Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

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Yukun
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Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by Yukun » Tue Feb 10, 2009 11:58 am

I was just curious, how many of you truly believe in \"Nagare\"?

Direct translation of this term maybe \"The Tide of Luck\".

You know... when you feel like you can tsumo any thing you wish to. Or you can win mangan-hands twice or three times in row.

I wanted to compare this tendency between Japanese players and Western players.
Actually, In Japan, elder generation tends to believe in Nagare; on the other hand, young generation tends to believe in actual numbers and probability (so called -Digital Mahjong-)

please tell me your opinion about this issue!

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by chalwa » Tue Feb 10, 2009 12:06 pm

I belive in it because i experinece it all the time XD
Maybe thats beacause i\'m still not very good player, but there are times when i play (on tenhou) with 2-3dan players and there I won and won very nice hands. And there are times when i play good (not many mistakes, and good tiles coming up), but there is player with 4kyu and he keeps wining... Also I think that in mahjong there are things that cannot be calculated, that you feel from tiles :] (maybe I feel it because i\'m bad palyer and dont know how to name it in mathematical therms or whatever).

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by WorTeX » Tue Feb 10, 2009 12:32 pm

I don\'t believe in flow of the game, but I think I believe in luck.

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by gemma » Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:04 pm

I\'m a big believer in luck or \'nagare\'.

Sometimes I get stuck in a terrible streak of bad luck. You know when you don\'t even seem to able to form a hand, and when you do manage to, you throw a tile to some monster hand.

The past month I\'ve had the worst luck in poker an mahjong. I guess if you compared across a year, the bad luck averages out....

But I was never one for maths!

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by carl » Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:31 am

LOL Gemma said what i was going to say practically word for word. i see all the time that one player usually dominates a game, getting good opening hands and draws, while others (like myself lately) just have terrible luck and have to really struggle just to win a cheap hand. and it seems lately that when i do get in tenpai or 1 away i get ron\'d if i try to progress. i guess i believe more in a tide of bad luck.

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by Yorac » Wed Feb 11, 2009 5:44 am

Of course there\'s some \"luck\"(I\'d just like to call it probability) involved in the drawing of the tiles, as they\'re in quite a random order(Unless someone in the table has some serious sleight of hand).

But then it\'s another deal what you make of those tiles you\'ve drawn, which has absolutely nothing to do with luck. Which imho is the bigger part. Even if you start with a crap hand and your draws are just horrid, skill and experience still minimize the damage or even leave you with some profit.

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by Yttrasil » Wed Feb 11, 2009 7:13 am

As those who read the yakitorionline forums knows I\'m strongly against the whole idea of nagare and would like to use the english words, \"selective thinking\" as a substitute for nagare. Maths and probability is the way to go, both in mahjong and esp. poker for me since believing in nagare there would cost me 1000\'s of dollars. Pure naivety I say and believing in and accounting for nagare will hurt your game...

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by sir_seagill » Wed Feb 11, 2009 9:25 am

thing is, when something of low probability occurs, doesn\'t that constitute as luck? I believe in luck. Sometimes you play on tenhou and get these guys who reach as soon as they\'re tenpai. And they just keep winning - even on single waits. You play defensive and they tsumo. There\'s no way I\'m calling that skill. There\'s too much luck when someone reaches (especially when reach is their only yaku)

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by Esh » Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:22 pm

I don\'t believe in Nagare persé. However, I do believe a person has an inherent amount of luck. I\'ve watched many a time in poker where my sister is able to constantly pull out flushes and full houses, meanwhile, I can barely pull at pair or three of a kind.

But, then again, Luck/statistics is a rather difficult thing to prove. I mean, according to statistics, I should have had at least 2 or maybe even 3 Yakuman hands by now. But the closest I\'ve ever gotten was getting tenpai for a Kokushi on the last tile of the game.

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by Yukun » Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:24 pm

wow thanks for many responses

Certainly, unlike chess, mahjong contains a lot of luck.
However, what I also wanted to ask is \"once you feel the tide of luck -nagare-, do you change your form or style of mahjong?\"

Would you become like \"oh I feel I\'m super lucky today, so I\'m gonna push any situation, riich any hands!!\"

Personally, I cannot deny the tide, but the most important thing is not to change your style, no matter how lucky or unlucky you\'ve faced. Mental things are rather affecting player\'s thinking...I guess

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by HotelFSR » Thu Feb 12, 2009 2:11 am

Holy moly! I am shocked that so many people believe in this!!

Any concept of nagare is more easily explained as bias in your own thinking- you will naturally notice when you win several times in a row, or lose many time in a row. This does not mean that there is some unseen tide. Basic math will explain why this happens.

