Hello! I am a mahjong player in America, and have been playing since 2007. I made this channel to start sharing what I have learned in that time with people who are looking to improve, as well as hoping to continue my path to improvement!
I am absolutely prone to the "making fast low scoring hands when you're in last" thing. I can recognise after the fact that it was wrong to do but at the time it really gets in my head.
This is useful but oh my christ please stop dragging your voice or attempt that vocal fried. Go get an energy drink. If you're on HRT then I guess it can't be help LOL
This is what i figured. To learn to detect tsumogiri and tadashi, you have to be good enough you dont even have to think to know what tiles are needed for your hand. So this skill of defensive reading is only necessary once the average noob has gotten gud enough to play the game as easily as he breathes The noob spends 90% of his time spent looking at his hand, thinking how to improve it. The got gud player spends 90% of his time looking at the other players. Plus, tsumogiri and tadashi is easy to do when focusing on one dangerous player. But when all the players are good and you gotta multitask and pay attention to all? A tad harder.
Cool video! If I remember right, the 1 in 1-2-4 is indeed weak, but the 1 in 1-3-4 is a bit stronger than an isolated 1 iirc, mostly because the 1 in 1-3-4-5 is quite decent (better than a completely isolated 2!). 1-2-3-4 is also good when the hand has no pair yet as you explained later in the video. This stuffs can be quite hard to remember though (especially this 1-3-4 shape which has both combos and overlaps). Another good thing to remember when you still have a choice between several seemingly useless terminal tiles to discard, is that 1-5 is okay if both are isolated. These isolated tiles cover many tiles in the suit, and drawing the 3 gives the ryankan 1-3-5. Also, about the first exception, maybe it's a bit better to discard the 4m instead of the 7m? You might be able to get sanshoku instead if ittsuu doesn't happen.
One more usage of kabe: if three or all four tiles are in your hand, you may try to discard one for defense. If it passes, you have a few safe tiles in your hand. Works better with winds/dragons, unless you suspect kokushi musou. Even if it's a dangerous one, three different half-safe tiles may be worse.
I recently get out of tenpai after getting suspicious tile and that tile was exactly what my opponent waited for (another player dealt in later). Feels like a win.
For a non-dealer, getting rid of an isolated East tile is priority. If you delay, the dealer with a single East tile may pair it up by the time you decide to discard. If East already has a pair of Easts and pons, you know to be on the defensive for that hand (sakagiri more often and keep safe tiles for the dealer).
I'm sure it was recorded Anyway first 7 crow died ( sound situation) Second crow that came after was trying to scare me 7 times as a t rex to scare my iman situation because it taught us historically how to bury our dead What can we do about this situation I'm not contained as much and Allah created more things and situations that we don't understand ( historically when people connected to certain things through kuffar they used to hear the word ala( Allahs prophets where different they were permissioned in a way that was Halal and only Allah knows how ) As for me I was thrown into the deep end and had to learn how to swim out of it metaphorically speaking 😭
Prophet Muhammad said the Earth will not end until theres nobody left on Earth who says the name of Allah When that happens Allah the creator of all things knows best We recognise Allah through his names and attributes and nobody knows his name as Allah creator of all things is not a noun
7:20 here you showed 3-6p as dead here but i think you meant 1-4s since only the 9p had been thrown, so a 45p block waiting for 3-6p is still possible Edited: nvm I just saw the called tile. But then it should be 7 dead tiles with 1-4s as well no?
Thanks for the method! I recently got my first chiniitsu and it was hard to read, fortunately the hand built itself and I was playing on Majsoul, which only lets you declare a win if you can. In person (or certain online clients like Mahjong Time) it’d be more problematic because of furiten and chombo… and I do plan on playing in person, so this is especially useful to me.
Is it possible to extend that last example a bit to say that it’s generally less bad to karagiri from tenpai if the tile you’re cutting is from a completed set? Obviously the example has the extra element of the flush hand/tanyao situation, but it seems like generally a completed-set karagiri from tenpai like that could obscure your tenpai state (since you’re not just tsumogiri-ing every turn) and also throw off people’s possible reads on your hand development. I don’t necessarily see a downside to giving away information about completed sets in a tenpai hand, unless it’s a situation like the opposite of your last example (say you’re tanyao with a non-manzu wait, but your calls make it look like you have a manzu flush). Curious what you think!
