WWYD 2014-10-06
Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 12:30 pm
The Only way to Play!
http://www.reachmahjong.com/en/forum/
http://www.reachmahjong.com/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=53339
I referring to a hypothetical situation if one chooses discard west over 1sou in this turn.or2az wrote:This may not be important but you state above that has already been discarded here. I don't see that.
Would that affect any of your reasoning?
I assume that you would, and I agree, still hold on to the west dora.
cliff168 wrote:If it is South 3, then someone tsumo'ing mangan is a big deal, but it is East 3. With this type of point situation in East 3 of a hanchan, you can practically consider it even. With this in mind, in addition to being dealer, your policy at the beginning of the hand should be to proceed to tenpai as swiftly as possible. Speed is your priority, value of your hand/safety if someone else attacks, is secondary. This is true in general, but especially for the dealer because winning means someone else didn't self draw as well as the added potential value of renchan.
Now comparing the difference between discarding and , if you discard , and then draw or , you will end up having to discard anyway. If you draw or , you will most likely have to discard anyway for your pinfu riichi. If you draw , those still have potential for pinfu (even sanshoku in the case of ), and you will likely have to discard for tenpai as well. In all those scenarios, you would have wished you discarded it immediately rather than wait and increase the probability it is called. In addition, if you draw or , you only have possibility for riichi nomi and no option to call for ittsu tenpai. If you draw , that is just a plain backfire.
On the other hand, if you discard , you will be sad if you draw another , and you lose the small chance of a richii with tanki dora wait. Regarding the danger level of at the current moment, it is low. From the discard pool no honittsu or chanta is apparent, and unlike sangenpai dora only West can call this for yakuhai, and the odds that west specifically, has 2 at this early stage in the hand is low.
Comparing the situations, the loss/risk from discarding is lower than from discarding .
If passes and I get into preemptive tenpai even with a bad wait, I would still riichi since the odds of someone having a hand worth enough to fight a dealer riichi is lower and most likely everyone will just fold to me.
Sure, I'll blame it on luck. I already made my decision that discarding west at this point in time is the optimal move, and as we all know the optimal move doesn't always produce the desired result. If I don't blame it on luck, then what do I blame it on, that I made a mistake? So since toimen ponned the west dora I discarded, I made a mistake. This type of result based theory is useless for any real discussion.mrfeng wrote:
What's your course of action when west dora has been ponned by toimen? Will you blame on luck?
Of course, since the tile that is eventually not needed is a potential dora yakuhai for toimen, extra consideration is needed (as compared to if we drew east, which we can instantly tsumokiri). I already weighed the benefit and risk in my prior post. We are not simply discarding dora because it is not needed, but because not discarding it sacrifices speed/value potential + the opportunity to discard it when it is safer.mrfeng wrote: It really depends on how you manage your risk in this risk management game.
It is easy to see what tiles eventually is not needed, which in this case most likely is the dora. But discarding the dora just because you eventually do not need it is a very weak reason in my opinion. All the hands you play, you envision it to reach tenpai but in reality, you don't see it happening majority of the time. Even when you do reach tenpai, you might not win it.
If everything else about the situation is the same as in this WWYD, then obviously you cannot discard the 3rd dragon tile, but you are comparing apples and oranges.mrfeng wrote: Do you discard the 3rd dragon tile when a player has melded the first 2 dragon sets at 5th turn? Will you discard it with the reason that "it is early in the game and there is a low chance that he is lucky enough to have the 3rd pair"
I don't understand what you mean by "a concrete plan on managing the risk of discarding the dora," does that mean finding toimen and pulling his internet if he pons the dora? As for the benefit of pushing our 2 shanten hand, consider this hand,mrfeng wrote: My main point is, unless you have a concrete plan on managing the risk of discarding the dora OR have lots of benefit such that it outweighs the risk via discarding the dora, you do not discard it. The problem with this hand is that even though it appear to have lots of potential to develop into a high value hand, it has yet to materialise to any. It is not near to materialise into any of the possibility. All are like 2shanten (tiles to waiting) to materialising to a good shape/value hand. Only if it does materialise, it gives you concrete benefit to push with discarding the dora even though it is dangerous. That is the point whereby you can weigh the risk and benefit accurately and even choose to fold or tanki dora.