How many people here believe in ghosts and spirits?

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by oxoboxo » Fri Feb 13, 2009 5:20 am

Haha I believe in it, but its more like I believe that luck can get and does get passed around depending on what happens during a game. Say you give away a big hand and from then on your draws are bad and the other players restrict your hand by either reaching or opening their hands quickly. This is most likely psychological with clouded judgment after a devastating loss, it\'s almost like being on \'tilt\' in poker terms. In other ways once you have the \'flow\' of the game, it seems that either your draws are good, your starting hand is good, and no one else seems to be getting anything. Obviously this doesn\'t happen all the time, but enough for me to see that there is a flow of each round :D I believe it, but I don\'t follow it in the sense that I play loose if I believe that I have the \'flow\'

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Re:Do You Believe in

Post by Esh » Fri Feb 13, 2009 5:42 am

HotelFSR wrote:Holy moly! I am shocked that so many people believe in this!!

Any concept of nagare is more easily explained as bias in your own thinking- you will naturally notice when you win several times in a row, or lose many time in a row. This does not mean that there is some unseen tide. Basic math will explain why this happens.

How many people here believe in ghosts and spirits?
It\'s not that simple, HotelFSR.

If you leave it to basic math, then according to that, every person in the world should average out completely even in all hands. But that never happens. Some people win almost all the time. They never seem to lose ever. While basic math can explain that during a game, can it really explain that kind of "luck" occurring their whole life?

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Re:Do You Believe in

Post by HotelFSR » Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:00 am

It IS that \'simple\', Esh. Rather, it is not as simple as YOU think it is.

Think it through a little.

First off, even the best players can\'t get a combined 1st + 2nd place percentage over 70% in the long run. For most top players it\'s 60% or less. First place percentage is always around 30%. These mythical players you speak of don\'t exist, ask Garthe and Jenn. Nobody wins all the time, only in anime like Akagi.

Probability DOES NOT dictate that all players will win evenly because Mahjong involves some skill in addition to chance. Some players are more skilled than others, and their stats reflect this. Nobody wins all the time, however. This is not a game like Chess where every factor can be controlled. Because some skill is nevertheless required in Mahjong, it is therefore NOT a game like Roulette where everyone\'s chances of winning are indeed equal.

Also, basic math DOES explain why some people are luckier over the course of their lives. This is called variance. It happens in every game, including Poker. Nevertheless, over very large number of games, you still never see anyone who has stats which defy reason. At least not in an age where people generally no longer cheat. It is only when you allow cheating that it is possible to get \'godly\' winning records by combining deception with skill.

That\'s why real life players like Takeo Kojima where so feared once upon a time. They were skilled hustlers and cheaters, well versed in sleight of hand and the psychology of distraction. They could therefore seem unbeatable at times. This aura has, however, been debunked since then. Kojima is good, but not more so than your \'average\' highly skilled pro. He is not unbeatable, nor is anyone else of his generation who once portrayed that image.

The civilized world would not be where it is today if people believed in their anecdotal observations without flitering their reasoning through the lens of scientific thought. Such is reality.


P.S.

I even suspect it is possible that the concept of \'nagare\' may once upon a time have been propogated in the world of Mahjong by hustlers who didn\'t actually believe in it. The reason for this is that if you can get your opponents to believe in such a thing and alter their play styles illogically (i.e. act rashly when they think they have it, fold even good hands when they don\'t) then you can have a big avantage by deliberately pressing them with false ideas of \'flow\'. It essentially gives you an avenue for mind control by creating superstious mind games out of nothing.

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Re:Do You Believe in "Nagare"?

Post by kamieniarz » Fri Feb 13, 2009 1:28 pm

Of course luck exists and it is within the rules of probability! It occurs in all things we do but sadly most of them do not win us anything - stupid things like throwing a cigarette butt carelessly away and realizing it just landed in an open handbag of a passer-by. Chances for that are like winning on a lottery but all you get is a hell of a fuss :)

As to \"the tide of luck\", it’s enough to say that if there is a 50% chance to win a coin toss, it doesn’t mean we will simply keep on winning every other game; or in other words if there is a 10% chance for something to happen, it can and sometimes it will happen twice in row or even more often! And so luck (\"the tide of luck\" or \"bad luck\" ) occurs whenever any of the above happens, to our profit or against it. Probability theory is only 100% reliable (haha) when we look at it from the perspective of infinity - something that doesn\'t happen in practise.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying here that mahjong is all about luck but whether you want it or not, it’s part of it. My point is, luck is just maths, there is nothing \"magical\" about it ;)

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