I would really hesitate to generalize that much about it. A lot of it comes down to the story your discards are telling- previous tedashi/tsumogiri tiles, state of other players' hands, etc. I mentioned this in another comment just now, as well, but to go deeper, it would basically need to be an analysis of pro games and specific situations, which could be a future video!
Interesting topic. I saw other players karagiri often so I came to the conclusion that it was a standard tactic. I'll definitely start using it less if it's not beneficial. Thank you for sharing!
This certainly is not the case. Just to make sure, I double checked with a pro friend of mine, and they spent a good bit of time relaying a lot of information about it. Basically, at higher levels, a lot of it is what story you want your discards to tell- it's all connected. This is a level of depth that I did not get into in this video necessarily- the last example is starting to show that direction. To go into depth as to when it makes sense to, I would need to be showing full games and situations (all discards, point situation, etc.)- this may be something I look at for a future video!
I wish riichi youtubers explained the Japanese terms they nonchalantly use. As if English beginners know what penchan, iipekous etc are. There are English names for those, and most are also perfectly descriptive by itself.
Since the riichi player has 1 sou in their discard, why 1-4 sou is still live? Moreover, are those tables with red 5s? If so, how do they change without them?
Half and Full Flush hands are often difficult to read because of these advanced shapes with triplets. I once ended up calling Ron on a man tile for a full flush hand during an EMA tournament (where turns go by really fast) without having had enough time to read all of my hand’s waits. I checked my hand carefully at that point and realised I actually missread the waits and the tile was not one of them. If such a thing happens, you need to be extra careful not to reveal your hand, as this would be counted as an illegal call and chombo. I kept my hand to myself and declared “No Ron”, which just puts you in dead hand state in this ruleset. Sad, but much less damaging. Following that, I wrote a small trainer program in PHP to exercise reading waits in such hands. It’s don’t think you’ll be surprised to learn that while there are many ways to iterate through the possible hand shapes, isolating the pair first is by far the most efficient algorithm. Having to figure out the best algorithm myself to try and code it on my own, I learned a lot about how to methodically read a hand, and by the end of the project, I didn’t even have to use the trainer much anymore, as I had already figured a lot of it out. I’d encourage anyone who has problems with reading complex shapes to apply the method you describe in your video: lock down triplets into either pairs or triplets, and reconfigure groups around that, and cumulate all possible waits after branching through all possibilities. It’s actually pretty fast once you’re used to the method.
Really interesting view to talk about Zentsu as a defensive play in specific situations, but you're right. "Defense" is more about "denying other players victory" than necessarily "avoiding dealing in" despite those *usually* leading to the same play.
I know this is old, but this is so apropos for me right now. I'm a new player and just ranked up into Adept on MJS. After some initial success, I started losing. I kept seeing everyone get into Tenpai way faster than me and started calling excessively, keeping honor tiles to try and make yakus, and refusing to fold small value hands because I felt I needed to win a hand since everyone was winning 2000 pt hands before I could even get started. Now I've managed to rank down and have gotten frustrated. Watching this makes me realize that I need to return to the theory that I've learned and ignore the other players.
i've been searching method for this complex shapes reading. i still remember about a months a go i declare winning on a complex shape, turns out im on furiten because instead of ryanmen, i was waiting for 4 tiles XD
I agree they are hard to read, I don't own a smartphone tho so many I need to download Bluestacks for Android on my PC. Just got into Expert 2 with 27,45% win 12,39% deal in over 145 South games, so while I may be able to grind my way to Master, I don't know all the Yaku nor scoring and have little to none defensive options and horrible call/riichi judgement so I feel I need to improve on my fundamentals regardless. Don't feel like spending 3x more time with grinding and pain, where I could have put that effort in study which I 100% need if I ever get into Master. Or I will end up like one of the many players that's stuck between Ex3 and M1 holding on for dear life hoping they eventually by experience gain a advantage over players that try that same tactic.@@Crow77
for the first example, if im sitting on East, why wouldnt I discard the 2 Wests assuming it isnt West Round? Am I not unable to form a Yaku with them unless its West Round or im sitting on West? Would they still count as pair Triplet even tho they dont count as a yaku themselves?
You could still keep them as a pair for Riichi + Pinfu and if not keep them as safe discards in case someone calls Riichi before you and your hand isn’t close to finishing.
