WWYD 2014-10-06

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WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by Shirluban » Tue Oct 28, 2014 12:30 pm

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by or2az » Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:39 pm

Let's see, I think I'll hold :west for now, maybe draw another for a pair of dora. Will also hold the 1-bam for now, possibility of a straight (ittsu) if I can draw the 2-bam 4-bam.
I'll also hold the 7-crak for now, maybe a chance at san shoku, if I can draw the 6, 8, or 9, and I think I'll keep the 6-dot 9-dot temporarily, until I see which pattern of san shoku I might lean toward, the 678 or 789, depending on which cracks (or dots) I can draw, if any, or other possible draws, such as drawing the 4-bam, which will allow me to toss the 6-dot or by drawing the 9-bam, which will allow me to toss the 9-dot.
So, I guess that leaves me with my choice for the initial discard to be the 3-bam, and then see what happens.
I might even be able to squeeze a pinfu in there somehow.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by cliff168 » Wed Oct 29, 2014 9:48 am

I would discard :west dora here. Other discards sacrifice too much in tile efficiency. If you discard 3-bam for example, you're giving up so many uke-ire towards a good shape pinfu 1-shanten ( 6-crak 8-crak 5-dot 7-dot ) . Discarding 7-crak or 6-dot likewise results in loss of many effective tiles, and discarding 1-bam takes away ittsu opportunity. This hand already has a lot of potential value (sanshoku, ittsu), even a pinfu-nomi riichi as dealer is very good, so there is no need to vastly reduce your uke-ire for the chance of drawing one of the three other dora. Also, the longer you hold onto it the more dangerous it becomes.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by saitym » Thu Oct 30, 2014 5:21 am

My initial thought was either :west or 1-bam. I think I will discard 1-bam in a hanchan just because even if you leave 1-bam in the hand, I think it's quite hard to tenpai with a ittsu hand. so I would rather have a :west that I can leave in my hand until tenpai with high probability. in other words my aim with this hand is riichi + pinfu and/or sanshoku with possibly two doras completely disregarding the slim ittsu posisibility because in my opnion I think the probablity of getting a :west pair by leaving :west is higher than getting ittsu by leaving 1-bam before tenpai. 6-dot is also a possibility if you want to create an open hand with yaku as naki/open-sanshoku or ittsu with :west pair or :west tanki wait, but i'll probaly not go down this route

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by deJENNerate » Wed Nov 05, 2014 8:51 am

I would discard :west here too. I am ahead and I need to get the win as dealer so I want a flexible hand and I don't want to be afraid to discard the dora later.

However, on the next draw I would surely get another dora and have to discard it again. But I'll be embarrassed for not keeping it so I'll discard a different tile that actually hurts my hand and then I'll lose the hand, mad at myself for discarding dora.

But I'd still discard dora probably 100 times or so.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by mrfeng » Wed Nov 12, 2014 12:46 pm

Ittsu is not confirmed. San sho ku is not confirmed. Pinfu is not confirmed as well. With no confirmed yaku, no aka-dora, you current hand progression is at riichi-nomi.

By simple risk-benefit analysis, the worst discard here is dora :west .

Consider the risk of toimen getting your :west pon. His hand immediately becomes mangan while your hand remains at riichi nomi and bad shape and you can't defend. It is also rather pointless to give the player in 2nd position, a big chance to catch up to you.

A general rule is that not to make your hand any worse. When your hand shape is already bad, it is detrimental to make it worse. So discarding 3-bam here is bad as well. It will make your hand fully rely on 2-bam to tenpai or to win. It is fine if you already have 4-bam, but the problem is you don't. your ittsu is not confirmed and therefore you wouldn't want your hand to end up riichi nomi on 2-bam wait.

Discarding 1-bam will give you most flexibility. Killing off the probability of ittsu is fine here because you don't have another pair. By keeping 1-bam for ittsu, it means upon drawing 2-bam , your pair has to be relied on 6-dot 9-dot . Remember that :west has already been discarded here. Your hand will eventually become more risky because you cannot dama 6-dot 9-dot . You have to riichi and it is cheap if you drew 7-bam.

Keeping :west here is important because as mentioned, you don't want to tell your opponents that you hand is cheap, neither do you want to give toimen a chance to upgrade his hand to mangan. If 2nd :west arrives, there is no need to even look at san sho ku. Rii-pin dora dora is totally sufficient. In the worst case scenerio, you will be discarding sha to riichi for rii-pin hand. However, at least this is a good hand shape to win and higher value. When upon tenpai if you think west is too dangerous to be discarded, you can always discard your pair of 3-bam and aim to tanki :west . Do remember that forsaking a win of riichi-pinfu (not expensive) hand is totally fine. This is because by giving :west , or a open mangan hand to anybody, you will lose 4k from his tsumo. That will destroy your lead.

There are many detrimental effects of discarding dora. If you don't manage the risk of discarding dora, don't discard it.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by or2az » Wed Nov 12, 2014 4:55 pm

This may not be important but you state above that :west 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.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by cliff168 » Thu Nov 13, 2014 3:11 am

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 1-bam and :west , if you discard 1-bam , and then draw 4-bam or 7-bam , you will end up having to discard :west anyway. If you draw 6-crak 8-crak 5-dot or 7-dot , you will most likely have to discard :west anyway for your pinfu riichi. If you draw 5-crak 9-crak 4-dot 8-dot , those still have potential for pinfu (even sanshoku in the case of 9-crak ), and you will likely have to discard :west 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 7-crak 6-dot or 9-dot , you only have possibility for riichi nomi and no option to call for ittsu tenpai. If you draw 2-bam , that is just a plain backfire.

