Rules & Questioning

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

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chalwa
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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by chalwa » Mon Aug 10, 2009 7:39 am

This rule is called kuikae, so it depends on ruleset you are playing. As far as i renember on tenhou its not allowed to call chi and discard 1 (in your example). I (while playing with friends) use this rule only when using red fives, so ppl wont change their shuntsu with fives just for more dora :]
EMA rules allows it (to change your shuntsu (chows)like this).

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Kurai_Hana » Mon Aug 10, 2009 11:47 pm

Hi, thanks for letting me know about it chalwa =)

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Kurai_Hana » Wed Aug 12, 2009 11:18 pm

Hello again! Sorry, but I had another question. Suppose East, lost a mangan to another player. Would the person at East pay 8000 or 12000? I thought that East wins 1.5x more, and pays 2x more so East would pay 12000, but I just wanted some clarification. If East had won that mangan, he would win 12000, but please clarify if East lost that mangan, would he pay 8000 or 12000. Thanks!

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Poochy » Thu Aug 13, 2009 1:00 am

Kurai_Hana wrote:Hello again! Sorry, but I had another question. Suppose East, lost a mangan to another player. Would the person at East pay 8000 or 12000? I thought that East wins 1.5x more, and pays 2x more so East would pay 12000, but I just wanted some clarification. If East had won that mangan, he would win 12000, but please clarify if East lost that mangan, would he pay 8000 or 12000. Thanks!
East wins 1.5x, but pays 2x in the event that somebody else wins by tsumo. So if East deals into somebody else\'s mangan, he/she pays 8,000 points. If a non-East player gets a tsumo mangan, then East pays 4,000 and the other two each pay 2,000.

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Kurai_Hana » Thu Aug 13, 2009 1:05 am

Thank you Poochy for clarifying for me! =) I\'m glad I\'ve gotten it sorted out now =D

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by July » Thu Aug 13, 2009 2:28 am

If you\'re writing hand histories, is there a special way to indicate that someone called pon or chi?

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Tang » Thu Aug 13, 2009 4:31 am

Do you mean the rotating tiles? Or something else?

I have a question, since I\'m here anyway, the bonus rounds are confusing me. These are the situations I know so far where it goes into bonus hand.

1) East rons/tsumo
2) East is tenpai
3) Everyone is noten, east moves on and goes into bonus 1 (I just noticed this in a JRM game)
4) Abortive draw...? (Current east stays east?)

There was another one that happened to me, but I can\'t seem to recall what was the criteria.

Thanks in advance~

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Poochy » Thu Aug 13, 2009 8:28 am

July wrote:If you\'re writing hand histories, is there a special way to indicate that someone called pon or chi?
I usually see a space after the last concealed tile, then any declared pon/chi/kan, with the declared meld in the order they were declared. (I\'ve seen both left-to-right and right-to-left. For a pon where the 4th tile was added to make a kan, its order goes by when the pon was called.) If sideways tile images are unavailable and you\'re denoting a winning hand, you can usually just have them all facing up. If you have a complete hand (i.e. after ron/tsumo), the tile the player won on is placed to right of all concealed tiles. Usually it\'s to the left of declared melds, but I\'ve seen it to the right as well.

For sideways tiles, the rules are:
Chi: The called discarded tile is on the very left and sideways.
Pon: If the discard came from the player to the left of the player who declared the pon, the leftmost tile is sideways. If it came from the player to the right, the rightmost tile is sideways. If it came from the player across the table, the middle tile is sideways. If a red 5 is involved, it is used as the sideways tile if and only if it was the tile that was discarded and then called.
Kan: If the 4th tile was added to a pon, the 4th tile is stacked sideways on top of the already-sideways tile. A concealed kan is usually denoted by all four of the tile vertical, with the leftmost and rightmost face-down. If the player had an an-kotsu and called the 4th tile, the most common way I\'ve seen is the same as a pon, but with the 4th tile placed straight somewhere in the middle.

