This is great. I've been learning for a few days and I figured out to do pretty much everything you talked about just by thinking about what I'm doing. This video helps me validate what I've been doing.
I have been playing for a month or so and had figured out most of this, but the section about the order of discarding guest winds was very interesting. Great video, very informative and concise. Definitely glad to know I'm on the right track!
Good video! 1d on tenhou weighing in with my amateurish opinion here haha. Like you said, so much of this is down to style and knowing when to break with the strategies. So I thought I'd share my own. Personally, I usually find myself cutting the double wind even before terminals, when I'm in a non-round position, but it's purely a gut move based on how many games I've played where the double wind player lucks into the pair draw very early. I'm also more comfortable going for outside hands, so I don't mind the terminals so much. Also of consideration in my own play is the idea of pretending that you're building a hand that you're not. For instance, I try to look for chances to make it look like I'm going for all simples when I have a yakuhai (discarding isolated terminals and honors for as long as I possibly can even at the expense of shape), or to make it look like I'm building an outside hand when I'm going for tanyao, or for a chance to pretend I don't have honitsu when I do. In the latter two cases, it comes down to looking for isolated tiles to cut from the overall shape, with an eye for the eventual wait I'm creating. Deception is so key to high level play, and there can be a real back and forth of players targeting each other. Information control is paramount once you start climbing. A mahjong hand is like a bonsai tree that you gradually try to prune into something good, and it's such an art. I just love the game. Anyway thanks for the vid! It's super important to get a handle on this kind of concept, and I'm sure videos like this help a great deal. Not to mention exposing the game to more people!
Yep! Pinfu is, by literal translation, something like "without fu," so as long as your hand doesn't score any fu, it qualifies. Your pair only gets you fu if it is a round wind, seat wind, dragon, or your final wait!
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).
Thanks! I'll definitely take a look at what I can discuss on that one. In the meantime, Feng has a presentation that has a few examples, a bit less than halfway through - take a look if you haven't! His slides are great. mahjong.guide/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Riichi-Strategies-Workshop-2018-by-Feng.pdf
I am new to playing Japanese Mahjong. I tend to hold on the Winds unless I can get a hand without Terminals for the need of honor tiles since some games I can't manage to get my hands on point scoring dragons, seat wind or round wind. So I tend to discard tiles that are the least useful in my hand. Like types of which I have 1 or 2 that don't make a pair or sequence. But sometimes if they do, I tend to discard a tile that can add more value but are harder to build like a 8 Sou when I have the following Sou tiles 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 for example. What Wind I discard usually depends on the discards of my opponents.
One thing I adopt is, if I have a 1 and a 4 - or a 9 and 6 - of any suit in my hand, I make that 1 or 9 my priority discard above all others if I'm not going for chanta. Reason being that 1s and 9s only ever make runs that the 4s and 6s all would also benefit from, so those central tiles would be stealing from the edge tiles
I just got into mahjong, it's a difficult game imo but a lot of fun if you get it right. I guess remembering the different yakus is what I need to practice at the most. Great video btw, I'll be sure to implement it in my games! Also, have you ever considered voice acting as an argonian in skyblivion? 😂 That is by no means an insult, you have a nice, slightly raspy voice 👍
Welcome to the game! It's super deep, an extremely high skill ceiling in my opinion. The yaku are kind of complicated overall, but memorizing them helps a lot- unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of tips for that, it's just recognition over time. I've never really looked into voice acting, but thanks! I'll probably stick with commentary for mahjong tournaments for now, but maybe I'll look into it in the future.
Late but i feel like an important note is that in many rule sets each player discarding the same wind on the first turn can restart the hand right away as such if you have a great starting hand think twice about discarding a wind
Eh, I wouldn't necessarily say "many"... it's really mostly online. Any tournament or competitive atmosphere really doesn't play with any redeal rules. That said, it is incredibly unlikely. If you really want to help mitigate it, if it's an option, start with a south wind discard. The south position is less likely to follow by dealing their own wind, reducing the likelihood of a redeal.
The south player is less likely to immediately follow with a discard of their own wind, especially in South round (as it is a double yaku there), with only 1 discarded. It's extremely marginal, but a rare corner case may be mitigated by it. However, the south player us very likely to follow with a west or north discard if you drop them instead, since those winds are meaningless to them, and west and north are more likely to follow suit than south, since there are already 2 or 3 out at that point.
Hi there! I've been working on sound quality issues and am going through speech therapy to correct a known issue- a lot of the newer videos should be improved. Thanks for the feedback!
I'm a complete beginner trying to learn this game and this video was helpful. I was wondering, why do you typically discard the isolated terminals before the dragon tiles? I had found myself doing it the other way around, since the dragons can never form runs. Is it to do with dragons being necessary to more high-scoring hands, or something like that?
Welcome to the game! Not necessarily high scoring hands, but a dragon triplet is a super easy yaku to be able to put down and make a quick hand. If you are going for value, though, isolated terminals aren't the best either- they only make bad wait runs, so while it may be a little easier to integrate them, they're lower value overall. So generally, I feel the upside of getting something good from holding a yakuhai outweighs the somewhat worse odds of using it. Of course, it does depend a bit on the hand, and what it needs. If you have 123 in two suits already, it would certainly make sense to hold an isolated 1 in the last suit over a dragon.
Idk if you're still wondering but a lot of pros will hold onto guest wind doras for a few turns then discard if no pair shows up. If you discard on like turn 4 or 5 it hits kind of a middle point where you have some chance of getting another but not waiting so long that it becomes a tile you can never discard, if that makes any sense. Definitely a bad idea to discard lone guest wind dora tiles right off the bat just IMO unless your hand is pretty much entirely finished without that tile (or someone else threw the tile already, making it unlikely to get a pair)
Yeah, I brought it up in a later video... Basically I have a paralyzed vocal chord that causes my voice to be much deeper and more gravelly than it should be. I've been working on it, and I'm doing a bit better now!
