Would you chi/pon in this situation?

[saitym]

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Not quite WWYD but I came up across an interesting situation when I was playing on tenhou and I thought I'll share it with you. I've come across some examples in mahjong strategy books where they recommend weird chis and pons in certain situations and I thought the one above kind of fitted the situation for an out of the ordinary chi so I decided to chi in the hope for either a ittsu, sanshoku or a west tenpai.

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I was getting excited because I have never attempted this kind of chi before and soon enough I draw and then luckily a and then my destined tile to win a measly 1000 points after so much effort.

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My question is though, will you be able to chi this if you came across the exact same situation ? and also do you have any crazy chis or pons that you did that ended up in your favour?

[saitym]

probably got the forum wrong on second look but don't know how to fix it so I'll leave it as it is

[or2az]

For what it's worth, I would not call that chi at that point in the hand. For me, especially 20,000 points behind, it's too early to open the hand, if at all.
Maybe if the pair were terminals or honors, instead of the .....
I wouldn't say what you did was crazy, you had a sanshoku/ittsu feeling and went for it. This time, it worked.
It's nice that you were "getting excited due to never having attempted this kind of chi before". I do it all the time, mostly when I get the "feeling" that I'm going to get that tile I need for an atozuke win, but it's not a habit I'd like to keep long-term, because I hate it when it doesn't work out.
This time, it worked, barely.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=53247&start=45#p57759

In the words of singer Carole King, from Sweet Seasons;

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose
And most times you choose between the two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-8HYbYYW1U

note: I believe Shirluban can move this thread quite easily to Reach Mahjong, or wherever, if he deems it necessary.

[Shirluban]

I wouldn't have called that early in the game, too.
If I had a , , or , maybe. But maybe not, because the hand probably won't worth much if open.

PS: I've moved it to WWYD (as What Would You Do).

[xKime]

I don't think your current round situation (East 2's second discard of a hanchan, no-dealer, and not to mention 3 people flat with 1 person flying with over 20k) merits calling a no-dora hand to turn a bad shape 3shanten into a bad shape 2shanten (with the prospect of a bad shape tenpai that would not only be most likely slow, but also require further calling of tiles).

However, under a different situation (all last agari jouken), this could be a viable option.

Luck played a factor in cashing in this hand without any casualties, but I think this chii is more poison than it is medication. The impact of winning the hand itself is also very low.

As far as crazy calls go, I do remember a mahjong night where we were going into our 6th hanchan, last game, and I was about to get into my first 4th place; I needed 1st place that hanchan to end up 1st overall for the night, but honestly I just didn't want to end the night with a last place. I was last in oorasu and needed yakuman to make it into first place, and my hand was just a mess of terminals, honors and unconnected tiles. I kept a Kokushi 3shanten for most of the hand, with some winds paired up, but eventually one of the terminals died. Then I absolutely changed my course of action by calling a 9s pon. In the last 6 discards, I somehow managed to pon two winds, draw the third set, and got a tanki wait on the last wind. I was haitei, and my tile wasn't coming out, neither was I drawing it.

Then last draw came in. It was the wind I needed to complete my yakuman. Shou Suu Shii tsumo on the last tile for a comeback. I don't think it was a crazy development at all, but it was indeed an open hand project I started with vaguely any hope at all that ended up with a really lucky result.

[riastradh]

I think it is easy to have hindsight bias in this situation, so I have to admit that I do not think I would chi the tile in this situation. Perhaps if I managed to close the gap with a or to make the straight more secure and that came later in the round, but definitely not so soon.

I agree that you were very lucky and the risk paid off, but I'm not sure that 1000 points was really worth it.

[Barticle]

Hey Kime, great to see you back on the forum. I see you're still in the top 10 users (by post count) - in fact you're currently tied for 6th place with Tom, but he gets head bump because he joined before you.

That's a pretty epic last-hand comeback right there! They can use this for the last few episodes of season 1 of the Kime anime (anikime?) when they make one.

PS Welcome to the forum, riastradh.

