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This situation seems to occur quite often. Game is east 2, hanchan, 36 tiles left. You have tanyao and a dora.
South has just discarded a .

(A) Do you pon the , toss the , tenpai, wait is (4 tiles).

(B) Do you chi the , toss the , tenpai, wait is (3 tiles).

(C) Do you pass on the , thinking that if you can draw a (11 tiles) , that you can riichi and go for a higher scoring hand.

(D) None of these

Should the 2 riichi sticks + honba on the table affect your decision?
The # of tiles left in the hand probably does.
What if you didn't have the red 5? (note that the 4 is also a dora, if you can pick it up)

I chose (A). Game ended in a draw.

the answer to this question is to either pon the to get wait or ignore the tile and aim for riichi. I prefer to pon the in this circumstance because it is already around the 8th discard and the average tenpai speed is around the 10th discard which means if you don't pon this you might lose out on speed in getting to tenpai. another major reason to pon the is that the is the dora which give you a possibility of getting 3900 points which is high enough to ignore the potential of getting riichi in my opinion but ignoring it for riichi is also a valid option as a hand that is waiting on a dora can be hard to win + the probability of achieving tenpai within a few discards is quite high.

However if this was between the 1-4th discards, you should probably wait as the probability of you being able to tenpai before everyone else and riichi is quite high. around 5-10th discard is debatable but anything after the 10th discard I think you should pon. However I do stress that it's not necessarily wrong to wait 'forever' as some people prefer because I think it all comes down to style of play but the one Ive listed is generally my preference in play.

(if the is not the dora, I think you should still pon but the timing gets a bit more debatable due to difference in play. I will probably pon around after the 8-10th discard but anything before that i might wait in this circumstance. If you need a mangan tsumo, then you should wait even after 10 turns and if you need a quick hand, I will pon before the 8 turn but in this circumstance it's still early and the point difference is still close so I will say a border at around 8-10th discard is probably right. This also applies to when comes out from anyone.)

I've also ignored chi because it limits the max. points to 2000 and you have two tile less for the wait ( two tile makes ALOT!! of difference). (5 tiles vs 3 tiles)

I will also note that you can also choose to keep the you've discarded in the turn before and thrown the instead. The advantage to keeping the is that you get more chance of getting a double sided wait and is considered a more efficient approach in winning the hand rather than just prioritizing to get to tenpai. Consider , the total number of tile to tenpai (ignoring any discards because i cant be bothered to count) is 42 tiles off 13 different types of tiles but out of the 13 different tiles only (only 5 different tiles(total 16 tiles))leads to a double sided wait (a good wait). If you discard instead of instead, you get which has 37 tiles off 11 different tiles to go to tenapi, but out of the 11, 7 different types of tiles(total 21 tiles) lead to double sided waits or good waits. increasing your chance of getting good wait at tenpai can overcome the advantage of more tile to tenpai and particularly in this case where is the dora, discarding instead of increases the chance of your wait including the dora which leads to higher average point score assuming you win the hand. If the was , discarding instead becomes more advantageous as you increase the chance of pinfu and drastically increase the chance of haneman tsumo as well.

if the isnt the dora, if you choose to keep , you should throw away just to increase the chance of all simple or tanyao and therefore increase the average expected points gained for the hand.

You may be confused to which you should choose but the general rule is if you are oya or the parent or whatever you call it, you should prioritize tenpai just because riichi is really strong when your oya, but when your the child, you should prioritize the probability of getting better wait as if you riichi and if the oya riichis after you, your more likely not to lose. There are more specific rules that I use but i cant be bothered to explain.

Should the 2 riichi sticks + honba on the table affect your decision?
the answer above completely ignored the riichi sticks and the honba on the table, but if you have 2 riichi sticks on the table, the balance leans more towards ponning the than ignoring it. I would probably pon as early as the 5th discard if i could but depends on your style of play.

What if you didn't have the red 5?
this makes a difference and leads further towards ignoring the due to the much higher score that can be achieved via riichi than opening your hand.

Thanks for your excellent analysis. You covered all the bases, and more.
What I found especially interesting was the part on "increasing your chance of getting a good wait at tenpai can overcome the advantage of more tiles to get to tenpai." Noticing that as my last discard and how I could have chose to keep it was very perceptive. I wondered about that when I tossed it.
One could probably fill a whole chapter in a book regarding that statement since you also state that even one extra tile on a wait is a big difference.
Deciding which way to go could be challenging, especially during actual game conditions. Thanks again.

East/South match. It is east 4 and I have not won a hand yet (yakitori marker).
36 tiles left, Dora is 9dot. I have one.
After I riichi, which I assume I should,
(A) Toss the , go for the wait of 3 tiles.

(B) Toss the , go for the wait of 3 tiles.

(C) Toss the , go for the wait of 2 tiles, and the extra yaku (iipeiko).

WWYD,
I chose (A). But I wondered about (C)
It was successful.

This is another situation that seems to occur often. It is east 3 of hanchan, 33 tiles left, atozuke is allowed.
Do you pon the from East, toss the , and wait for for the win?

or,
Do you keep going with a concealed hand?

In this case, I ponned the 3 because east was also the dora.