On the other hand, if you discard :west , you will be sad if you draw another :west , and you lose the small chance of a richii with tanki dora wait. Regarding the danger level of :west 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 :west at this early stage in the hand is low.

Comparing the situations, the loss/risk from discarding :west is lower than from discarding 1-bam .

If :west 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.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by mrfeng » Mon Nov 17, 2014 1:01 pm

or2az wrote:This may not be important but you state above that :west 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.
I referring to a hypothetical situation if one chooses discard west over 1sou in this turn.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by mrfeng » Mon Nov 17, 2014 1:06 pm

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 1-bam and :west , if you discard 1-bam , and then draw 4-bam or 7-bam , you will end up having to discard :west anyway. If you draw 6-crak 8-crak 5-dot or 7-dot , you will most likely have to discard :west anyway for your pinfu riichi. If you draw 5-crak 9-crak 4-dot 8-dot , those still have potential for pinfu (even sanshoku in the case of 9-crak ), and you will likely have to discard :west 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 7-crak 6-dot or 9-dot , you only have possibility for riichi nomi and no option to call for ittsu tenpai. If you draw 2-bam , that is just a plain backfire.

On the other hand, if you discard :west , you will be sad if you draw another :west , and you lose the small chance of a richii with tanki dora wait. Regarding the danger level of :west 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 :west at this early stage in the hand is low.

Comparing the situations, the loss/risk from discarding :west is lower than from discarding 1-bam .

If :west 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.

What's your course of action when west dora has been ponned by toimen? Will you blame on luck?


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.

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"

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.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by cliff168 » Wed Nov 19, 2014 9:34 am

mrfeng wrote:
What's your course of action when west dora has been ponned by toimen? Will you blame on luck?
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.
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.
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.
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: 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"
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: 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.
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,
1-crak 2-crak 7-crak 1-bam 3-bam 3-bam 6-bam 7-bam 8-bam 2-dot 4-dot 7-dot 9-dot :west . 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 1-bam becomes a 3-crak , then we would discard 3-crak 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?

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by mrfeng » Thu Nov 20, 2014 8:02 am

cliff168 wrote:
mrfeng wrote:
What's your course of action when west dora has been ponned by toimen? Will you blame on luck?
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.
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.
So after the pon, you will proceed to discard 1-bam and 9-dot , am i right to say that?

cliff168 wrote:
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.
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,
1-crak 2-crak 7-crak 1-bam 3-bam 3-bam 6-bam 7-bam 8-bam 2-dot 4-dot 7-dot 9-dot :west . 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 1-bam becomes a 3-crak , then we would discard 3-crak 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?
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.

If is 3-crak instead of 1-bam , i will go with 6-dot.


By the way, on another point, you are keeping 1-bam mainly for ittsu right? There are 4 2-bam to get to half completed ittsu which is 2 han correct? There are 3 :west to be drawn to give you a confirmed 2 han. I rather hope to draw another west then to hope to draw a 2-bam that still doesn't give me a confirmed 2han.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by cliff168 » Thu Nov 20, 2014 9:20 am

1) Of course, it depends on what you draw, if toimen makes another call, etc.

2) Yes, of course ittsu is a factor, but the key is flexibility of the hand and danger of keeping dora for too long. In general, you shouldn't fix your pair with a hand like this, ittsu potential is just an added benefit. Still, you can't just simply compare the value of 1-bam to your hand and the value of :west to your hand (it's true that the confirmed 2 han is better than the unconfirmed 2 han, but drawing 2-bam is not the only scenario that benefits from keeping 1-bam ). My point remains, even if the value of west is greater for your hand, it's far more likely to turn out to be a burden to you than it is to help you.

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by mrfeng » Thu Nov 20, 2014 1:54 pm

1) Depends what kind of draw? So you will take toimen as tenpai upon 2nd meld and continue to push when he has 1 meld?

2) if not for 2-bam , what's other function of keeping 1-bam ? You mentioned flexibility, so what's the flexibility here besides leaving space for 2-bam ?

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Re: WWYD 2014-10-06

Post by cliff168 » Fri Nov 21, 2014 3:55 am

1) I was just giving examples of what would influence your decision making moving forward. We can talk about probability of being tenpai with one open meld in early rounds or two open melds in early rounds or one open meld in the middle rounds or how many times he discards from the hand or what he is discarding vs the expected value of your hand and so on, but that is entirely another discussion and has nothing to do with whether 1s or west is the superior discard. You can't analyze what you would do at a future point in time without seeing how the hand unfolded up to that point.

2) The iishanten shape when you draw 7-crak 6-dot or 9-dot is better if you had kept 1-bam rather than :west . If you keep :west and don't draw another one, you just have a ticking time bomb. If you keep 1-bam and don't draw 2-bam before you draw any other of the many effective tiles, it's not really a big deal.

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