Reachmahjong.com

I've read about this abortive draw but I have not seen one occur, until now. The first 3 players tossed the east wind so I decided to follow suit and see what would happen. Nothing did. I guess my game doesn't use this optional rule.
From Barts guide, "The draw of Sū Fon Renda (literally "four winds barrage") occurs at the start of a hand if all four players discard the same wind tile on their first turn".

Well, technically you still haven't seen it happen. It's not insanely rare since most players will usually ditch a few unpaired honours at the beginning, starting with any guest winds (those that cannot be used for yakuhai). One player must drop their seat wind for this draw to occur so you'd assume they have no unpaired guest winds to discard first. It's likely you've had this situation before and just not noticed.

If your game applied the abortive draws you'd have seen 9+ terminals/honours and probably four riichi by now too.

The pic shows that one bot discarded the round wind before a guest wind and the dealer dropped their double wind before two guest winds...

Ah, so you are saying that in order for me to "see" it happen, the draw has to occur, and since my game doesn't apply it, I didn't really "see" it.
All I "saw" was a four winds barrage which doesn't become a Sū Fon Renda until the actual draw is validated. Whew!! I was confused initially. Thanks.

Well, these next discards by oya could have been tsumogiri.

Anyway, this is one weird abortive draw, and I'd say it comes totally from superstition, what with the unfortunate implications of the number four in Japanese. Not that the other abortive draws make much sense anyway (Except quadruple riichi, mayhaps).

Yes Steve, you met the criterion for it but a draw did not actually occur. Just as well, since you had a pretty good hand.

...and yes Ref, I drew attention to the discards without explicitly slating the game's AI because maybe both players drew those other winds immediately after. I'll give the developers the benefit of the doubt for now!

Incidentally, that image would make for a good WWYD.

Referee wrote:Well, these next discards by oya could have been tsumogiri.

Anyway, this is one weird abortive draw, and I'd say it comes totally from superstition, what with the unfortunate implications of the number four in Japanese. Not that the other abortive draws make much sense anyway (Except quadruple riichi, mayhaps).

What doesn't make sense about the abortive draws for 9+ different honor/edges in a starting hand or 4 kantsu ? The first one leaves you with a really bad starting hand, and the second one turns the game into a roulette if you play with sin/ura doras... They may be overkill depending on the context and one's opinions but I wouldn't say they don't make sense...

I say it doesn't make sense because Mahjong is not a game to give you escapes from easy solution. That's why I despise a draw coming from triple ron. If you discard a tile that is being the wait for all three opponents, you suddenly walk away unscatched?

First, the hand with nine terminals is bad offensively, but it's pretty good on the defensive side. You can even try for Nagashi Mangan if that rule is allowed in your game. You can also try for Kokushi Musou if you want. I agree it is a long shot, but hey, it's a yakuman, did you expect an easy one? Hands are not that long and there are several hands in the game, so as long as you don't deal into something big you usually have time to recover, and it's not like you're going to spend an hour or so fighting what you deem a lost cause. The main strike against it is that there are other kinds of bad hands that don't get the easy escape. So why is nine terminals special?

The four kan can be understood because you don't have any more indicators after that. However, even if you are playing without kan dora, you'll get a draw for four kan. Yes, if you play with all dora and there are four kan someone can get a lot of ura dora. That's why you shouldn't kan happily, and always think twice about it. Especially if someone else is already in riichi. Even if no one is in riichi, you may be giving someone three dora on an indicator that wasn't there at the start. Another reason for being careful with your kan. Kan are awfully obvious because all have to be declared. If you have three of them, and somebody else calls a fourth one, they're not only stopping you from going for the rare suu kantsu, they are immediately calling the hand when you are close with at the very least san kantsu, a minimum 50/3 and easily a mangan or better. Without playing any defense. Just by getting the fourth one of a given tile.

I hope I explained my opinion (that is all it is) well. If not, please ask about what I should clarify.

Your opinion is perfectly clear and makes sense, I just wanted to point out that those abortive draws have a meaning and add some tactics, but of course it is perfectly arguable wether that's relevant or not
Personally I think that allowing them or not depends on the context of the game, which is true for most optional rules...

Referee wrote:The main strike against it is that there are other kinds of bad hands that don't get the easy escape. So why is nine terminals special?

The nine-tiles-nine-types abortive draw isn't based on logic or strategic improvement to the game, it's a superstitious abort. Nine (九, kyū) is pronounced similar to suffering (苦, ku), so rather than finish a “suffering deal” players would rather agree to abort the deal than to finish it with a bad omen hanging over it... although it is a nice way to rescue a horrible deal.

=)

This is reasonable, and ties in with the superstition on suufon renda. But then, why can you still declare the draw with 10 terminals/honors, when the superstition is gone?

Referee wrote:This is reasonable, and ties in with the superstition on suufon renda. But then, why can you still declare the draw with 10 terminals/honors, when the superstition is gone?

Here's a numbers analysis on Kokukshi:

http://osamuko.com/i-told-you-not-to-go-for-kokushi/