New Player. A few questions, for now, haha.

[Tang]

Greetings. My friends and I have just recently tried picking up Riichi style Mah Jong, it\'s been two days and we are going along nicely. I am testing my arithmetic online against bots, and I have two questions at the moment, I hope they aren\'t too silly.

First. (Answered!)



4 Fan Mangan, Mangans have to be 5 fan?


Secondly. (Answered!)



According to http://mahjong-europe.org/filer/riichirules.pdf, the mini-point (fu) count should be 26, rounded up, 30. However, in this picture, it is 40. This is where I got 30; non-concealed win (Riichi) is 20, a pair of winds is 2 and a concealed simple pung is 4, so shouldn\'t it be 26 into 30? I\'m sure it\'s not a concealed ron win because there was a Riichi, so the base wouldn\'t be 30.

Here\'s another Minipoint one I\'m confused about.



Base is 20 for Riichi, 4 for concealed pung, 8 for open Kung, 2 for winning on closed, shouldn\'t it just be 40?

Thirdly. (Answered!) Which side do you count from to determine the Dora indicator? The right or left side to determine the indicator? When you Kung, I\'m assuming you take the opposite side?

Edit4: New question! I just came across this. If you have a kung, but don\'t choose to take a replacement tile, and use one of the 4 tiles as a chow and the other 3 as a concealed pung in your hand, do you count the 4 tiles as a concealed kung or a pung for the minipoint calculations?

Edit5: Decision making time!



Which should I discard? I\'m thinking the 3/8 and maybe hope for some 7s to connect.

Well, I did it my way and I hit both 7s, but I\'m wondering if others would have done the same?



I was unsure what to do. I remember hearing something like \"5 pairs is just 2 pairs away from 7 pairs!\" and I was in that situation. I threw out the 4 and hoped for 3/8 drops. It came out, luckily, but what would you guys have done?

Edit6: For starting discards, what are generally the best discards to make? Honors then Terminals correct? Unless you have a lot of honors, they are useless? Especially winds?

In the case of a lot of honors, I have a lot of trouble deciding what to do with them. It is obvious if a lot of them are the same, but if they are scattered about, it\'s annoying. I start thinking if I could possibly hit a terminal/honor discard win, or aim for 13 orphans. Another thing is, what do you do with a pair of winds that aren\'t prevailing nor seated? I can use it for 2 extra minipoints, but that\'s about it? There aren\'t many hands, that aren\'t Yakumon, that use nonseated/prevailing winds as anything.

With the mentioning of Yakumon...
If you\'re east and you ron, 32k points?
If you\'re east and you Tsumo, 16k/16k/16k which is 48k points?
If you\'re not east and you ron, 16k points?
If you\'re not east and you Tsumo, 16k/8k which is 32k points?

Thanks for any replies and help!

Edit: I\'m starting to think it\'s my knowledge of concealed versus open. However, if I change the calculations for the second minipoint confusion, it\'s still only 50. Also, the first one is definitely concealed already, and I\'m still off. This is saddening.

Edit2: Looking over it again, the only way that makes my numbers correct is if I change the base win from 20 to 30, winning on conceal discard rather than self-draw/open hand. Re-thinking my second picture, it\'s a concealed Kung because I picked it up myself? Also, winning on concealment means no pung or chii? Therefore, which I originally thought anyway, full concealment is no Riichi nor pung/chii, concealment is Riichi without pung/chii and open hand is both chii/pung and Riichi? I\'m hoping I\'m right, I usually dislike people that don\'t research before asking, and I\'m trying my best right now to figure this out on my own, but I need confirmation.

Edit3: Removed a few questions I found the answers to while researching.

[Zi Rong Low]

Hi Tang,

For your First: Mangans can be 5 Fan, 4 Fan 40+ Fu, or 3 Fan 70+ Fu.

***Details of payout calculation***

The formula to calculate the raw unit is

Rounded Fu * 2^(2+ Fan) = Rounded Fu * 4 * 2^Fan

The raw unit is rounded to the next 100s to calculate a \"single unit payment\".

For \"double unit payment\", the raw unit is doubled and then rounded to the next 100s and so on.

Note that due to rounding, the \"double unit payment\" isn\'t always exactly double the \"single unit payment\".

Dealers are expected to pay and receive \"double unit payments\".
Non-dealers are expected to pay and receive \"single unit payments\" except if the dealer wins, in which it becomes \"double unit payments\".

Dealers expect a total of 6 units payment, Non Dealers expect 4.


Dealer Tsumo = 3 people paying double units each = 6 units total

Dealer Ron = 1 person paying sextuple units = 6 units

Non Dealer Tsumo = 2 people paying single unit each and 1 person (dealer) paying double units = 4 units

Non Dealer Ron = 1 person paying quad units = 4 units


Due to rounding differences, the amount received by Ron can be a bit less than from Tsumo even though it\'s the same number of units...

Eg Dealer\'s 4 Fan 30 Fu has a raw unit of 1920 points. Dealer expect 6 units.

Dealer Tsumo = 3 * (2 * 1920 = 3840 --> 3900)
= 3 * 3900 = 11700 points.

Dealer Ron = 1 * (6 * 1920 = 11520 --> 11600)
= 1 * 11600 = 11600 points.

Non Dealer expect 4 units.

Non Dealer Tsumo = 2 * (1 * 1920 = 1920 --> 2000) + 1 * (2 *1920 = 3840 --> 3900)
= 2 * 2000 + 1 * 3900 = 7900 points.

Non Dealer Ron = 1 * (4 * 1920 = 7680 --> 7700)
= 1 * 7700 = 7700 points.

If the raw unit exceeds 2000, then the limit of XXX-Gan applies.

Mangan is the first limit and applies when the raw unit is >=2000 and < 3000. Cut the unit to 2000.

