In Garthe's Hands #8 - Outside Hands

February 27, 2007

In Garthe's Hands #8

How are you all holding up remembering all those hands? We've covered quite a few already and I wouldn't be surprised if some of you are wondering how much longer I can keep coming up with new hands to throw at you. Don't worry; after 14 of them now, we're almost halfway through! Hang in there. The hands I'll be covering the next few issues will be comparatively rare, but can make for impressive scores when they're pulled off. Today let's cover two more that are closely related to each other: Mixed Outside Hand, and Pure Outside Hand.

Mixed Outside Hand (Terminals and Honors): 1-2 Hand Points

A Mixed Outside Hand, known as "Chanta" in Japanese will be a hand consisting only of runs or triples and a head that use a 1, 9 or letter tile. It is a bit of a converse to Simples. So 9-9-9 in Bamboos would be a useful group, as would 1-2-3 in Grands. Pairs or triples of Honor tiles can also be used. Concealed, it's fairly rare so it's worth two Hand Points. Stealing tiles from discards will bump it down to one Hand Point. It's a good idea not to steal tiles without good reason. A couple of possible reasons might be; perhaps the tile is almost all gone, or, there are other Hand points in the hand too so it's an expensive hand and worth stealing for. One of the other hands that will often work in well with this hand is Three Color Runs. Because runs all have to be at one extreme or the other, it will often just work out that there's one in each suit. One of the reasons it's so unusual, at least for me, is that I drop stray 1 and 9 tiles early in the hand as a matter of course. At the beginning of a hand I may have 6-8-9 in a suit and discard the 9 without noticing that I have a lot of terminal tiles in all the suits. I've shot myself in the foot right on the starting line. So lately I do try to pay attention as I'm first grabbing all my tiles to see if I have a lot of the terminals and letter tiles. This is good for noticing whether or not you have a good shot at the All Terminals Limit hand too.

Pure Outside Hand (All Terminal Sets): 2-3 Hand Points

Pure Outside Hand is Mixed Outside Hand's big brother and you may be able to guess from the difference in the names that what makes it different is that it doesn't allow the use of Honor Tiles. So all groups and the head must contain a 1 or 9. This is considerably more difficult, so it's a 3 pointer. Though, once again, stealing tiles will knock it down a point to 2. And once again, Three Color Runs is even more likely with this hand as the kinds of groups get more concentrated without the letter tiles. And once again and again, it's one of those things that needs to be noticed early if there is to be any chance of going for it. The Japanese name for this hand is "Junchan".

One thing to note especially regarding these hands, is how bad an idea it might be sometimes to use Reach together with them. If the wait happens to be a "good" one, for example 23 waiting for the 1or 4, there is a huge risk of having to win on the wrong tile. Reaching and then letting the cheaper tile go by without winning will knock the hand into the "Missed hand" category and the only option for winning anymore will be drawing the winning tile. So a hand that might have been huge with 6 points may wilt all the way down to just one point for the Reach.

Here are some examples:

Mixed Outside Hand ex.1

Just 1000/1500 points. Useful perhaps at the end of the game if one just needed to win a hand to end the game.

Mixed Outside Hand ex.2

Let's say the player reached and some unlucky soul threw the red dragon: the hand points are Reach, Red Dragon, Triple Colored Runs, Terminal/letter groups for a total of six hand points making it 18,000/12,000 points!

Pure Outside Hand ex.1

Bumped because ⑨ was the lucky dragon, this would be a 12,000/8000 point hand

Pure Outside Hand ex. 2

This is an example of the situation where declaring Reach might have been disastrous. If the 4 had come, the hand would simply be Reach and Peace for a grand total of 2900/2000 points. The fact that the player waited quietly for the 1 to come out adds Triple Color Runs and Terminal Groups into the mix for an actually grand total of 18,000/12,000 points.





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Gemma's Journal #7

February 24, 2007

Gemma's Journal #7

So I've been wondering what I should write about this week. Jenn suggested that I write about scoring, and I started trying to but then I realised I was still completely lost! It's the thing I'm currently working on but there are still quite a few holes in my understanding of it all. To be honest there doesn't seem to be much logic behind it at all! Well I shall persevere and you can expect an entry explaining the basics of scoring from me soon!

Hence I thought I would use this entry instead to clear up a few little loose ends in what I looked at already and then give you some puzzles to look at!

