), and comparing them to the respective discards of each player. I don't think it ever goes to the level portrayed in mahjong manga and anime where it'd seem everyone is playing with open hands. but as the game advances and the number of tiles become less, similarly you can close down on what each player is going for. Maybe flow of the game is too strong of a word though, but for those who have played dominoes it's the same thing as knowing with a high certainty who has what tile depending on their played tiles, when where they played, etc. Obviously there is a higher uncertainty factor than dominoes here (because the players grab a random tile each turn, not all the tiles are played since some are in the dead wall, etc.) but then again that doesn't stop you from measuring probabilities.

[Ashlotte]

Well like s_b said felt like the episode was a slighty retooled version of last episode...

Atleast it looks like we broke out of the cycle this time for good and the story can move past Nodo-chan playing the annoying passive-aggressive emo game with Saki.

I did adore Kugi's acting as with the other episodes...She defiantly makes about a 100x better straight up loli without the Tsundere pretenses then the ones with.

[Proto]

Well yeah, the intro is the slowest part of the series, but now it is well over so you can look forward to an improved pace.

[Bambi]

Originally Posted by Proto

Well yeah, the intro is the slowest part of the series, but now it is well over so you can look forward to an improved pace.

Like single mahjong match over 2 manga volumes?
Btw i like manga a lot, but wonder what peoples will say about it when in ep3 was too much boring mahjong for them

[Proto]

Well yeah, the intro is the slowest part of the series, but now it is well over so you can look forward to an improved pace.
Like single mahjong match over 2 manga volumes?

Well, you know, the manga is about mahjong so... Heck, for that matter more than a third of Akagi's run was about a single Mahjong match, in his games against Washizu. This is pretty much standard fare in sports series, so if you know your genre you know what to expect when things get "serious".

Unless you thought that by improved pace I meant faster pace, in which case you might want to know I like slice of life and European movies.

[Bonta Kun]

Originally Posted by Bambi

Like single mahjong match over 2 manga volumes?
Btw i like manga a lot, but wonder what peoples will say about it when in ep3 was too much boring mahjong for them

I love the manga too and I do wonder about the up and coming eps but then I think what do I care, as long as theres my Nodo-chwwaan its all gooood here

[Deathkillz]

For being the first series this season for me to catch up on, I think it is pretty good and brings back sweet memories of Akagi with added moe
The quality really isn't bad at all either (especially the eyes) and some rather humorus and obviously exaggerated moments when Saki's luck is at a holy level makes it all the more enjoyable to watch. I can't wait for more

[whitepearl]

Originally Posted by Proto

The best hand I could (never again) could have gotten (my hand is on the lower part of the screenshot)



A Baiman riichi chi'itsu ipeiko. non dealer 16000 points

Wasted on North's yakuhai. 1000 points. AAAAAAAAAAAAA.

BTW I found the server that appears in the screenshot yesterday. Pretty neat site for those interested.

I hate it when great hands get wasted when someone else beats you to the tsumo or ron.

I have plenty tales of epic fail in this regard,

I came close to getting a Kokushi Muso this time:



In total I have gotten it I *think* three times (maybe four). IMO, it's a pretty easy yakuman to get, just so long as your hand starts off with numerous honor tiles on the initial deal.

[whitepearl]

Originally Posted by Vexx

The household is taking up mahjong as an addition to our madhouse of other games we play... I'm leaning towards learning the Chinese rule set first as the American rule set just looks annoying (especially with its "pokemon of the year" new hands).

Sound like a good plan? And I browsed around a bit in the thread and didn't see anything conclusive --- have we established whether they're playing Chinese or Japanese rules in the series?

They are playing Japanese rules. Chinese mahjong does not employ red dora (the concept of the dora being the bonus is strictly endemic to Japanese mahjong as the bonus tiles in Chinese mahjong are the flower tiles).

The concept of yaku (more or less a series of conditions that allow your hand to qualify being a winning hand) isn't as closely followed in Chinese mahjong. There is no riichi, either. Depending on who you play with, chicken hands (gai wus) may be allowed as winning hands; such hands would never be allowed in Japanese rules mahjong.

