Discussion regarding rule sets based around Riichi, MCR, ZJ
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:31 pm
Hello, I'm new to the forum although I have been following the site for quite some time. I'd like to state my view on the title subject and open up for a discussion on preferred rule set among the readers of this article. I would like to apologize for the lengthy text.
A background of me as a Mahjong player is in order (a full gaming background can be found here http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/Mordachai). I am an avid gamer, having played board games (and other games) since my childhood (born -78). I first came into contact with Mahjong as a teenager in the form of the Classic Chinese rule set. While I was fascinated by the game (as I was by most games) it was a brief encounter that left little impression.
The year 2000 I spent a summer in Japan studying Japanese and briefly came into contact with Riichi. A few years later I encountered the game again, this time with the Hong Kong rule set and then MCR. I found both rule sets very interesting, with MCR being the better one. Mahjong was played for a while in my gaming group and then died out.
Then in 2009, in a new city due to work, my new gaming group was introduced to MRC at a gaming convention and it became the main game in the group, being played regularly. This rekindled my interest for the game and I started reading up on some basic strategy. While doing so I read up on the different rule sets and became more and more interested in Riichi.
In 2010 my gaming group didn’t play much so I joined Mahjong Time and tried the different rule sets out. When MT severely restricted gaming for non paying members I stopped playing there (I didn’t play regularly enough to warrant a subscription).
Finally, in the fall of 2010 I started studying Japanese again and once again came into contact with Riichi. My gaming group is currently playing once a week and in April of 2011 I managed to successfully introduce Riichi. I am also playing a bit online (currently replacing Dragon Kong with Tenhou).
Back to the topic already!
I feel there are a couple of important differences between Riichi and other rule sets of Mahjong that make Riichi a better game for me as a gamer. This is of course very subjective, but I’ll try to describe these points by comparing to MCR, the main rule set played in Sweden (and Europe).
The issue of win on self draw versus win on discard.
In MCR (and most other rule sets) a win on self draw yield a much higher reward than winning on a discard from another player. A MCR min point hand of 8 points will yield 48 points if self drawn (8+8 from each player) and 32 points if won on discard (8+8 points from the discarder, 8 each from the other two opponents). Thus, a min point hand yields 150% the points if self drawn, not that big of a deal.
The higher the hand points, the bigger the difference though. A medium scoring hand of 22 hand points (e.g. one color straight, all chows, voided suit and three flowers) would yield 196% the points if self drawn (30*3=90 for self drawn and 30+8+8=46 for won on discard).
A monster hand such as little three dragons, half flush (70 hand points) yields 234 points if self drawn (78*3) and 94 if won on discard (78+8+8). That means a self drawn is worth 249% the points of a won by discard one.
I regard winning on self draw a win because of getting lucky, rather than a win because of outplaying the opponents. Theoretically, if I draw your winner and discard it, I have made a mistake. Depending on how far into the hand we are and how many melds you have made the mistake can be considered lesser or greater. On the other hand there is no way to defend against a self draw and yet it yields a much higher reward. A self draw also hit indiscriminately, disregarding the way the opponents behaved. Thus, it could be said that while you don’t want to be the one discarding the winner, your favored situation if an opponent is waiting is to have one or both other opponents playing very loose to lessen the risk of you having to pay the price of the self draw.
In Riichi this is not the case. A Tsumo yield the same amount of points as a Ron with one exception, when you Tsumo with a fully concealed hand, in which you get an extra yaku. What does change between Tsumo and Ron, however, is which player(s) responsible for paying. With Tsumo, the opponents share the responsibility, with the dealer paying double compared to the others (the downside of always getting 150% of the points and another go as dealer if winning). With Ron, the discarding player is responsible for the entire sum.
In other words, winning on self draw is not rewarded in Riichi (unless you have a fully concealed hand) compared to if you claim a discard. Instead the entire burden of a win by discard is placed on the player that made the mistake of discarding the winning tile and this brings us to the second issue, defending.
The issue of playing defense.
In MCR playing defense is a quite difficult. I may very well be wrong here, but it seems that the best defense in MCR is building the quickest legal hand possible. The exception to this is when one of the other players is in an obvious waiting state with a potential big hand, but even in that case defending is problematic.
In MCR all tiles are drawn before the round is declared a draw. That means that waiting player(s) winning tiles will get drawn, either by him/her self or by one of the opponents. With the preface of you not being the one waiting, the latter option naturally is of preference since a victory on self draw will cost you as much as if you had discarded into the winning hand yourself. If the tiles are drawn by you or the opponents a willful act of keeping it in hand is necessary to keep the tile from flowing out and ending the round. But, even if you manage to deduce the wait and keep the dangerous tiles in hand, you will end up paying a penalty if the winning tile flows out (the fact that all players pay a minimum of 8 points to the winner is another, albeit smaller problem). At that point one can only hope it was a win by discard and not a self draw.
