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Early in the 1st hand of the match. dora inconsequential. non-dealer

I'd hope to turn this hand into toitoi + sanankō, or even sūankō.
So it's a choice between 5m and 7m.
Keeping 5m means I can switch to iipeikō + menzen tsumo; it's not that great, but not that bad either.
Discarding 5m means I'm not even tenpai.

makes sense.
one more question.
If the last two pungs were exposed, and the 9 bams were, let's say, 8 bams instead, would tossing the be a decent tenpai option too?
Or would we still aim for toi-toi?

I picked too for the same reasons as Shirluban. I would not call pon on any tile, but I don't think calling pon is bad if you want to. (5m is hard to use completely in other players' hands with 2 4m and 2 6m, especially if 4m/6m is the tile discarded, and there's still a suuankou chance, and you could riichi later if you wanted to.)

or2az wrote: If the last two pungs were exposed, and the 9 bams were, let's say, 8 bams instead, would tossing the be a decent tenpai option too?
Or would we still aim for toi-toi?

If you're like me (really low risk style, low 1st place rate but really low 4th place rate), I think you can discard but I'd do it only if you're worried about other players' hands being close to tenpai and possibly expensive. If dora being inconsequential means they're not in other players' hands because they've been discarded, or they're hard to use, like the 1p behind the triplet of 2p and maybe one is discarded already, then even I would probably discard 7m and go for toitoi and I would call pon in this case.

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