Dude, where's the strategy?

[Fat*Dragon]

According to our little conversation here (which I presume to be one of the most helpful treatise on playing on Tenhou - at least for me) I rearranged my style of play to the necessities of Tenhou. There are a lot of things left to be learned but as of writing this I can say that I got much better in my games. Sure, it's not always fun to see streaks of 33213313341 but at the end this is a way I can live with. It takes a whole lot discipline but that's the way I like it. I never thought that riichi is only about ponning and chiing. There are other variants of mahjong which are better suited for this way of play.

"Fourth place avoidance" as xKime calls it, is crucial for progression. Since I'm not a paying member of Tenhou this is the way for me. I like the idea of "against all odds" since this is it when you consider how many points you loose when you end in 4th place and how many points one gets when beeing 1st place. And I've seen that the discrepancy between points beeing awarded/subtracted gets bigger and bigger the higher you climb the dan ledder. Oh well.

What did I learn from all this? I think the main point is that one has to check for the given circumstances. Then you've got to define your goals. Based on that you can develop your strategy. Within that everbody has much room to be creative and find different, maybe more maybe less enjoyable, ways to one's goal. I wouldn't have considered xKime's advice to play "east only" rounds until you get to the dan rooms (because east/south rounds could be considered kind of wasted time) appropriate for me. This would kill some of the flavour of the game. And I also think there's a risk to get accustomed to bad playing habits because "east only" rounds also call for other tactics (I think there's more tile calling involved because the game is shorter). But everyone is free to decide which way suits one best.

As I started out on ９級 I never thought about overall strategies and game tactics. And I have to say that there are some good sources on the net on how to play skillful, build and compiled by very commmited people. A lot has changed since I started playing. Because of posts like this one here I can see that the overall level of play IS rising even if its subject is "Dude, where's the strategy", a title which I took out of temporary frustration. Hopefully we see even more great articles and posts on strategy and tactics on the internet in the future...

Thanks guys!

[xKime]

I'm glad your topic served you purpouse, and it feels good to have helped. I would really like to see the level of tenhou increasing. Now, the people at Phoenix Room are saying that the level on higher dan is really low, and getting lower. Puyo already touched that subject on his blog, so I'm not gonna go there. Not to mention, the level at lower dan is awful, and the open lobby is chaos. If we can get some level of seriousness in the players, it will make the grinding much more enjoyable. Most of the time, when I'm grinding on tenhou, I don't feel like I'm playing for fun but for the sake of rank/rate, and I can't seem to reach 6th dan for the life of me. And I begin to think it's most likely my own fault, but it gets to be very hard to see my own mistakes, and to know what was and wasn't a mistake. I try to be careful and not judge decissions based on immediate results. So, it's very hard to judge myself critically. By exposing and writing about my theories or "the way I play," I expect someone pro to tell me "you're wrong, and you should do it this way" as to better understand what I should do. Still, people normally don't comment such things on my blog.

There are great resources about mahjong in Japanese. Most resources in English are what new authors call "old tactics." That is, authors crazy about tile efficiency and number of winning tiles who value a double wait more than a closed wait sanshoku, but still, playing with ippatsu and the reverse and red doras, I think they are not that wrong. Riichi, ippatsu, tsumo, ura or red dora already gives you a mangan, so who needs to learn to stack yaku, right? ...

My point is, be critical about the resources you use. Who is the author? What style of mahjong does s/he play? And most importantly: What is -your- purpouse?

Knowing for what purpouse you play mahjong is very important, as it will determine what style of play you are better off with. What is your goal? If you want to play mahjong for fun, then all you need to learn is how to win a hand and just go for it all the time. But, if you want to, I don't know, win tournaments or leagues, there is a different strategy involved and therefore a different way to play. If you want to level up in a mahjong client, of course you have other strategies. And even so, you probably will shine more under certain rules. For me, it's probably open tan yao with no red dora, with ippatsu and ura, East Wind only. But I rarely play that. My objective is to become a decent player long rate term, and I eventually want to reach 7th Dan 2000R at tenhou to play in houou. And thusly, eventually, hold enough mahjong knowledge to succesfully pass a pro test and keep playing for the rest of my life, and make a small living of it by either writing, playing, working at a jansou or anything related really. Even selling tile sets would work for me. And that's why I try to learn and improve from any resource, and try different strategies and theories at different rulesets. And I can't seem to find anything that suits me yet.

Anyhow, if your objective is to level up at tenhou and acquire average knowledge on the game, then just keep playing and reading articles and you'll be "okay."

If you want to become really good, I suggest you learn Japanese, read the theory posted at JPML's site, at beginners.biz, and read the blogs of mahjong pros and of some 9th Dan players of Tenhou. Buy books, read them and learn from them, especially if they have some WWYD problems with some truly helpful insight. Familiarize yourself with pro tests and what you should know to pass them.

Anyhow, wall of text. Just saying, you may do as you please...