[Referee]

Well, it's the typical hand that you see on an anime and go "yeah, right".

[xKime]

Hey, Bart. Someone linked the thread to me and I just felt I needed to chime in. I definitely need to start posting more like in the old days, specially if we get WWYD dicussions, like this one. I'm typically just posting in Osamuko mahjong Facebook group lately, though. Now that you mention it, since Ben released his manga "I learned about Japan from manga and games", I'd love to get a series called "I learned mahjong from niconico and Tenhou". lol

Calling 7s from this hand is something the old Kawamura would probably do, as you can fish for either the ittsuu or upper sanshoku with chanta and pairing up shaa and whatnot, but my point is I don't think many other players would do it from 3 shanten at the 2nd draw. Now, if the hand was 2 shanten, it's a completely different story, but there is certainly a huge sense of strain in this move this early, with still plenty of draws to work with.

[xKime]

I feel like this call I made today is pretty similar in a way.



Fishing for 567 sanshoku or chun. But I also feel there's a very substantial difference. It's 4 flat scores, on my only dealer turn (east 1 on top of it) of a tonpuusen game where I do have dora, shimocha has already opened up, and winning the hand will actually have an effect in the outcome of the game. I also have to admit having the pair of norths makes me feel a bit safer.

Eventually...



8p comes my way. Obviously, tsumogiri. Tenhou has kuikae disallowed, so keeping this to have a noyaku tenpai would only disable me from calling 5p. Later in the hand I can just get either 58 from anyone for a tenpai shape in case of a draw.

Then...



Suddenly, I have a mangan tenpai for 12 thousand points. On top of that, I feel a lot of relief because three 8m are already out, making me a lot more unlikely to draw it myself.

In the end, though, shimocha was a lot faster and drew his winning tile for Haku+Aka1. It was also really unlucky for me that shimocha was using three of them, do note, though, that he was also extremely lucky to get into tenpai with 2s, because if he had otherwise got tenpai with 47s or 47m, he would have been forced to discard a 5m.

Nevertheless, it's still interesting to point out that even if the hands look similar, the situation is a lot different. One of the reasons why I like tonpuusen so much over hanchan is because every hand has a condition attached to it, much like a hanchan's south round. It makes it very exciting, and you can get a lot of juice out of the logs.

[Ignatius]

Reading this kind of threads is always useful to learn. In sitym´s case I wouldn´t call the chi, it was pointed out is too early in the hand to do so... I think the same.
Cool "almost sanshoku" there xKime. Tôka, Tôka everywhere...

[xKime]

Reading this kind of threads is always useful to learn. In sitym´s case I wouldn´t call the chi, it was pointed out is too early in the hand to do so... I think the same.
Cool "almost sanshoku" there xKime. Tôka, Tôka everywhere...

Note that my tenhou sound effects are also voice clips from Touka I cut myself!

[Ignatius]

Reading this kind of threads is always useful to learn. In sitym´s case I wouldn´t call the chi, it was pointed out is too early in the hand to do so... I think the same.
Cool "almost sanshoku" there xKime. Tôka, Tôka everywhere...

Note that my tenhou sound effects are also voice clips from Touka I cut myself!

Why it doesn´t surprise me?

[Ignatius]

Well, as people are here talking about game situations, I´m interested in opinions about the last hand of this game (It´s a Tonpûsen and it was fast, I think): http://tenhou.net/0/?log=2015031410gm-0 ... c2f3d&tw=0

Still long way to go.

As I said, I´m mostly interested in reading opinions on the last hand. The whole game was just "meh", not too bad, not so good, for me and my decisions... (My playing level is more or less like this, but today I´m extra picky).

I usually play Hanchan because I tend to play more relaxed than in Tonpû games.

[Barticle]

Eventually...

Disappointed. Expected Chinroutou.

[...]since Ben released his manga "I learned about Japan from manga and games", I'd love to get a series called "I learned mahjong from niconico and Tenhou". lol

Ben Boas? Released a manga...?! Wow, I totally missed that.

Found it! http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4093883955/ That's really cool.