Mahjong and Poker

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HotelFSR
Expert Reacher
Expert Reacher
Posts: 328
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 11:39 am
Location: Federated States of Micronesia

Mahjong and Poker

Post by HotelFSR » Mon May 04, 2009 6:14 pm

Long-winded introduction:


Since I\'ve started playing on the high-level tables online, I\'ve been noticing that it becomes a lot more important to pick the right hands to reach with, and often not to reach at all- even with your final shape, perhaps especially. Sometimes, at least, the standard play-style gets turned on its head.

Going straight for a two sided wait and reaching can often lead to a drawn game, or worse: someone winning before you by pushing through your wait (with or without counter-reaching). If your discards suggest too many safe tiles, someone else might beat you before you get many chances to win by self draw, possibly even off one of your forced discards. It\'s not good enough just to rely on going for the concealed self draw win. You have to weigh the risk against the reward.

You may even have more success with a closed or single wait. For example, let\'s say nobody is discarding your winner, either by playing defensively or folding, and that they play this way reliably after you reach- based on the default strategy of defending two-sided waits. This means that you are losing about 75% of your possible winners right off the bat, just by declaring reach.

One the other hand, if you pick a closed wait you lose only 50% of your possible winners (4 outs instead of 8), which is a favorable comparison with the two-sided wait because you nullify the two-sided furiten defense game. Realistically, you also have to account for your opponents dealing some safe tiles (whether or not they suspect you have a two-sided wait), so you\'ll always be losing out on some winners thanks to the reach itself. However, if you use a closed wait to reach or particularly if you lay a closed trap (e.g. closed wait on 8 after discarding 5) then you will expect to see more winners than usual. It probably evens out somewhat, but the comparison nevertheless shows that it can very often be better- not just good- to have a closed wait against really tight opponents. What you lose in tsumo potential you more than make back in ron potential! The only shame is that pinfu won\'t count.

So far, so obvious, you may say.

Of course, the reality is still more complicated because your opponents may win faster if you don\'t reach. There is value in causing your opponents to slow down or fold under the threat of your reach. Predicting that depends on what you see of your opponents\' playstyle and on what you see coming out in the discards.

You also have to look at whether you want to reach at all. If you have a 3-han hand, it might be better to stay quiet and hope for a quick win or instead a concealed self draw to push you up into mangan (or 7700/11600) territory without reaching. In these cases a two-sided wait can only do you good!

Not reaching can be the difference between winning the hand and losing it, especially if your wait centers around any doras or suspect tiles. If you have 4-han, reaching may give you a shot at haneman but do you really need it? Is it going to be worth the risk? The answer changes from one situation to the next, depending on what the scores are and how far you are into the game or the individual round.

There\'s a constant balancing act between reaching (pun intended) for a big hand, and going for a hand that will actually win rather then crash-and-burn or fizzle out because you reached. Then you have to factor in the bluff potential of a reach, or whether you want to make your opponents fold. Will it work? Is it what you need? Difficult decisions. This is where, at a high level, changing styles and player psychology come in to the picture.

Still fairly obvious stuff, but I think it\'s necessary preamble for drawing sensible comparisons between mahjong and poker. That\'s it for the introduction, now on to the header topic...



Mahjong and Poker:


This is where I want to open this discussion to the floor. What can we learn from poker about when is best to call reach or take risks generally? It\'s a parallel I\'ve just started to think about and I\'d love to hear your opinions on the matter!

In poker you generally want to bluff with your weakest hands, because that way you can add the most value. You create value where there is none rather than risking value that is already there. If your hand is average or fairly good, why risk losing it for the sake of increasing its value? You may not win as big for that particular hand, but it works out better in the long run. Mathematically it makes very good sense, at least in poker.

So...

In mahjong, do we want to reach mostly with our weakest hands? This way you can slow down your opponents when it doesn\'t serve them. You are using a disposable hand to bluff, in a sense. If we combine this with not reaching on our big hands, we\'ve created a trap whereby we can occasionally reach with an important big hand- and get away with it when we need it most. Basic poker strategy, in a sense.

If our puny hand reaches and wins, it might even get jacked up with ura-dora, tsumo or even ippatsu. We have suddenly created value where there was none, whereas the 3-or-4-han hands we don\'t reach with, by and large, can be considered already \'big enough\'.



So...


What further lessons can we learn from poker? There are lots of comparable risk assessment scenarios. For example, if you are behind scorewise, should you reach more or less? I\'m assuming less. Getting people to back off and fold is more valuable when you are ahead than behind, no? In this case it turns out that the old school \'nagare\' thinking would actually have a logical strategic basis, in a roundabout way!

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