Apart from scoring this week I've also been trying to introduce Mahjong to some of my classmates. (blind leading the blind perhaps!) I think/hope that they had a good time and certainly a few of them seem quite enthusiastic to play more which must be a good sign.

Look at their confusion! I'm clearly a brilliant teacher!

Anyway, I'm hoping some of them will start reading and using this site so we can expand our community more!

Second thing I want to look at is a combination question of reach and quad. This was something I didn't consider when I was first writing my entries about these two but whilst I was playing ron2 the issue came up. I might not have mentioned explicitly that once you had reached it was possible to still declare a Concealed Quad because in most instances it wouldn't change your wait. But take a look at this hand:

The wait for this is 5 6 8 of Bams.　However if you declare a Concealed Quad with the 7 of Bams, then your wait would become a 6 of bams
only. Because reach rules mean you can't change your wait you wouldn't be able to do this. Just something to watch for!

I also received an email from David who asked this question:

"One last question on the sacred discard/Missed Win, if you have a ready hand and you haven't Reach-ed, the only concern is for your own discards, you can pass up other discards from other players and it won't effect your hand (say you're waiting for a hand worth more points), However if you declare Reach you HAVE to take the first discard that will complete your hand, correct? The "sacred discard" doesn't expand into the other players' ENTIRE discards, only the tiles they discard AFTER you've declared Reach?"

This is something I want to pass onto Jenn. (sorry! Help us!)

>Jenn's Note: David has it right here! I'm going to use the term ‘Missed Win' for Sacred Discard and ‘Lost Hand' for hands that have fallen into the category. First of all, if ANY of your winning tiles are in your own discard pile, your hand is considered to be Lost Hand no matter what and your only winning option is by drawing the winning tile yourself. The following explanation will be regarding the times when your hand is not yet Lost.



When you have a Ready Hand and you have not Reached, you only have to worry about your own discards and any discards in the same turn that include your winning tile. If I discard a tile, then Gemma discards my winning tile and I let it go (don't win on it), then the Missed Win rule applies to me until after I have had another turn. Me having another turn means me discarding a tile (the taken tile can be drawn, Chowed, Bumped or quaded). If my turn gets skipped because of someone else Bumping or Chowing, I still cannot win on the river until after I have had a turn.



After Reaching, your own entire discard and all other players' discards after the Reach was declared determine your Missed Win. If any of your winning tiles are in those places, you have Missed your Win. You must win on the first winning tile that has come out on the river. If you don't, you have a Lost Hand until the end of the game and can only win on a Self-Drawn tile.



It is a confusing rule. If anyone can think of a simpler way to explain it, please comment! Back to Gem!

I haven't been able to find any other odd situations or peculiarities yet but email me if you can think of anything for me to add!



Right, this entry is going to be a little puzzle heavy. But I expect you to all be ready to learn/revise the scoring rules for next time! Especially so you can all help me!



I had some great emails as well with puzzles! (My job gets easier by the day!)



So this week's puzzles were created for me by John. Thank you!



Puzzle One:

What's the wait?




Puzzle Two:

And finally two questions for the more experienced players on the boards:



Question 3: This one is from Jenn.



Which would you discard and why?

Question 4: This was emailed to me from another beginner like myself and I think we'd all like to hear words of wisdom on this one!

"This whole "Missed Win" has always been one of the most confusing parts of the game for me. Besides a self-pick do you just have to give up in a situation like this? Or do you then go about changing your hand until all of your possibilities to go out are tiles you haven't discarded?"

So, if we realise we're foul of the ‘Missed Win' rule do we just pray that we'll pull it ourselves, or do we try to change our hands?



Well, I'm sorry that that has been a bit of a random entry with lots of added bits of other people's work and questions! Thank you very much everyone who emailed me. Some of the questions were really good which is why I decided to share them with everyone!



Tomorrow I'm off to Japan to spend the week with Jenn so I'll make up for this week with an extra special Japan entry! Wish me luck everyone!

If anyone else has some more puzzles that they think might be fun and interesting, please email them to me! Or maybe you had a really exciting hand last week and want to share it with us? I know I always get confused whilst playing as to what I might be waiting on, so I jot down my hand and then look at it at my leisure later. Anything like that then email me!