In Riichi the situation is quite different due to two important rules; the dead wall and furiten. The dead wall consists of 14 tiles that will never come into play. This means 10,3% of the tiles will never enter play. In other words, the winning tiles have a chance/risk of never being drawn by any of the players which in itself means that good waits become all the more important. Hell waits are called hell waits for a reason.
Furiten is the rule that set Riichi apart from the other rule sets and state that you cannot win on a discard if one of your earlier discarded tiles could be used to finish the hand (although as long as you have a yaku you can still win on self draw). This means that any and all tiles discarded by a waiting player are now safe to discard (in regard to that particular player). This also means that other tiles can be sorted into a scale of very dangerous to probably safe. Combined with the dead wall, this make defending a much easier task in Riichi compared to MCR.
Also, since discarding the winning tile make you responsible for the entire sum to be paid while a victory by self draw will set you back much less than that (most of the time) defending becomes an important part of game play. In several cases “folding” your hand to lessen the chance of dealing into an opponent is the correct choice. These cases are mainly when you have a hand that is either, a) far from ready, b) not quite ready and cheap or c) ready or close to ready but consisting of dangerous tiles that need to be discarded to maintain the ready state. The more obvious it is that an opponent is waiting, the stronger your own hand must be to keep pushing for a win yourself. There are, of course, other factors to consider, such as current standings, but in the end what matters is who pays who. You can’t win in Mahjong unless you win hands, but if you keep throwing other players their winners the climb to victory will be that much steeper.
Final thoughts
Thanks to the rules of the dead wall and furiten, Riichi gives the player a much greater chance of playing defense than offered by MCR. Also, the potential benefit of playing a good defense is much greater in Riichi since only the discarder pay in case of win by discard and there is no inherent benefit of winning by self draw. This all sums up to my personal conclusion:
Riichi should be the gamer choice of Mahjong rule set since it is the rule set that most benefit the individual who can correctly deduct when to play offense or defense and actually give the player a decent chance to play defense when so desired or needed.
I would like to end with pointing out that I am currently quite the Mahjong novice, but I aim to become better. If you want to play a game, look me up at Dragon Kong or Tenhou. My ID is Mordachai on Dragon Kong and ジェスパー on Tenhou.
Jesper Edmark, 2011-04-14
A background of me as a Mahjong player is in order (a full gaming background can be found here http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/Mordachai). I am an avid gamer, having played board games (and other games) since my childhood (born -78). I first came into contact with Mahjong as a teenager in the form of the Classic Chinese rule set. While I was fascinated by the game (as I was by most games) it was a brief encounter that left little impression.
The year 2000 I spent a summer in Japan studying Japanese and briefly came into contact with Riichi. A few years later I encountered the game again, this time with the Hong Kong rule set and then MCR. I found both rule sets very interesting, with MCR being the better one. Mahjong was played for a while in my gaming group and then died out.
Then in 2009, in a new city due to work, my new gaming group was introduced to MRC at a gaming convention and it became the main game in the group, being played regularly. This rekindled my interest for the game and I started reading up on some basic strategy. While doing so I read up on the different rule sets and became more and more interested in Riichi.
In 2010 my gaming group didn’t play much so I joined Mahjong Time and tried the different rule sets out. When MT severely restricted gaming for non paying members I stopped playing there (I didn’t play regularly enough to warrant a subscription).
Finally, in the fall of 2010 I started studying Japanese again and once again came into contact with Riichi. My gaming group is currently playing once a week and in April of 2011 I managed to successfully introduce Riichi. I am also playing a bit online (currently replacing Dragon Kong with Tenhou).
Back to the topic already!
I feel there are a couple of important differences between Riichi and other rule sets of Mahjong that make Riichi a better game for me as a gamer. This is of course very subjective, but I’ll try to describe these points by comparing to MCR, the main rule set played in Sweden (and Europe).
The issue of win on self draw versus win on discard.
In MCR (and most other rule sets) a win on self draw yield a much higher reward than winning on a discard from another player. A MCR min point hand of 8 points will yield 48 points if self drawn (8+8 from each player) and 32 points if won on discard (8+8 points from the discarder, 8 each from the other two opponents). Thus, a min point hand yields 150% the points if self drawn, not that big of a deal.
The higher the hand points, the bigger the difference though. A medium scoring hand of 22 hand points (e.g. one color straight, all chows, voided suit and three flowers) would yield 196% the points if self drawn (30*3=90 for self drawn and 30+8+8=46 for won on discard).