5 Fan 20 fu --> 20 * 4 * 2^5 = 20 * 4 * 32 = 2560 --> 2000.

4 Fan 40 fu --> 40 * 4 * 2^4 = 40 * 4 * 16 = 2560 --> 2000.

3 Fan 70 fu --> 70 * 4 * 2^8 = 70 * 4 * 8 = 2240 --> 2000.

So for Non-Dealer winning, it would be 2 units (dealer) + 2 * 1 unit (non dealer) = 4 units * 2000 = 8000 points.

Dealer winning would be 3 * 2 units (each non dealer paying double) = 6 units * 2000 = 12000 points.

Haneman (1.5 limit) applies when the raw payout is >= 3000 and < 4000. Cut the unit down to 3000 points.

For some reason, Haneman only applies to 6 Fan and 7 Fan even though the raw unit DOES exceed 3000 at
5 Fan 25+ Fu (3200) and 4 Fan 50+ Fu (3200). I suspect they don\'t allow the Haneman rounding at 4/5 Fan to prevent the actual payouts from becoming astronomical at higher levels...

Haneman total payment would be would be 12000 and 18000 points for non dealer and dealer respectively and so on.

***

[Zi Rong Low]

In Secondly, I assume you are referring to the winning hand on the left coz it has a pair of winds (pair South).

You will start from 30 (20 + extra 10) Fu if you win by *RON* on a *Concealed* hand, it doesn\'t matter if you said Riichi or not.

It\'s the person on the left that won, and I\'m not sure whether he\'s player South or not coz I can\'t see where the position of the dice are.

Assuming he was South, then it would be:

20 + 10 (concealed Ron) + 2 (correct wind pair for South) + 4 (concealed Pon) = 36 --> 40 Fu.

Therefore it\'s 1 Fan 40 Fu.

[Zi Rong Low]

For your second picture, Riichi doesn\'t contribute to your Fu, it contributes to your Yaku total and is worth 1 Fan.

You always get 20 Fu or more for winning a hand, except for Seven Pairs in which it\'s fixed at 25 Fu.

You don\'t get 2 Fu for a closed hand, you get it if you win by Tsumo (even if the hand is revealed). The only exception is Tsumo on a Pinfu in which it often gets forfeited.

You won by Ron, which is why you don\'t get a Fan for a Fully Concealed Hand. You won by a Concealed Ron, so you\'ll start on 30 Fu.

That\'s a Concealed Kan you have there, it\'s represented as concealed coz 2 of the tiles in that quad are flipped downwards. If it was a revealed Kan, you would be able to see all 4 tiles, with at least one of them turned sideways to show who you stole it off.

You had 79 Crak needing 8 Crak to complete it so you get 2 Fu for a \"Central wait\".

Fu for this one would be

20 + 10 (concealed Ron) + 16 (Concealed Simple Kan) + 4 (Concealed Simple Pon) + 2 (Central wait) = 52 --> 60 Fu

[Zi Rong Low]

For the thirdly, you\'ll have to look at it in real life.

In real life when there are 4 walls, dealer rolls dice.
Dealer counts walls in an *Anti-clockwise direction* of the rolled number, starting from his wall as 1.

The selected wall has the same rolled number counted by tile stacks from that person\'s right to left with the right-most stack being 1.

The \"break\" occurs just to the left of the last tile stack that got counted.

The 7 tile stacks to the right of that \"break\" are the dead tiles.

Of the dead tiles, the 2 stacks on the very left are the \"Rin Shan Pai\" (Rinshan tiles) which you will use to replace your hand every time you make a Kan. This means that only 4 Kans are allowed in any Hand.

The top tile of the 3rd stack (right after the Rinshan Pai) gets flipped over as the starting Dora indicator.

If you play with Kan Dora rule, the top tile of the next stack to the right of the most recent Dora indicator gets flipped over too after every Kan is made.

This web page has a nice diagram: http://www.japanesemahjong.com/reachmah ... k_wall.htm

[Barticle]

Welcome to the forum, Tang. :)

It doesn´t help that a lot of guides/books only define Mangan as five Fan when in fact it´s 2000 base points. The 3 Fan 70+ Fu scenario is pretty rare but you´ll see 4 Fan with 40 Fu quite often on concealed and/or pung/kong-heavy hands.

There´s a nice photo of a game in process on page 10 of the EMA\'s PDF guide you mentioned (I used that a lot too) which shows the Dead Wall (wanpai) clearly.

I see you´re paying the Flash game online - I sometimes play this at lunchtime at work (mahjong addiction is a terrible thing!). To save space on the screen only the five stacks for the dora indicators are shown; you don´t need to see the kong replacement tiles.

This means that only 4 Kans are allowed in any Hand.

It´s quite neat that there are four replacement tiles (the first two stacks) and four stacks where the top tile can be exposed as kan dora. I also like the idea that the fourteen tiles of the Dead Wall are like the unplayed hand of a spooky unseen fifth player. :)

It´s probably worth noting that one player with four kongs (in a complete hand) gets a Yakuman (albeit incredibly rare, as ZRL mentioned recently) but if two or more players have four declared kongs between them an abortive draw is called.

[Robert]

Unfortunately, the Flash game (I assume you mean the one at gamedesign.jp) does not show the number of tiles left in the wall. It is useful to know that the round ends after 70 discards, not counting discards used as part of a meld.

[Barticle]

For a free MJ game (in English!) it is very good, but yes it could do with some indication of how many tiles are left. A simple numerical counter would be easy to add.

You get a pretty good idea from the discards though. You usually discard around 17 or 18 tiles (70/4) so when the third row of six discard tiles is about full your time is up! (obviously this isn´t an exact science, i.e. if there´s a lot of pon and chii action in a hand)