Or just send me fanmail! I like to feel loved! heehee

Jenn's Corner #8 - Mediators and Tournaments

February 20, 2007

Jenn's Corner #8: Mediators and Tournaments

I arrived at SNPM'S Ryuou-sen match to cheer on one of my favorite Pro's of all time, Yuukou Itou. My plan was to rush off to JPML's Phoenix Cup Finals right after, but because of the length of the Final game (of 6), there was no time, so I just said my good-byes and headed home.

I walked into Vacance (バカンス), the first Mahjong Parlor I had ever played in, for the first time in probably a year. It was just as I remembered it, except for only one table was being used, in the middle, and all the tables around it had been pushed away to make room for the 30 odd spectators that had turned out to watch JPML's Itou and Yamai, NPM's Takeuchi and MU's Mihara. Obviously I went hoping that Itou or even Yamai would win, so I chose to watch behind Itou.

I made it just in time to watch the last 2 and a half games and Itou was already far behind the other 3. Yamai was ahead in total score and in the 4th game.

Until the last hand of the South Round in the 4th game. The table set-up looks like this:

Itou throws the 3 of Bams and Mihara shouts "Chow". A split-second later, but obviously secondary, Takeuchi whispers "Pon" (bump). Now, in most rule systems, the rules state that the first person to declare gets the tile. If the declaration was made at the same time, then the person Bumping gets the priority. In this case, the Chow was obviously first, but it was close enough to ask for a judgment. Alright, then, trusty mediator, who gets the tile in this case? Wait a minute? Where is the mediator? Off on a smoke break?? While the final table is battling it out?! Seriously? Well, there is a score-keeper watching, surely he can make the judgment? Nope. Looks like he is going to call the mediator over. This ought be good, someone who didn't even see the action is going to judge it. No Way!

Way. The mediator finally came over after a minute or so of people looking at each other dumbfounded and he comes over and says, "Yes?"

He had no idea what was going on. Yamai explained what happened and the mediator finally said in an almost silent voice, "I believe 'pon' has priority," seeming quite unsure of himself.

Obviously there is no problem here except for the fact that the mediator is judging something that he didn't witness because of his 'need' to smoke, but let's put that aside, and let's forget the fact that he made the judgment while looking at Takeuchi's hand (a former teammate of his in SNPM), which contained 3 drags and got its Hand point from All Trips, one of which, was made by this Bump. It seemed like I was the only one who thought this judgment was strange. Perhaps it is a culture problem, but I will say here and now that I think the mediator of a Final Table in any Mahjong tournament should be watching the Final Table. (This is why I made this article a 'Jenn's Corner' entry and not a news article, so I can write my opinion)

Honestly I am not saying that his call was necessarily the wrong one. Perhaps any mediator would have made the same call. However, the fact that he wasn't at the table to see the action means that he was not doing his job and this is something I want to set a standard for in future Mahjong competitions. When there are 50 tables at a qualification match going on at the same time it is impossible and not economical to have one mediator to each table. But this is the FINAL Table with reputations, money and honor at stake. Just because no one in your own league has made it to the Final Table does NOT mean that you are entitled to do a mediocre job of running a competition. This is also not an article to negate Takeuchi's earned prize. He played very strongly and if the mediator would let him take the Bump, that is the best decision for him and he should do that, no questions asked.

In the end, Takeuchi won that hand and pulled ahead. Going into the Final game, he was first with +42.0 points. Mihara held 2nd place with +37.4, Yamai right behind him with +33.9 and Itou trailing with △113.3. Because in SNPM matches, the placing bonus is a ridiculous +30 points for first and +10 points for 2nd, the player with the most points in the last game, with the exception of Itou, will win the tournament. In other words, it all boils down to these 8 hands.

In the end, Takeuchi won that hand and pulled ahead. Going into the Final game, he was first with +42.0 points. Mihara held 2nd place with +37.4, Yamai right behind him with +33.9 and Itou trailing with △113.3. Because in SNPM matches, the placing bonus is a ridiculous +30 points for first and +10 points for 2nd, the player with the most points in the last game, with the exception of Itou, will win the tournament. In other words, it all boils down to these 8 hands.

In the East Round, Itou had 2 big wins with +5,200 points and +12,000 points, putting him comfortably in the lead of that game. People in the room seemed to like it when Itou won.



