What's the reason on abortive draws?

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What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Referee » Tue May 04, 2010 2:48 pm

Hi there. I\'ve been wondering on the reasons there are abortive draws. Exhaustive draws can\'t be helped (they happen in MCR which has no dead wall, and having 14 less tiles can only increase the issue), but let\'s see.

Four Kans: I see the problem with this one is that there\'s no space for more Kan Dora, and you would start picking the dora indicators to replace your tiles. Could be fixed with a bit of relaxation (drawing from the end of live wall, for instance, but then we hit the same thing at the sixth kan).

Four Riichis: Hmm, I guess the game becomes then \"whose winning tile will appear first?\", but that\'s pretty much the issue in triple riichi already (and a bit less in double riichi), and those are OK. This one I can see the rationale, but it\'s a bit weak, IMHO.

Four Same Wind Discards First Round: Wha? This one baffles me. Why only with winds, and not dragons? or terminals? Some yaku(man) are not possible after four same winds are discarded, but also true with sangen tiles. Some of those become impossible on the third discard, or even the second, but that doesn\'t warrant a redo... Can anyone help me with this one?

Triple Ron: This one is an escape valve. Wha? I have to pay all of you? No way, that\'s a draw. I\'m not too fond of Head Bump, but if paying multiple people scares you, play with that rule. Double Rons are OK, but triple ones are not. This game is weird. I\'d say either pay only one (Head Bump, Yakuman first, whatever criteria you want to set), or pay all the winners (which can be up to three).

Nine Orphans: Come on. That\'s for wussies. Whaaaa... I got this crappy hand, I want a redoooo. Mahjong is not for wussies, hehe. Go for Kokushimusou, Nagashi Mangan (if it\'s allowed), or play defense. But don\'t force a redo. If playing on an automatic table, it surely hasn\'t finished shuffling the other set yet. (This one is also true of the Wind discards one). And if I get something ugly like 258w 258s 258p ESWN WRG I don\'t get to claim a draw.

Anyone can enlighten me on the reasonings of those ones? Do you play with them all, or none, or just some?

Unrelated Question: Any game I can get to play/practice Riichi? I own a DS Lite (original DS, not DSi), I am in Spain if that matters for something. I\'m a total newbie with Riichi rules, but I\'ve played some MCR (ocasionally, not a big player of that, either). I am learning Japanese, but I don\'t have a big level of it (I started just last October).

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Barticle » Tue May 04, 2010 4:49 pm

Referee wrote:Do you play with them all, or none, or just some?
I mostly play Mahjong Fight Club on the PS3 which has fixed "fight club" rule options on the Pro CPU mode I play. Triple Ron and Four Riichi are not applied, Four Kongs or Four Winds is a draw (and the deal passes), 9+ Majors declared is a draw (and the seat-winds don\'t move).
Unrelated Question: Any game I can get to play/practice Riichi?
The GameDesign site\'s online single-player game is very good, available in English and (if you want to practise the language a little) Japanese.

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/mahjong/mahjong_e.html

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/mahjong/mahjong.html
I own a DS Lite (original DS, not DSi), I am in Spain if that matters for something.
There are plenty of games you can get for your DS. They\'ll all be in Japanese text, but at least you know you\'re getting modern Japanese rules! A few are two-player head-to-head though.

I\'ve made a list of MJ console games in a thread on this site (link). Mahjong Fight Club is highly regarded and was recently reissued in Japan at a lower price which should hopefully make imports cheaper now.

Apart from Chinese games and ones made specifically for the DSi, any DS game is region-free. All the DS games I\'ve listed should work on your Lite.

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Shirluban » Tue May 04, 2010 6:43 pm

Four kan:
I see two reasons:
1) The excessive number of dora.
If you don\'t play with kan-dora, this reason vanish.
2) The lack of replacement tiles.
This one is not very accurate, since the abortive draw applies to the 4th kan, but there is no problem until the 5th kan.
As you said, it\'s easy to by-pass it too.

