Shirluban wrote:There are also things that you can't learn from experience, like statistical analysis and other game theory.
It's possible to re-invent the wheel all by ourself, but having a good book or other source is better.
Books are also useful to learn from other peoples' experience, not only your personal one.
Of course, personal experience is very important, but no one should limit to that.
very true, especially about using books to learn from other peoples experience.
(actually for that purpose, reading manga's about mahjong not named Saki might be an even better option. Hell even Saki has a few good strategic bits useful in real life)
I wasn't saying that you should limit yourself to personal experience at all. you shuoldn't limit yourself to anything ever. That sort of closed minded thinking never got anyone very far.
BUT,
I do believe that once you have the basic mechanics of mahjong down, it's best to just play. You learn alot of the more 'advanced' strateties like not stealing tiles at every opportunity and patiently building bigger hands and defensive strategies like dealing sugi tiles etc. naturally or, in other words, the hard way. Which is just another way to say you REALLY learn it, not just KNOW. And learning the hard way I think usually gives one a 'sixth sense' of sorts, knowing instictively when to win a hand fast or when to build a monster or when to plain bail from the start period. Something you cant expect to 'learn' by reading about in a book. Too many people, not just concerning mahjong but on almost anything there is to be learned, insist on becoming armchair experts, reading everything there is to be written about a subject, before actually going out and trying it for themselves, when in fact they might actually learn more in a single game than all the mathematical statistical theoretical crap they've ever read combined.
huge exaggeration i know, but bear with me just trying to make a point..
Ive read some bits and pieces here myself, and with plenty difficulty. Like its been said a few times already on this thread, most of the more 'advanced' stuff on mahjong is written in archaic medieval Japanese that id be willing to bet most of Japans youth today would have a hard time reading. Japanese as a written language is incredibly difficult.
And of course, there were alot of good points to be learned in those books that ive used here and there when they applied. But for all that hard work, I've come to find that most of that crap goes straight to shit when I'm isshanten from a solid haneman hand for a potential gyakuten, in the face of a reach from the oya and my last tile to throw away is looking rather suspicious.
I'm sure you know as well as I do, if not more, since I'm rather young and probably not as experienced as you are, that mahjong, for all the statistics and mathematical possibilities surrounding it, has a huge element of random luck attached to it. Sometimes, rather, alot of times, winning is simply trusting your 'nagare' and having the balls to jsut go for it. And of course even more importantly, knowing when to not push your luck despite being 'statistically' in the green zone, trusting that uneasy feeling in your gut that tells you to back off.
But then if im honest, I'm much more of a unpredictable luck player, going by gut feeling and my sense of where the 'nagare' is going, rather than a by the books skill player, so maybe I shouldn't be pitching my opinion so much on this topic anyways
just my two cents, sorry for throwing the thread off topic so bad.
oh and the thing about the old japanese men.. haha yea, I realize that.. no offense intended, I was just thinking about a funny incident that happened to me just a couple days ago involving a very chatty old japanese man while I was playing the other day.. but yea save that story for some other time.