Wareme Rule

Japanese Reach Mahjong Rules. Strategy, news, sets - anything!

Moderator: Shirluban

Post Reply
zzo38
Senior Reacher
Senior Reacher
Posts: 162
Joined: Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:17 am

Wareme Rule

Post by zzo38 » Fri Jul 30, 2010 4:00 pm

I was playing a computer mahjong game it allows you change some rule settings, one is wareme, I enabled it to figure out how it works and stuff. How it works is:
  • After throwing the dice, count the seats counting East as 1, South as 2, and so on, whichever the total of the dice is, that player is wareme. (The computer program will tell you at the beginning who is wareme, but if you don't remember, you can count it by the dice)
  • Wareme player pays and receives double. This is applied after all other calculations.
  • This double is not for the 1000 points bet for riichi, or for ryuukyoku.
That means, counting according to approximate multiple of the hand score:
  • Win self-drawn, you are not east or wareme, and east is not wareme = 5x
  • Win by discard from not wareme, you are not east = 4x
  • Win by discard from wareme, you are not east = 8x
  • Win by discard from not wareme, you are east = 6x
  • Win by discard from wareme, you are east = 12x
  • Win self-drawn, you are not east or wareme, and east is wareme = 6x
  • Win by self-drawn you are east and are wareme = 12x

User avatar
Barticle
Platinum Boarder
Platinum Boarder
Posts: 1555
Joined: Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:08 pm
Location: Ipswich, UK (and usually 一向聴地獄)
Contact:

Re: Wareme Rule

Post by Barticle » Sat Jul 31, 2010 3:24 pm

zzo38 wrote:After throwing the dice, count the seats counting East as 1, South as 2, and so on, whichever the total of the dice is, that player is wareme.
In other words it's the player whose section/side of the wall got broken when deciding where the wall begins at the start of the hand.

In fact the name wareme (割れ目) denotes a split or crack.
(The computer program will tell you at the beginning who is wareme, but if you don't remember, you can count it by the dice)
Some video-games use a wareme marker bearing the initial character:
Wareme player pays and receives double.
When you apply that doubling factor to limits it starts to get very painful. A dealer mangan under wareme is 24,000 pts. :shock: Ouch!

Nice if you're the dealer though!

gartheee
Mahjong Pro
Mahjong Pro
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:42 am
Location: Japan

Re: Wareme Rule

Post by gartheee » Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:00 pm

I used to play with some guys from a TV show I worked on. Generally the TV industry peeps like to play what everyone calls, "Inflation Mahjong" which means changing rules a bit so that more money moves around more quickly.

Oh! Not that we're gambling, cause that would be illegal! But, you know, metaphorically.

But like Barticle says, it can get pretty painful pretty fast.

Dealer mangan becomes 24,000 so if you've lost pretty much any points and then throw that, it's pretty much game over!

It's not unusual for games to end on the 1st or second hand.

But strangely enough, I always did best with those rules, when I didn't really pay any attention to them. Last time we played I won 80,000 metaphorical yen in one night which is pretty big for that rate. They haven't invited me to play with them since then.

Another way to get an idea of how quickly games were finishing, we would sometimes play 32 games in 10 hours or so.

It does make it exciting though. Even when you're down by 20,000 points at the end of the game, there's still a chance that wareme will pull out a miracle for you

zzo38
Senior Reacher
Senior Reacher
Posts: 162
Joined: Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:17 am

Re: Wareme Rule

Post by zzo38 » Sat Sep 25, 2010 9:16 am

I have another idea about a variant of wareme rule: The wareme is advanced by one position every time any player calls chii, pon, kan, or riichi. So if East is wareme, and North calls riichi, then South is now wareme instead. (You can't keep track of it as easily by where the wall is cracked. If you have a wareme marker, you can just move it. Or adjust the dice numbers. Or, just figure it out in the end, according to everyone's exposed cards.)

gartheee
Mahjong Pro
Mahjong Pro
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2009 9:42 am
Location: Japan

Re: Wareme Rule

Post by gartheee » Sun Sep 26, 2010 4:43 pm

That is an interesting idea. But becoming the wareme player is generally something of a benefit so if it were to move around, I think there it should be tied to something less random. Like perhaps if the player who is wareme chis or pons then the player whose tile he takes becomes the wareme player. That would encourage more closed hands and not reward players for randomly chiing or ponning just to get the wareme status.

Of course, these types of rules are generally not used in real competition so when you do use them, it's with friends and you can just decide together how you want to implement them. In those groups, the first few minutes are almost always spent deciding which rules everyone wants to play.

enjoy enjoy enjoy!!!!

Post Reply