The final hand looked like this:

Yamai Reaches. In order for Yamai to get past Takeuchi's lead of 3,700 points, he would need to win 3,900 on the river, Self-Draw 700-1300 or win a 2,000 point hand directly from Takeuchi. He is holding:

In the end, neither the 4 or 7 of Bams appears and the hand ends in a draw, giving Yamai 3,000 points (1,000 from each player) for his Ready Hand. The Reach Bone kept him 0.7 points away from taking 1st place. Takeuchi wins the title and the trophy (which SNPM didn't bother to dust off) with a final score of +51.9. Yamai takes a comfortable second with +23.1. Mihara ends in third with △6.1 and Itou was fourth with △69.9. Itou, the most experienced player at the table was heard saying, "Everyone today played excellent Mahjong."

Yamai with his 2nd place prize.

In Garthe's Hands #7

February 16, 2007

In Garthe's Hands #7

Last week I got to tell you about my absolute favorite hand so I guess this week I have to go to the other extreme and tell you my most hated. It's strange because many pros consider it their favorite. I don't know if it's just because I want to be different or because I'm bitter or what, but this hand bites me more than it feeds me and I just can't forgive it. I HATE Sanshoku. I hate it so much I don't even want it to have an English name. How about 3 Color Runs. That sounds poopy enough doesn't it?

3 Colors (3 Color Run): 1-2 Hand Points

Does the name say it all (Sanshoku dou-jun in Japanese)? You qualify for this hand when you have the same run in all three suits, for example 234 in grands, 234 in dots, and 234 in bamboos. Concealed, it counts as two hand points but stealing tiles will knock it down to one point. I can't stand this hand because when I aim for it, invariably the wrong side of my wait comes and I am disappointed; for example, in the above situation I would perhaps already have the 234 in grands and dots and a 23 in bamboos waiting for 1 or 4 and what comes but the 1. I hate that. Another favorite trick the mahjong gods play on me is giving me, say, 345 grands, 235 dots and 45 bamboos. I have the possibility of the triple run but I have that lame wait in the dots. I generally take the good wait in that situation and after discarding the 5 of dots, of course the 4 always comes and if I go out on the hand someone always points to my discards and mentions what a shame it was that I didn't go for the big hand. God I hate that.

But I suppose rather than try to poison your minds on the folly that is 3 Color Runs, I should try to show how it might be useful and let you discover its orneriness yourself. This is another hand that will often combine well with other hands, mostly Reach, Peace, and Concealed Self Draw. All Simples will sometimes also work itself in there too. It's a little dangerous to steal tiles for this hand because like I pointed out above, what if the other side of the wait comes?!!? If one does decide to bump or chow aiming for this hand it's a good idea not to until it's a sure thing. i.e., either bumping the 3rd run, or the final wait is only one tile and not open-ended. There might be other reasons to try to steal tiles without it being certain yet, but they'd better be good. There's nothing worse than going for it, then drawing the wrong side of the wait, and having to wait for the winner as a "Missed Win.

3 Colors (3 Color Triples/Quads): 2 Hand Points

Having covered 3-Colors in the first half, let's now cover 3 Colors. Lest you think I'm hitting the bottle again, let me explain, there are actually two kinds of these 3 color hands. The second one is "3 Color Triples", the first one was Runs. In Japanese, their names both start out with the word Sanshoku but the second word is different. In fact, the triples version is so rare, that the name Sanshoku has generally just come to mean the runs version, and if someone wants to talk about the triples version he'll use the full name, Sanshoku Doukou. I've probably only seen this hand 2 or 3 times in my Mahjong life so it's not likely to play large role in anyone else's life either. Its one advantage over the other version of 3 colors is that it is still worth 2 points even when tiles are stolen. This hand really only occurs by accident. The only time I might ever really decide to go for it actively would be if I happened to have at least 2 of the same number in each suit; I'd probably start bumping as soon as any of them came out. The times I've seen someone steal 2 suits of the same number, I've actually seen people throw number in the last suit a lot. I think some people really want to see someone win with this hand and are actually willing to help sometimes.

Let's look at some examples.

3 Color Runs ex.1

Just 1000/1500 points. Useful perhaps at the end of the game if one just needed to win a hand to end the game.

