Should I have seen this coming?

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Referee
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Should I have seen this coming?

Post by Referee » Sat May 26, 2012 2:15 pm

Here's the hand that sent me into negatives in the game I just played at tenhou: http://tenhou.net/0/?log=2012052622gm-0 ... &tw=0&ts=6

My question is: Was this something I should have seen? If so, how? What are the signals? Because I hate this when this happens...

Bonus question: &ts=0 ended up with -1300 for me. Would you have played that hand any different?

Thanks again to the great community of reachmahjong.com

Esh
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Re: Should I have seen this coming?

Post by Esh » Sat May 26, 2012 7:48 pm

Given the fact you just discarded 2 1-character tiles just before that? Probably not. His wait is a little hard to read, but I think it might have been possible to notice all of his tiles were inside tiles and just avoid playing the outside tiles. But again, if I discarded 2 in a row that went through fine, I would probably think the third was okay too.

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Re: Should I have seen this coming?

Post by Iapetus » Sat May 26, 2012 10:41 pm

The tile wasn't safe at all. Discarding a non-suji terminal into riichi is a very risky play. Sure you can't predict a junchan sanshoku, but a simple riichi ippatsu pinfu dora1still does huge damage. In 3shanten and with no hurry to make it into 3rd place, you should just have defended by discarding the 7sou and aka5sou.

And there was no reason to discard those 1mans to begin with. Only in tenpai could it be necessary.

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Re: Should I have seen this coming?

Post by Kyuu » Sat May 26, 2012 11:14 pm

Plus, y'had a pair of 1-man and drew a third. Why reject that?

If it makes you feel better, he didn't particularly target your dislike for 1-man at the time. Instead, his hand grew into the natural development of sanshoku. Y'got victimized by bad timing. Had he not gotten tenpai at that point, you would have gotten away with it.

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Re: Should I have seen this coming?

Post by Referee » Sun May 27, 2012 12:28 am

The first discard of iiman was because I was thinking of pinfu, and that ankou worked against it. The second discard was an attempt to move towards tanyao to add to the hand. I admit this could have been a bit greedy/premature. What would you have discarded on round 8?

The third discard I'm happy for the second ryunman, only to be brutally knocked down by an ippatsu baiman. I agree the 3568 shape in pinfu is not too good. I'm still having trouble in seeing when I need to fold, it seems.

Do you have any comments on the East-1 hand where I was ronned by 1300? Also, should East 4-1 be folded, too?

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Re: Should I have seen this coming?

Post by WaveMaster » Sun May 27, 2012 2:00 am

Not that I need to say this, but even if any of us would have played it differently, that doesn't necessarily make it a better way to play. Had your opponent's wait been different you might have pressed forward and won as dealer with a nice hand. It's not impossible that your opponent could have had a different wait even with the same discards.

Having said this, I've recently started trying out a much more defensive style where I (usually) remove incomplete melds that are not likely to be used in my final hand as early as possible, even though this limits my ability to change the shape of my hand later. Due to limited availability of mahjong resources, I'm not really aware of whatever existing opinions there might be on doing this, so I'd be interested in getting your (and the rest of the board's) thoughts.

To illustrate, on your fourth draw, your hand looks like this:

1-crak 1-crak 3-crak 4-crak 3-dot 5-dot 6-dot 5-bam 6-bam 6-bam 7-bam :south red-dra Draw: 8-bam

You have a pair, one complete meld, and three incomplete melds with double-sided waits, which is enough to assemble pinfu dora 1 and reach for it. The 3d, South, and Chun are not part of this final hand. Among those, the 3d is generally less likely to pass later in the game then an honor tile, so (unless I was going to fold now), I would discard the 3d now.

On the same note, the very next turn, you bring 8d into your hand. This gives you [3-56-8]d, which is a nicer shape than [-56-]d, but you already have one complete meld and two other incomplete melds with double-sided waits elsewhere, so you only need one meld from dots. If you keep pressing the hand, the most likely outcome is that you'll have to get rid of the 3d and 8d anyway.

If you were to continue as I described, by the time your opponent declares riichi, your hand would look like:

1-crak 1-crak 3-crak 4-crak 5-dot 6-dot 5-bam 6-bam 6-bam 7-bam 8-bam :south red-dra Draw: 6-crak

This has the (minor) advantage that you still have the safe Chun in your hand which you can use to get past the ippatsu chance. The South is not necessarily safe, but buying even one turn with the Chun lets you see more safe tiles, as well giving the possibility that someone else will deal in or the opponent will self-draw.

***

As for the specific moment you were in when your hand looked like:

1-crak 3-crak 4-crak 6-crak 3-dot 5-dot 6-dot 8-dot 5-bam 6-bam 6-bam 7-bam 8-bam Draw: 6-crak

In order to make this hand proceed normally, you're going to have to dump 1c, 3d, and 8d, and only the 3d is safe among those. There is no particular reason to think that the 1c is safe; rather, it may be that the reason the opponent discarded the red 5c last is because he had something like [-23-5] and was waiting to see whether he would draw the 4, in which case he could connect the red 5 and keep the dora.

Because I'm East and behind, I don't want to completely give up on the hand, but that's a lot of danger tiles to go through for this hand. Because the opponent discarded quite a few middle bamboo tiles early, I would plan to discard my bamboo tiles down to only one meld and then see if I happen to get the needed 4d and 7d which allow me to keep the 8d and have two melds in dots. If that happens, then I can decide at that time whether the risk/reward of discarding the 1c is in my favor or not.

I would start by discarding the mostly safe red 5b (I say mostly just to emphasize that someone else would win on it), with the possibility of discarding the 6b in the future if a later draw improves my hand.

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Re: Should I have seen this coming?

Post by Iapetus » Sun May 27, 2012 10:03 am

WaveMaster wrote:Not that I need to say this, but even if any of us would have played it differently, that doesn't necessarily make it a better way to play. Had your opponent's wait been different you might have pressed forward and won as dealer with a nice hand. It's not impossible that your opponent could have had a different wait even with the same discards.
It's not impossible to win from a situation like that, but it's very unlikely. Mahjong is all about playing the moves with the greatest chance of success. He was only 1900 points below 3rd and 6100 below 2nd in South 1; in a situation like that the last thing you want is to be 10000 points down.

Referee wrote: I'm still having trouble in seeing when I need to fold, it seems.

Do you have any comments on the East-1 hand where I was ronned by 1300? Also, should East 4-1 be folded, too?
The simple rule of thumb at your level is: if you're tenpai, attack, if not, fold unless absolutely necessary. Not folding those two hands was fine, as you were in tenpai for 6000+ points. But the last hand was a textbook case of a situation where you need to defend.


By the way, I got my first yakuman just like that. Guy to my left discarded 2 1mans in a row, I drew into kokushi tenpai, he discarded a third one and boom!

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