The shanten is important.
Consider this:
A 2han tenpai hand worth 2k.
How much does a 5han 1shanten hand worth?
The answer is 0.
The rationale: You can't win when your hand is not in tenpai.
It is a fundamental concept but many of us tend to be blinded by value and/or speed of the hand.
So after the pon, you will proceed to discard and , am i right to say that?cliff168 wrote:Sure, I'll blame it on luck. I already made my decision that discarding west at this point in time is the optimal move, and as we all know the optimal move doesn't always produce the desired result. If I don't blame it on luck, then what do I blame it on, that I made a mistake? So since toimen ponned the west dora I discarded, I made a mistake. This type of result based theory is useless for any real discussion.mrfeng wrote:
What's your course of action when west dora has been ponned by toimen? Will you blame on luck?
If toimen does pon the west dora, then like always, just proceed according to the situation. You can easily betaori if you need to, or if you have good draws you can make an attack/defend judgement based on the situation.
This is not the point I wish to illustrate. The point I am trying to illustrate is to not overestimate the value of potential ssk/ittsu at the expense of discarding a dora.cliff168 wrote:I don't understand what you mean by "a concrete plan on managing the risk of discarding the dora," does that mean finding toimen and pulling his internet if he pons the dora? As for the benefit of pushing our 2 shanten hand, consider this hand,mrfeng wrote: My main point is, unless you have a concrete plan on managing the risk of discarding the dora OR have lots of benefit such that it outweighs the risk via discarding the dora, you do not discard it. The problem with this hand is that even though it appear to have lots of potential to develop into a high value hand, it has yet to materialise to any. It is not near to materialise into any of the possibility. All are like 2shanten (tiles to waiting) to materialising to a good shape/value hand. Only if it does materialise, it gives you concrete benefit to push with discarding the dora even though it is dangerous. That is the point whereby you can weigh the risk and benefit accurately and even choose to fold or tanki dora.
The shanten is important.
Consider this:
A 2han tenpai hand worth 2k.
How much does a 5han 1shanten hand worth?
The answer is 0.
The rationale: You can't win when your hand is not in tenpai.
It is a fundamental concept but many of us tend to be blinded by value and/or speed of the hand.
. Similarly, it is 2 shanten, but it is not difficult to see the difference between this hand and the one we are discussing.
If someone is in riichi, then I can understand your stance that we need a "concrete benefit" (i.e. tenpai) to even consider justifying discarding a dangerous tile, but that is not the case here. Why put yourself at a disadvantage and wait until you are tenpai to make your risk-benefit judgement? Let's say that in our hand the becomes a , then we would discard because there is no concrete benefit to justify the risk of discarding dora, right?
You should be making risk-benefit decision with every discard, not only once you reach tenpai, and in this case I determined the benefit of discarding the dora outweighs the risk at this point in time.
So a hand is only worth something when it is tenpai, and a 1 shanten hand is worth 0 because it can't win immediately. To get to tenpai, you need to be 1 shanten, and to get to 1 shanten, you need to be 2 shanten. Maybe the 1 shanten hand is worth 0, but its expected value is certainly not 0, since it can reach tenpai and win with positive probability. Since our 2 shanten hand is worth 0, there is no way that the benefit can outweigh the risk of discarding dora? If someone else is tenpai, I understand that the expected value of our hand drops immensely, since not only do you have to get your tiles but your opponent has to not win as well, but that is not the case here as it is the 5th turn and no one is obviously in tenpai. Why can't the expected value of our 2 shanten hand outweigh the risk of discarding dora?