3 Color Runs ex.2

Let's say the player here Reached and drew his own winning tile; he would have Reach, Simples, Peace, Concealed Self Draw, and 3 Color Runs for 12,000/18,000 points!! Way to go!!

3 Color Runs ex.3

Let's say West was the Lucky Dragon, this would (usually) be worth 8,000/12,000 points. It's a nice pay off but it was a big risk hoping that the 1 would come and not the 4.

3 Color Triples/Quads ex.1

In this example, ⑤was the lucky dragon. The only hand points are the 2 from 3 Color Triples but because the triples were 1's this gets up to 5,200/7,700 points

3 Color Triples/Quads ex. 2

This hand has "4 Triples" and "3 Color Triples", 2 2-pointers; it scores 8,000/12,000 points

Mahjong Symbols for Posting

We realize that some people cannot type in the same fonts as us, so this post is for you to refer to when talking about tiles. Feel free to copy/paste or use the input method best for you!
First is single-letter abbreviation, 2nd is the Chinese Characters or symbols and third is the Official JPML abbreviation for the tile.

If you have trouble seeing any of the characters below, change the View: Encoding option in your browser to Japanese.


Winds:

East: E - 東　　T
South: S - 南 N
West: W - 西 西
North: N - 北 北


Dragons:

Red: 　R - 中 中
White: B - 白　白
Blue/Green:　G - 發　R


Grands:
1 - 一　一
2 - 二　二
3 - 三　三
4 - 四　四
5 - 伍　五
6 - 六　六
7 - 七　七
8 - 八　八
9 - 九　九

一二三 Grand-123


Bams:

1 - 1 1
2 - 2 2
3 - 3 3
4 - 4 4
5 - 5 5
6 - 6 6
7 - 7 7
8 - 8 8
9 - 9 9

123 Bam-123


Dots:

1 - (1) ①
2 - (2) ②
3 - (3) ③
4 - (4) ④
5 - (5) ⑤
6 - (6) ⑥
7 - (7) ⑦
8 - (8) ⑧
9 - (9) ⑨

(123) 　①②③ Dot-123



　

Gemma's Journal #6

February 12, 2007

Gemma's Journal #6

I got an email from Walter this week with evidence that the puzzle that we had last week can occur in real life!


This was a picture from the Mahjong Montreal Winter Tournament:

An amazing wait of 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 bamboo. (He quaded the 8 because it was a Drag (Lucky Tile)!)

However, if he wasn't careful and had previously discarded one of these tiles then his hand would have become a lost hand. It's this Missed Win (or Lost Hand, a.k.a. Sacred Discard) rule that I wanted to look at in this entry. Mostly because it's really upsetting me and catching me out A LOT recently. (If you're not understanding the terms I just used because you know the Japanese one etc, you clearly have not checked out Jenn's great new glossary! Made lovingly for you! http://reachmahjong.com/en/rules/glossary.html)

So Missed Win means that if I've already discarded a tile that could have completed my hand, even if that's not the tile I eventually want to win on, then I can't Mahjong on it. Unless I pull it myself. Woah, that's a complicated sentence! To make it a little clearer I'll use some pictures!



My hand is this:

My discards look like this:

My wait is ⑥⑨... But oh no! There's the ⑥ in my discard pile! That's a Lost Hand for me...

That's quite a simple one to see but that's when those horrible waits start to catch you out. When you (more specifically me) don't calculate correctly your wait and then realise to your horror after you've reached that unless you pull it yourself you're lost - it's really annoying!

That's why these puzzles are so good! So that we can get used to the patterns that come up and see what we're waiting on better. Certainly something that I need more practice on if my recent performance is anything to go by!

And with that here's my puzzle for you! Actually I have two this week. Perhaps they may be a little too easy for the more experienced but I hope they'll be fun nonetheless.

What's my wait?



And this is a hand I actually got playing ron2 this week. Can you see what my wait is? Also try and guess which tile I'd discarded that made this hand fall foul of the Missed Win rule!

If anyone else has some more puzzles that they think might be fun and interesting, please email them to me! Or maybe you had a really exciting hand last week and want to share it with us? I know I always get confused whilst playing as to what I might be waiting on, so I jot down my hand and then look at it at my leisure later. Anything like that then email me!