Four riichi:
The game becomes a brainless Russian roulette.
Aborting the hand is unfair for the 4th player, since he can wait on more tiles than other, and so have more chances to win.
IMO, it would be better if the 4th reaching player have to choice to abort the game or not.

\"that\'s pretty much the issue in triple riichi already\"
I case of 3 riichi, the 4th player is still playing. With 4 riichi, no one plays anymore.


Same wind discarded on the first round:
If I remember right, it\'s about some kind of bad omen. In Japanese, \"four\" sound the same than \"death\", so \"four west\" is \"death from west\" (reference to I-don\'t-remember-what in Japanese history). Extended to all winds/directions.

Triple ron:
Lucky escape plan for unlucky player.
EMA rules don\'t abort the game in this case -> you pay, pay and pay again.

Nine unrelated terminals:
It\'s a very bad starting point for a regular hand and a bit too few for kokushi. Depending on the game, going for kokushi or nagashi mangan can be a very bad idea. It\'s also harsh to force someone to play defense form his first discard.

\"I get something ugly like 258w 258s 258p ESWN WRG I don\'t get to claim a draw.\"
You need a threshold somewhere, didn\'t you?
And it\'s not too too bad: any tile you draw will be linked to one you already have :P
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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Senechal » Tue May 04, 2010 8:43 pm

2-bam red-bam 8-bam 2-crak 5-crak 8-crak 2-dot 5-dot 8-dot :east :south :west :north green-dra white-dra red-dra
Isn\'t this 16 tiles?

(Although, come to think of it, for the Taiwanese, this \"and a pair for 17\" is the worst you could possibly get.
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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Referee » Tue May 04, 2010 9:23 pm

Yes, drop the fives, for instance. 28 28 28 + 7 honors. Or something along the lines. My point is that there are worse hands that 9 different terminals, and in any case, it seems to reward a bad draw with making the hand void.

Four Winds Discard: Oh, yes. The four/death thing. They could go with \'yon\' or, more appropriate for Majan, \'suu\'. Mahjong is full of fours anyway. And that rationale could go with any other tile, really. Also, somehow if it\'s not the first round, Death won\'t answer the call.

Hmm... I don\'t know where I\'m trying to reach ( ;) ). I\'m not trying to diss Riichi, but I find those superstitions quite baffling since we\'re talking about modern Majan.

My conclusions so far:
Four Kan: One wants to limit dora (some rules don\'t allow kan dora or even ura dora anyway), and there\'s no replacement for the fifth kan. Fair enough, but why should the fourth be the one causing the draw? Then there\'s the necessary exception for the Yakuman.

Four Riichi: OK, 75% Roulette is OK, but 100% is not. This one makes quite a bit of sense.

Four Same Wind: Total superstition. I don\'t think that\'s positive for MJ, it\'s so... irregular. I dunno...

Triple Ron: Escape for a guy that deals into three hands. Maybe good, but I\'d say that\'s the risk of Riichi, that you don\'t want to deal into anyone\'s hand (but somehow dealing into all three is all right?)

Nine Terminals: OK, it\'s a hard hand to play, but there are others, too. Shall we reward bad draws with a redo?

Again, I want to clarify that my intention is NOT destroy Riichi or anything like that. On the contrary, however, my personal (and thus quite meaningless) opinion is that some of these draw rules are meh to say the least.

Barticle: Thanks for your link to the list of DS games. Any suggestions? There are a lot! :)

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Senechal » Tue May 04, 2010 10:16 pm

For 4 same winds: Because of the value of the dragon tiles, and the other usual intention of wanting to get to tenpai in the shortest amount of steps by keeping anything that can be made into a meld, sequence or triplet, it\'s more logical to expect winds to be chucked first.

And yes, I can tell you that it takes less time (usually) than an autodealer takes to shuffle to abort a hand in such a way. I can understand that it\'s not necessarily like the all-crap hand or like some card game aborts (I used to play a bridge-like game that allowed a misdeal if you had no cards above the 10.), but it is 1 way for the last player to either abort a hand that he may not like or scrap someone else\'s hand if he sounds a bit too happy. Besides, it\'s a panic lever that can\'t be used if someone calls a tile before that.
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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Barticle » Wed May 05, 2010 12:07 pm

Referee wrote:Barticle: Thanks for your link to the list of DS games. Any suggestions? There are a lot! :)
Indeed, there\'s a good range of options! I only got my DSi a couple of months ago and I was expecting to buy MJ games by the dozen but I\'ve actually only got one so far! Have been busy with other projects.

