I either play this on my computer -Barticle wrote:Sounds like you're progressing well.
When learning yaku it makes sense to focus on the ones which occur more frequently. Some of the low value ones are actually extremely rare, especially san kantsu (three kongs) which is only worth two han (doubles) but I've never completed it.It's more rare than several of the yakuman hands.
The top-ten most common yaku in order (most frequent first) are: riichi, yakuhai (pung of dragon, seat wind or round wind), tanyao (all simples), pinfu, menzen tsumo (self-draw win with concealed hand), honitsu (half flush), iipeikou (pure double chow), toi-toi (all triplets), sanshoku doujun (mixed triple chow) and chii-toitsu (seven pairs). I've omitted ippatsu ("one-shot" instant win after riichi) since that's a matter of luck. If you want a full list of yaku (and yakuman) in frequency order then check the appropriate sections of my PDF guide (link in sig).
In Japanese mahjong you'll spend a lot of time going for a pinfu hand since chow sets (123, 456, etc) are the easiest to make, and you'll hope to combine this with riichi, ippatsu (luck), tanyao, self-draw win (luck), dora bonus tiles and - less commonly - with other compatible yaku.
Some links to English articles on discard-reading were collated in the first reply to this thread:
http://www.reachmahjong.com/en/forum/vi ... =5&t=50379
Much of that is quite advanced for your first couple of weeks though. When you decide to "fold" (switch to purely defensive play) you can go a long way with basic defence by simply taking advantage of the furiten rule, i.e. if someone calls riichi you should try to discard only tiles that either a) the riichi player has discarded already or b) one of the other two players has just discarded.
Where are you currently playing by the way - on a video-game or website?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edUqg_o0vJo (video of the game)
or go on tenhou to play against people.