Or just send me fanmail! I like to feel loved! heehee

Jenn's Corner #7

February 8, 2007

Jenn's Corner #7

Did everyone see the new Glossary? If you didn't then you should definitely check it out here! It has all of the terms we have used on the page up until close to the end of January. Keep checking back for additional terms (we will be adding at least monthly with terms that we have used on the site) and also for a Japanese Romaji cross-reference! That way we can all understand the same terms and use the terms we are most comfortable with!

I want to talk about something that is important in the world of Mahjong; Gambling. Betting money on games has a very distinct image and in many places, the image is not good. In Japan, Gambling is mostly illegal. I say mostly because thanks to loopholes gamblers can still get their fix in Pachinko Parlors, at Horse Races, Bike Races, Boat Races, through Lottery and yes, in Mahjong Parlors as well. It kind of makes me wonder what part of Gambling, exactly, is illegal. There are, of course, no [advertised] casinos that give you the chance to lose money at Roulette, Black Jack, Poker or Baccarat (although it is possible to fill your cravings for these fixed games at underground casinos secretly). For legitimate gambling in those areas, everyone flocks to Las Vegas or Macau.

But lately, Mahjong is changing from its smoke-filled, beer-drenched, high-stakes "bad-ass" image to one of healthy competition, attracting a quite different but equally welcome crowd. To be perfectly honest, I am all for both images. Although I don’t like smoke in the poorly filtered hole-in-wall Mahjong Parlors that I frequent, I do appreciate that such a complicated game that requires a great deal of intelligence can have a “cool” image. The Japan Professional Mahjong League has announced that all JPML competitions will be non-smoking starting with the first competition in April. How exciting! Now maybe my contact lenses will hold up for all of the games. And in professional tournaments, while we are not betting money like in cash games, there are almost always cash prize purses, tournaments that allow amateurs reaching about 120,000 yen for first place (close to $10,000 U.S.). And you will rarely find a rate-free Mahjong Parlor, though they do exist.

Most Professional players got that way by playing for money. It is a popular belief among many of the old hands and their disciples that Mahjong, like Poker, uses money to keep score, and a more popular one that if something is not at stake, then not only does the gambling aspect increase and skill level decrease, but there is no hope of improving your game. At times I am torn… I do believe that people can improve without betting money, but I also believe that if all Mahjong games you play are “just for fun” then that is what you are playing the game for. That is perfectly fine. Mahjong is a game and it should be fun. There is no reason that everyone must participate in “gambling” in order to have fun at the Mahjong table. But, I also believe that it is hard to find people playing “for real” even if there is no risk of losing something. There are the golden few, but most people change the way they play when money is involved. In serious games and to make sure your opponents are serious, many people believe that it is better to use cash to count, even if it is a small amount.

Anyone who plays online poker will understand. When you play Poker for play money, the best hand usually wins the game, making it a game of luck and true gambling. When you play for real money, the most skillful player wins in the long run, using bets and tricks to let their opponents fold hands, proving that Poker is a skill game and not an actual gamble. In Mahjong, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the fastest hand will win in no-rate games, increasing the luck factor, since less people will fold hands. If the risk, however, is greater, people will tend to fold more, giving bigger hands and the players who wield them the edge.

It is a touchy subject for some and since most public Mahjong in the world outside of Japan right now has little to no cash involved; it is difficult to get everyone on the same side.

I will leave you all with this image though. All of the World Champions that you have heard of that came from Japan, us Americans that live in the center of the Reach Mahjong world here in Tokyo (including Garthe, I and a few of our buddies over here), and most professional players, rarely even practice without a rate attached and it has proved strength in the World beyond our doors.

Is Takeo Kojima (founder of the JPML and nicknamed Mr. Mahjong during his peak) right? Is it impossible to become an A-Class player without betting money? I’m not sure if that is true, but I can say from experience that finding worthy opponents already at that level is quite difficult. Maybe that, like the smoking rules in Mahjong Parlors, will soon change as well. For now, all of you anti-gamblers don't worry! With the English Ron2 coming and the possibility of more tournaments in the world to come, there are plenty of opportunities to gain and keep your Mahjong skills.

In other news, last month Garthe and I participated in Saikouisen's (another pro group in Japan) Pair Match. Aren't we cute?

In Garthe's Hands #6

February 5, 2007

In Garthe's Hands #6

Oh how I've waited. Today I finally get to declare my true love, my favoritest of favorite hands, a thing more beautiful than Yosemite and my girlfriend put together. (Now we'll see if she's really reading this).