I've never played American rules mahjong but the fact they use "joker" tiles turns me off quite a bit.

[Emerald Emblem]

I don't quite understand how mahjong is played, regardless I just just love this anime. I guess I'm just a sucker for the execution.

[X207]

Originally Posted by whitepearl

In total I have gotten it I *think* three times (maybe four). IMO, it's a pretty easy yakuman to get, just so long as your hand starts off with numerous honor tiles on the initial deal.

nice, did you declare any extra points when you got that hand?

[whitepearl]

Originally Posted by X207

nice, did you declare any extra points when you got that hand?

Nope, didn't declare riichi.

In Tenhou (where I play Japanese mahjong online) they don't stack other points on top of yakumans. Then again, I am working with an extremely narrow sample space so I don't know if they do. If I declared riichi or had dora tiles, they would not count as additional points on top of the yakuman.

Good to see an attempted Kokushi Muso in Saki Ep3. I wonder if we will see other yakumans, like the Dai San Gen...

[X207]

Originally Posted by whitepearl

Nope, didn't declare riichi.

In Tenhou (where I play Japanese mahjong online) they don't stack other points on top of yakumans. Then again, I am working with an extremely narrow sample space so I don't know if they do. If I declared riichi or had dora tiles, they would not count as additional points on top of the yakuman.

Good to see an attempted Kokushi Muso in Saki Ep3. I wonder if we will see other yakumans, like the Dai San Gen...

ty, i now have an approximate point score for my best hand. i never knew that the special hand could score that high o.o.

[whitepearl]

Originally Posted by X207

ty, i now have an approximate point score for my best hand. i never knew that the special hand could score that high o.o.

Oh it can get higher...



Come to think of it, I did declare riichi but I don't know if that alone helped make the score that much higher...

nvm, I was dealer which *may* have been why the score was higher...

I still haven't memorized how to count fu and calculate scores from han...

[Proto]

Indeed...

Originally Posted by wikipedia on yakuman

A yakuman (役満, or yaku-mangan 役満貫) is awarded to some rare hands which is particularly hard to achieve, like kokushi-musō (国士無双; thirteen terminals) or sū-ankō (四暗刻; four concealed melds of same three tiles). The basic point is 8,000 (4 × mangan). The winning dealer gets 48,000, and a winning non-dealer gets 32,000. If the winning hand can be interpreted as different forms of rare hands, multiple yakuman points are awarded (for example, all hands are concealed, contain only four triplets of direction tiles plus a pair of dragon tiles as eyes).

So yep, that's the reason you were awarded more points.


Nice one anyway, wipping out everyone by the 3rd east round

[Quarkboy]

Points stack in riichi mahjong, but only up to certain "limits".

That's the whole point of the limit hands. Up to 4 fan it depends on the number of fu (minipoints) you have what your score is. Above that the fu are irrelevant.

With 5 fan (mangan) it's 2000 base score, 6-7 (haneman) is always base of 3000,
8-10 (baiman) is 4000, 11-12 (sanbaiman <- even harder to get than yakuman, especially if playing without red 5s) is 6000, and 13+ fan is a yakuman, 8000. Above 13 fan and the FAN are irrelevant.

But there are also hands that give you an entire yakuman.... So obviously, since you get only 1 yakuman for more than 13 fan, any extra fan you get on top of a yakuman are irrelevant; it'd still count as 1 yakuman.

In other words, once you have a yakuman, the next highest score you could possibly get is in units of yakuman.

(of course the standard rules for points apply. A non-dealer yakuman is 4*8,000, a dealer yakuman is 6*8,000, hence the 48,000 score shown above).


Actually, one thing I'm not entirely certain on: What if you had a yakuman hand that independantly had more than 13 fan? Like, say, you had a 4 concealed pungs and declared riichi, where all 4 of the pungs were actually dora and/or ura-dora, giving you 12 fan for dora and 1 for the riichi, in addition to the 1 yakuman for the 4 concealed pungs hand.... Would that count as 2 yakuman? Or is that still only one yakuman? I mean, I suppose the chances of that are infinitesimal, but still... I'm not sure how that would be scored.