The one I got was Custom Mahjong which does the job adequately. It tracks a range of stats and yaku counts; also it doesn\'t mother you by telling you when you can reach or declare a tsumo win. The most interesting feature though is that you can adjust the playing styles of your opponents in some detail.

I think your best choice though would be Mahjong Fight Club. The PS3 game is excellent and folks here have said good things about the DS version. Also you can play against real named pro characters including our very own Jenn and Garthe. :)

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Ignatius » Wed May 05, 2010 5:18 pm

As far as I know the \"Nine Orphans\" is always optional. You can call it if you wish, but is possible to pass and go for Kokushi Musô or something like that.
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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by zzo38 » Fri May 07, 2010 5:05 pm

What happened in case fourth player makes no-ten riichi? (As far as I know, you don\'t normally check for that on abortive draws, it is checked only for exhaustive draws)

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Ruro » Fri May 07, 2010 6:12 pm

if the forth player declares a no-ten riichi i think he gets a nice chombo :D When there are 4 riichis i think you need to show your hand like when you are in tenpai, but I can be wrong.
The four same wind rule is not that bad in my eyes, if every player has the damn same wind in their hands it just confirms the fact that the tiles are not too well shuffled, and you need 4 players to discard the same wind, so its the same is having an option for saying \"i want reshuffle\" :)
As for the 9 terminals, i have to agree on that you should only try 13 orphans with 10 or more terminals not 9. Nine is just an incredibly bad hand... (but maybe still good for chanta or something :P )

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Shirluban » Fri May 07, 2010 6:25 pm

EMA rule:
3.4.3 Abortive draw
After an abortive draw no noten penalty is payed, and players who have declared riichi are not obliged to show their tenpai hands, except in case of four riichi declarations.
[...]
All four players have declared riichi, and no-one declares a win on the fourth
player’s discard. All players are obliged to show their tenpai hands.
So if the fourth player makes a noten riichi, it\'s a chonbo.
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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by zzo38 » Sat May 08, 2010 12:22 am

Shirluban wrote:So if the fourth player makes a noten riichi, it\'s a chonbo.
This is EMA rule, I don\'t know what it is in other rules (such as JPML) (I will assume it is the same), but anyways: I suppose the deal still ends, so if your opponent would otherwise earn more points than chombo, perhaps it is better to make chombo instead? But only in a few situations, I think. In most situations it is probably not better.

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Mcgreag » Sat May 08, 2010 9:37 am

If you want to end the hand with a chombo to stop a strong hand it\'s always possible, you don\'t need 4 riichis for that.
Just declare a false win or \"accidentally\" knock over a large part of the wall or something.

As for having a really bad starting hand that doesn\'t fore fill the 9 honors requirement there are if I remember correctly an optional yakuman for a starting hand with no connected tiles. Don\'t remember the exact details but they where very strict.

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Referee » Sat May 08, 2010 12:39 pm

Another one I\'m not sure I like. Bad draws are gonna happen, and again, I\'m not sure we should reward them.

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Re:What's the reason on abortive draws?

Post by Barticle » Sun May 09, 2010 9:55 am

Mcgreag wrote:[...] an optional yakuman for a starting hand with no connected tiles. Don\'t remember the exact details but they where very strict.
For Shiisanpuutaa you need to have, on your first draw, thirteen unrelated tiles plus one duplicate of those.

So for example you couldn\'t have 6-dot+7-dot or 6-dot+8-dot because they could form a set - they\'re not unconnected.

As TV chefs like to say, "here\'s one I made earlier". :)

Image

Wikipedia Japan also lists a Shiisuupuutaa - 14 unconnected tiles (and no pair obviously).

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