So far I've given you some one pointers that will let you score some small hands. You can also put them together to score bigger hands. I've also given some higher point hands which will let you make the big score with just a couple of them in your hand. But these are just base hits, little jabs. What if you're swinging for the fences to hit that grand slam, that one knock out punch that leaves your opponents reeling, mouth agape in awe. That's when you need the uninspiringly named "Limit Hands", known as "Yakuman" in Japanese. Another translation, though not much more inspiring, would be "full" or "complete" hands. You can't get anymore points out of a hand than these. They are extremely rare, some more than others, and because of that they are worth a lot of points. If you hit someone with one of these, chances are you're going to knock him out of the game in one fell swoop. A few of them, I have yet to see in my 5 years of Mahjong, so ignoring them for the moment, let's start with the more commonly occurring ones, All Terminals and the love of my life, 4 Concealed Triples.

All Terminals (a.k.a. 13 Orphans): Limit Hand

All Terminals is called "Kokushimusou" in Japanese and it's probably the most well known of the Limit Hands. It's one of those random words that people who don't even play Mahjong know, so that when I say I play Mahjong they start blurting out "Kokushimusou" and "Men-tan-pin" with knowing grins to let me know that they have no idea what they're talking about. It is the other hand in Mahjong like "7 Pairs" that bears no resemblance to the normal form of a hand in Mahjong. A winning hand will have one each of the Honors, 1 and 9 tiles plus one more of one of them to make a "head" (or "eyes"). Generally, when this hand gets "Ready" you will have your head already and be waiting for one remaining terminal or honor not in your hand. However, if you managed to get one each of the 1's and 9's plus one each of the Honors before you established your head, you would then be waiting for any one of those 13 tiles to make your head, the dream 13 tile wait, and depending on who or where you're playing, it will be worth double the most amount of points possible! How crazy is that?!

There are of course several problems finishing a hand like this. For one, just getting all those tiles together is surprisingly difficult. Those Honors which were the bane of your existence when you were trying to get Peace and Simples will seem to never come. If they do, they'll be the ones you already have. Also it becomes clear pretty quickly what you're trying to do as you throw away one useful middle tile after another. You'll make for an easy target from someone who has nothing more than Simples in his hand but knows that it's only a matter of time before you throw his middle of the road winning tile. Still, there's nothing more satisfying than showing your hand and asking for the most points possible. "What? You don't have that much? Well I'll just take the rest of your points and your money too then." So I almost always go for this hand when I have at least 9 of the terminals already in my hand. If it's toward the end of the game and I'm probably losing anyway, I may even go for it starting with only 7 or 8. If the hand ends up not going anywhere, I have a hand full of pretty safe tiles so I can probably throw pretty safely if someone declares Reach. And every once in a while you get some idiot who buries his head in his hand and has no clue you're going for anything until you say "Ron" and ask for all his points. Unfortunately, that idiot would be me, and if I miss the cut to move up to the next league tomorrow, losing to this hand 2 months ago will be the reason.

4 Concealed Triples: Limit Hand

And now perfection: 4 Concealed Triples or "Suu Anko" in Japanese. It was the first limit hand I ever completed so it's always had a special place in my heart. It's like its little brother, 4 triples, except that all the triples must be made from tiles you've drawn. Bumping tiles immediately precludes being able to go for this hand. You'll find that you end up going for this hand when you started out going for normal 4 Trips and also 7 pairs. A note to be careful of here, the triples must really all be self drawn. That means that if you are one away with two pairs waiting for one more of one of them to finish the triple, you still have to draw that final tile. If another player throws the winner, it will be a much cheaper hand, still fairly expensive, but not the home run you were swinging for, more of a ground rule double. If you did manage to get 4 triples into your hand and you have a singleton waiting for one more to complete your head, this special wait will again qualify the hand as a double limit hand depending on what rules you are playing. Most Free Mahjong Parlors, however, don't allow double limit hands so as amazing as it is, you'll still just get the normal most points score. (Sidenote: I don't know why I used so many baseball terms writing this. I HATE baseball!)