But what if it wasn't? Does that change anything? Would you still go for the atozuke win?
or,
Would you pon the , toss , and go for open tanyao, with a red five,
or,
keep going with a concealed hand? (maybe tanyao, maybe pinfu, maybe riichi, maybe yakuhai, fanpai, kazehai, whatever you call a pung of value winds)

As it turned out, I got lucky. It was nerve-wracking but I got a last tile ron for 12000 pts.

If you have no way to win other than drawing the Yakuhai Dora, then making it so that you win the moment you draw it isn't a terrible plan.

However, with this hand there's other ways to win. You should notice that the souzu form a 34567 three-way wait shape. The manzu 3456 can also easily form 2- or 3-way waits. So there's two ways to proceed. One is drawing manzu and discarding the 3s. For example,


take you to tenpai.

The other way is to draw 258s first:

take you to tenpai.

Both possibilities let you draw or pon the east for a good tenpai. And although drawing 2m gives the possibility of furiten, the wait will be three-way so it doesn't hurt terribly much.

So: don't pon the 3s, stay concealed.

I think I understand the point you are making.
Rather than getting to tenpai immediately by ponning the and relying solely on getting one of the two remaining tiles for the win, I should be able to see that, in this case, with the hand shape having 4 consecutive cracks and 5 consecutive bams, that if I stay concealed, I could get to tenpai with a multitude of tiles even though the tenpai is still 2 tiles away. WOW!
You once stated (WWYD 7/22) that "there are cases where you have to choose to be slower, but those are because they offer something in return. That something is usually more points or better defense".
Is that what we are talking about here?
The atozuke route sure seems faster and less complicated but perhaps less reliable and more dangerous.
It definitely involves more luck than skill, as , being the dora, is not likely to be discarded.
Something for me to think about in the future.

or2az wrote:You once stated (WWYD 7/22) that "there are cases where you have to choose to be slower, but those are because they offer something in return. That something is usually more points or better defense".
Is that what we are talking about here?

No. This is a case of the longer path being faster than the shortest path. Not faster to tenpai, but faster and more likely to win.

Ok, time to get back to serious business. I had to pause a little in deciding what to discard here and I finally settled on the .
That put me one away from tenpai.
As it turned out, I was soon able to riichi and the win looked like this, but only 1300 points.
I was curious if there was something better I could have (or should have) tossed at that point (perhaps involving a try for san shoku).
What would you have done?

Not only Sanshoku but also Iipeikô as well, chances do exist. You could have discarded and .Toimen discarded so it´s a little safer to discard (you know where are 2 of those, one on your hand, the other, discarded). If you´re very lucky you can even add Junchan if you´re able to change those (chances are low).

Aming for Sanshoku only (nomi) it´s easier, but, with that hand I think, Sanshoku + Iipeikô is good. Maybe is hard, but you´re first and it´s only the second game of east round. A good moment for being a little risky, maybe?

If I were you, I don´t know what I would have done. Game´s time limits makes me feel anxious and end with "zero-think" play, and I like it.... (Don´t know if the word could be correct, or exists, or whatever. I don´t care .)

I see. Tossing the and using the as the pair would keep alive the possibility of both san shoku and iipeiko. The drawback is you move another tile away from tenpai and you must draw 2 specific tiles, the and the to get both yaku. So now you ask yourself ,
"I'm ahead by 8000 pts and it's early in the hanchan, so I'll risk it", (as you suggested).....or....do you say,
"I'm ahead by 8000 pts and it's early in the hanchan, so there's no need to risk it". I always have a problem with that.

Yeah, I have the same problem. Also, it's always easier to judge things like this when one is not playing than when in game.

I'm not sure if you have realized this or if other people have already mentioned it but there is a massive problem with your winning hand from what I can see. you had and you discarded to get . I assume from you winning hand that you drew for tenpai next but the problem is that you seem to discard rather than which limits your hand to riichi nomi without ura-dora. if you discarded and won on , you winning hand would have looked like this Tsumo and that is riichi tsumo pinfu sanshoku and therefore mangan (haneman with one ura-dora) and 2000/4000 for you. I might be missing the point but that's what I have assumed from what you had and your winning hand.

Anyway to the discard, tile efficiency wise I will discard all the way and it's still east 2 so I would go with . However if you are going for a quicker hand then (or ) will do just because you can chi to get a definite or kakutei sanshoku wait on (and also chi the to get a kata-agari wait) There isn't really a difference in score porential becasue both can achieve sanshoku while one can achieve pinfu and the other iipekou.

I'm not sure if you have realized this or if other people have already mentioned it but there is a massive problem with your winning hand from what I can see.

You are very perceptive and correct. I'm staring at the hand.....and staring.....and staring.....and I have no idea how that happened.
Maybe it was accidental but I never caught on to it. Thanks for pointing that out.
(note: I don't think it was a tsumo so it would just have been riichi pinfu sanshoku, still a mangan)
Referring to the last part, I don't think iipeiko or pinfu are valid once you call chi.

I meant score differential between and / discard when closed so pointing out that tile efficiency wins out outright for discard because the score potential are the same unless you want a quicker but cheaper hand (playing an open hand) where / discard leave you in a better shape for that (i.e. the chi explanation). Another reason I forgot to mention for choosing or discard is when you definitely need a mangan or over because your more likely to achieve sanshoku because the only uncertainty is in wait while if you discard the you need to get both and for sanshoku. However for normal circumstances I recommend discard