For example, here\'s how one might denote a winning hand (without sideways tiles, since the forum doesn\'t have those):
1-dot 1-dot 1-dot 7-bam 7-bam 9-bam 9-bam 9-bam :south :south ... :south ... 4-bam 4-bam 4-bam

This would mean the player declared a pon on the 4-bam, then won on a :south

Note that which tile the player won on can be important, since some yaku only count on some waits, which is why it\'s put separately. For example:
3-crak 4-crak 5-crak 2-dot 3-dot 4-dot 4-dot 5-dot 2-bam 2-bam 3-bam 4-bam 5-bam ... 6-dot would count for pinfu, while
3-crak 4-crak 5-crak 2-dot 3-dot 4-dot 4-dot 6-dot 2-bam 2-bam 3-bam 4-bam 5-bam ... 5-dot would not since it\'s not a ryanmen wait.
Tang wrote:I have a question, since I\'m here anyway, the bonus rounds are confusing me.
In general, the bonus hand occurs if East wins or the round ends in a draw. Usually, East will remain East for the bonus round. However, if the round ends in a draw by running out of tiles and East is noten, then the positions rotate just as if there was no bonus hand, but the honba count (bonus hand number) still increments by 1 just as if there was a bonus hand.

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by kylone » Mon Aug 17, 2009 2:14 pm

I\'m new here. (\"Hey everyone\")
I\'m one of those who\'ve just gotten interested in mahjong a couple of weeks ago from watching Saki. (Some bloggers commented on the entertainment value of the series, even without knowing mahjong rules.)
Well, after tracking down what flavor of mahjong the characters are playing, I picked up the European Mahjong Association rulebook, and learned the game. (I play every now and then at MahjongTime, with the same nickname)

Oh yes, my question: something the EMA rules don\'t (directly) address, does (as the tournament in Saki showed) a rinchan kaihou after a claimed kon get treated as ron, or a tsumo? The series implied that the answer changed upon which tournament you enter, so I\'m wondering what the EMA\'s rules say...

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Tang » Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:53 pm

I was actually wondering about that too after I saw it in Akagi.

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by July » Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:06 pm

In some rulesets, there\'s a rule about open kans... if you make a rinshan kaihou win, it\'s treated as a \"ron\" on whoever you got the kan tile from.

Actually, I think pretty much everybody is annoyed with this rule, but since it almost never comes up it\'s not really a big deal.

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Mcgreag » Wed Aug 19, 2009 12:00 pm

The EMA rulebook says this about Rinshan Kaihou:
\"... Counts as a self-draw.\"

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by July » Wed Aug 19, 2009 3:25 pm


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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by kylone » Sun Aug 23, 2009 9:46 pm

Well, I\'m not sure how this is implemented with online games, because it\'s never come up. It\'s rare enough that the player who claims the tile by calling \'kon\' might just wanna mention whether winning by rinchan kaihou is treated as a ron or tsumo, before the draw.

Mcgreag: The other interpretation is that the mention is in the scoring section, meaning that rinchan kaihou with a concealed hand would also score the menzen tsumo yaku, or 2 minipoints for self-draw, depending on whether the rest of the hand is open or not.
My take-away from thinking about this: there needs to be a mention of this is in section 3.3.2 Melded Kong, clarifying the issue.

(Two schools of thought: 1) since the discarder didn\'t discard the winning tile, how can he be responsible; or 2) since the winners turn started with a call, how can it be a tsumo? This seems right up there with open/closed tanyo as for which way is the \'right\' one...

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Re:Rules & Questioning

Post by Mcgreag » Mon Aug 24, 2009 8:33 pm

There are many unclear parts in the EMA rules but I don´t consider this to be any more unclear than anything else.

No you can´t get Menzen Tsumo because you opened your hand when you called the kan (unless it was a closed kan of course) and yes of course you get 2 minipoints. It´s just a normal self-draw that happened to come from the king´s tiles which just means it gives an extra yaku. Now if rule had stated that it counted as a ron then I agree there would be some uncertainty on the whole open/closeness of the hand etc but when it counts as a tsumo there isn´t much really to interpret.

An example of other unclear rules would be that if you follow the rules to the letter then you could get a chanta/junchan/honroutou with a hand that contains a pair of 5´s. The rules says all \"sets\" must contain/consist of terminals/honors and in section 3.2 a set is defined as a chow, pung or kong but the pair is not listed as being a set.

To make a slight spillover from the open tanyao thread where they discussed among other thing what rules would promote more people to play riichi. I think that if you want to promote riichi it is much more important rewrite the the rule book so that a person who has never played mahjong before could read it and easily understand all rules than it is to argue about open/closed tanyao.

The problem with the current rulebook is that it´s a mix explanations and codified rules if the same text, and there are nothing that indicates what is what. It also makes it very difficult to search for a specific rule.
It should probably be divided into 2 parts. One being a numbered list of rules and the other an explanation on how to play. But that´s a fairly large undertaking.

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