Another note about these two hands: until a year ago, I thought 4 Concealed triples was the most common Limit hand. Yet I still have not finished it once on Fight Club and I have finished All Terminals several times. I think the reason for this is the tables on which we play live games. It is a common complaint that in fact they do not shuffle the tiles very thoroughly, so that when the "walls" (or deck so to say) come up out of the table, tiles that had been grouped together in the previous hand will often be near each other in the wall. This leads to a higher
occurrence of pairs in starting hands which will thus lead to many players opting to go for 4 Concealed Triples more often than they normally could. The more random distribution of tiles in the computer generated Fight Club certainly seems to lend itself better to the scattering of tiles needed for All Terminals. Just another little side note and excuse for why I have yet to finish my favorite hand on Fight Club.

Let's look at some examples. Also regarding examples from now on, I will provide both the score as if the hand was won by the non-dealer and dealer.

All Terminals ex.1

32,000/48,000 points

All Terminals ex.2

Usually 32,000/48,000 but because of the special wait, sometimes 64,000/96,000

4 Concealed Triples ex.1

32,000/48,000 points

4 Concealed Triples ex. 2

Usually 32,000/48,000 but because of the special wait, sometimes 64,000/96,000

Gemma's Journal #5

February 2, 2007

Gemma's Journal #5

Hey again everyone!

Thank you everyone for commenting on my last entry! That was fantastic! It's great to have everyone discussing and sharing their views, especially for a beginner like myself - getting advice from you all is going to be great way for me to learn. I'm going to do something similar again for this one, so if you're already more than familiar with the rules of Mahjong skip to the bottom!

If we've all grasped the concept of Bump then this next one isn't going to prove a problem at all.

What if you have four of a kind in your hand? Apart from being quite excited, what should you do? This is where we can shout Quad! It's almost exactly the same as Bump, so when someone discards a tile that you could use to your advantage and create a set of four then you can shout Quad and upon showing your group of three take the final tile to create a Quad. However, you would be one tile short to make a full hand if it was left at that. Therefore, to rectify this, you have to take one tile from the far end of the dead wall (or king's tiles) before you choose a discard. Then your Quad gets put to your right side with the tile turned appropriately just as before.

If you are not taking from someone else's discard and instead have pulled the tile yourself then you can still Quad. This is called Concealed Quad; on your go you just say Quad, show the tiles, then pull another tile from the dead wall (or king's tiles) and discard. You then have to place your tiles, as if you had barked them, on your right but turning the outside tiles over to indicate that you drew it yourself.

One last Quad option is; what if you Bumped a set from another player and then pulled the final fourth tile? You can add this and create a Quad! We're calling this Add-a-Quad and then you take an extra tile and discard as above.

Apart from being quite satisfying to collect all of one tile the other exciting aspect to Quadding (It sounds a bit like some game in Harry Potter!) in all of it's varied forms, is that you can then turn over an extra lucky tile indicator - thus increasing your chances of getting a lucky tile in your hand!

There is one last rule for Quads is that if 4 Quads are declared in a single hand by any of the players (i.e. four lucky tile indicators have been turned over) then the hand is replayed.

Jenn's note: If only one player has Quads and they have 4 Quads then the hand is not replayed and it is instead a limit hand (4 Quads). If more than one player has Quads and the count gets to 4 Quads, then the hand is usually started over.

I managed to get a concealed Quad the other day with the red dragons and it was the lucky tile. I can't tell you how pleased I was! Fortune smiled on me that day!

Ok, following on from last week's popularity I have another puzzle you can advise me on. Walter kindly emailed me one that he created and I'd like to see what everyone has to say about it. I love the way he phrased it as well! It's quite a lot like a school maths (and Americans please note - math-S not math… hehe!) textbook.

Bob got extremely lucky. He managed to make Reach with a Full Flush.





But, now he realizes it's not easy to be so lucky. There are too many choices. Too many similar tiles. So he asks his wife, Margaret, who is a far better player than he is : "I'm waiting for a 2 or a 5 Bamboo. But it feels like there may be other ways to finish this hand. Am I missing something?"

Thank you Walter!!!



If anyone else has some more puzzles that they think might be fun and interesting, please email them to me! Or maybe you had a really exciting hand last week and want to share it with us? I know I always get confused whilst playing as to what I might be waiting on, so I jot down my hand and then look at it at my leisure later. Anything like that then email me!

Or just send me fanmail! I like to feel loved! heehee