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An ittsu in bamboo is worth the same as sanshoku would be, but you won't be able to score both, and the ittsu will necessarily complete before sanshoku, so why bother with the lackluster [-89]d shape? I'd be looking for the ittsu in bamboo, but I'd hold on to the extra 3b for a bit in case I want to take the three-sided wait instead (in which case I'd discard the 9b). If we're lucky, we'll draw another 9d and complete our pair before becoming tenpai, but we may end up switching it out for something else (if we draw 6c or 9c I would prefer that pair wait, if we draw 9b we can give up on the ittsu and take the three-sided wait we saved).

Winning anything here as dealer would improve my situation massively. Just riichi-tsumo-dora1 cuts the deficit from 13000 to 5000. I'm racing against the leader's open hand, and the speed difference between the 258s three-way and the 8s kanchan is huge. The 9s serves no purpose when it comes to tile efficiency. Keeping the 89p makes 7p and 3467s get me into tenpai, while the 3s enables 36s and 7p; just too many backfires. The only backfire from discarding 9s is the 8s that would have granted ittsuu, and even that gets me into tenpai. An ittsuu dora1 would be nice for scoring, but damaten won't scare the west and his hand has all the chances to outspeed mine.

I'm with . Going for sanshoku entails taking apart the bamboo shape that could go somewhere in favor of a bad 8-9 pin single wait. Tossing is premature, but my top priority in this desperate situation is keeping the deal. If the itsuu shape doesn't come out and a pinfu does, I'll reach on it.

I'd go with either or , as pointed out earlier Itsu scores the same as San Shoku (although might be slightly easier to read, if we're left waiting for Bamboo) but is more flexible if the yaku fails to materialise. Given my lack of Mahjong knowledge, is there much behind discarding the first? I'm thinking keeps an initial illusion of Tan Yao at first in my naive mind

drivershigh wrote:Given my lack of Mahjong knowledge, is there much behind discarding the first? I'm thinking keeps an initial illusion of Tan Yao at first in my naive mind

Terminal tiles and honors are (usually) safer, so it's nice to keep them to have a safe tile to discard when the table becomes dangerous.

Here, it makes little difference, but discarding the before the is still better according to game theory.
For the "illusion of Tan Yao", it don't make much difference either.

Shirluban wrote:Terminal tiles and honors are (usually) safer, so it's nice to keep them to have a safe tile to discard when the table becomes dangerous.

Here, it makes little difference, but discarding the before the is still better according to game theory.
For the "illusion of Tan Yao", it don't make much difference either.

Thanks for the reply, I can see why that line of thinking is better.