A monster hand such as little three dragons, half flush (70 hand points) yields 234 points if self drawn (78*3) and 94 if won on discard (78+8+8). That means a self drawn is worth 249% the points of a won by discard one.
I regard winning on self draw a win because of getting lucky, rather than a win because of outplaying the opponents. Theoretically, if I draw your winner and discard it, I have made a mistake. Depending on how far into the hand we are and how many melds you have made the mistake can be considered lesser or greater. On the other hand there is no way to defend against a self draw and yet it yields a much higher reward. A self draw also hit indiscriminately, disregarding the way the opponents behaved. Thus, it could be said that while you don’t want to be the one discarding the winner, your favored situation if an opponent is waiting is to have one or both other opponents playing very loose to lessen the risk of you having to pay the price of the self draw.
In Riichi this is not the case. A Tsumo yield the same amount of points as a Ron with one exception, when you Tsumo with a fully concealed hand, in which you get an extra yaku. What does change between Tsumo and Ron, however, is which player(s) responsible for paying. With Tsumo, the opponents share the responsibility, with the dealer paying double compared to the others (the downside of always getting 150% of the points and another go as dealer if winning). With Ron, the discarding player is responsible for the entire sum.
In other words, winning on self draw is not rewarded in Riichi (unless you have a fully concealed hand) compared to if you claim a discard. Instead the entire burden of a win by discard is placed on the player that made the mistake of discarding the winning tile and this brings us to the second issue, defending.
The issue of playing defense.
In MCR playing defense is a quite difficult. I may very well be wrong here, but it seems that the best defense in MCR is building the quickest legal hand possible. The exception to this is when one of the other players is in an obvious waiting state with a potential big hand, but even in that case defending is problematic.
In MCR all tiles are drawn before the round is declared a draw. That means that waiting player(s) winning tiles will get drawn, either by him/her self or by one of the opponents. With the preface of you not being the one waiting, the latter option naturally is of preference since a victory on self draw will cost you as much as if you had discarded into the winning hand yourself. If the tiles are drawn by you or the opponents a willful act of keeping it in hand is necessary to keep the tile from flowing out and ending the round. But, even if you manage to deduce the wait and keep the dangerous tiles in hand, you will end up paying a penalty if the winning tile flows out (the fact that all players pay a minimum of 8 points to the winner is another, albeit smaller problem). At that point one can only hope it was a win by discard and not a self draw.
In Riichi the situation is quite different due to two important rules; the dead wall and furiten. The dead wall consists of 14 tiles that will never come into play. This means 10,3% of the tiles will never enter play. In other words, the winning tiles have a chance/risk of never being drawn by any of the players which in itself means that good waits become all the more important. Hell waits are called hell waits for a reason.
Furiten is the rule that set Riichi apart from the other rule sets and state that you cannot win on a discard if one of your earlier discarded tiles could be used to finish the hand (although as long as you have a yaku you can still win on self draw). This means that any and all tiles discarded by a waiting player are now safe to discard (in regard to that particular player). This also means that other tiles can be sorted into a scale of very dangerous to probably safe. Combined with the dead wall, this make defending a much easier task in Riichi compared to MCR.
Also, since discarding the winning tile make you responsible for the entire sum to be paid while a victory by self draw will set you back much less than that (most of the time) defending becomes an important part of game play. In several cases “folding” your hand to lessen the chance of dealing into an opponent is the correct choice. These cases are mainly when you have a hand that is either, a) far from ready, b) not quite ready and cheap or c) ready or close to ready but consisting of dangerous tiles that need to be discarded to maintain the ready state. The more obvious it is that an opponent is waiting, the stronger your own hand must be to keep pushing for a win yourself. There are, of course, other factors to consider, such as current standings, but in the end what matters is who pays who. You can’t win in Mahjong unless you win hands, but if you keep throwing other players their winners the climb to victory will be that much steeper.
Final thoughts
Thanks to the rules of the dead wall and furiten, Riichi gives the player a much greater chance of playing defense than offered by MCR. Also, the potential benefit of playing a good defense is much greater in Riichi since only the discarder pay in case of win by discard and there is no inherent benefit of winning by self draw. This all sums up to my personal conclusion:
Riichi should be the gamer choice of Mahjong rule set since it is the rule set that most benefit the individual who can correctly deduct when to play offense or defense and actually give the player a decent chance to play defense when so desired or needed.
I would like to end with pointing out that I am currently quite the Mahjong novice, but I aim to become better. If you want to play a game, look me up at Dragon Kong or Tenhou. My ID is Mordachai on Dragon Kong and ジェスパー on Tenhou.
Jesper Edmark, 2011-04-14