Monday, February 05, 2007

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

11 comments:

Gemma said...

4 Concealed Triples is the first (and only) limit hand I got! I was so happy with it!

六六 七七七 66 ⑥⑥⑥ ⑨⑨⑨ 六


So beautiful!

Anonymous said...

It was my first limit hand too!!

I can't remember all the numbers I had in there though I do remember that as it turned out, I was waiting on the single tile which happened to be the Lucky Dragon because someone had reached and I kept being too afraid to throw it. And then I drew it myself!! I haven't seen as pretty a 6 of dots since.

They really do look beautiful all lined up there in your hand, don't they?

Another random note: I played a game on fight club today where a player got 2 4-concealed-triples hands IN A ROW!!!!! The second time he even had Big Dragons in his hand but drew the non-dragon tile so he only got one more limit hand that time. And he had Reached too!!! Man, I wanted that guy to die a slow and painful death.

Anonymous said...

My first limit hand was also 4 Concealed Trips! And I was also just waiting for 1 tile, the 2-grand.
I was ready with a 1-4 Grand wait and then I pulled the 3rd tile for my Eyes, giving me 4 Trips. I discarded the 3-Grand and the guy next to me Bumped it, making the 2-Grand look super-safe... Little did the guy across from me know, when he discarded teh 2-grand and I said "RON! 48,000 points please." That's right, I was the dealer.

Of course, I had no idea at the time that a Bumped 3-Grand would make 2-Grand look safe, at that time it was just dumb luck (^^) How sweet it is!

Did I ever tell you all about the time that Garthe gave me 13 Honors? It was beautiful!

No one else is winning on Limit Hands? Share your stories yo!!!

ASDF JKL; said...

In 2 player mahjong with 20 discards max (against my older brother), I have won with "Kokushimusou/ 13 Unique Wonders" and "Chin Routou/Pure Old Heads" only once each. The "Chin Routou" one was extremely rare, I could only win with it because I got dealt out several pairs of terminals (1s or 9s) at the start. No other Yakumans in real life.

However in various Japanese mahjong video game emulations on the computer (for N64, GBA, SNES, NES, MAME), I have won with "Suu Ankou/ Four Concealed Triples" 4 times without cheating (that is, saving and loading slate files). I don't know if that counts though...

Also in regards to "Kokushimusou", it would be very retarded/wasteful of you to say "Kyuushuu Kyuuhai" (9 different terminals in your starting hand)and make that hand drawn, instead of aiming for the "Kokushimusou" hand itself.

Anonymous said...

I don't remember when I first made a Limit Hand. However, I remember one funny instance when we were playing at a cultural exhibition in Montreal's old port, a tourist attraction.

A Chinese lady looked at us, amused. I asked her if she wanted to join us. "No, I don't know how to play". We knew it really meant "Yes, but I don't want to gamble money". We reassured her, she jump in a seat and start shuffling the tiles like a pro. She didn't even look at the tiles while talking and building her side of the wall.

She didn't know Japanese rules, so we agreed to let her play Hong Kong style. After, a few hours of play, I got tired of her making Chicken Hands (0 yaku), so I asked her if we could require at least 3 fan (doubles) to go out. She agreed, convinced we didn't really know how to play since we almost never managed to do even a Chow. Between us, we silently agreed to still aim for valid Japanese hands, hence our hands remained mostly closed.

We started a new game. I got lucky at that moment and assembled a 13 Orphans hand. She looked at me, very displeased, like I ruined her entire day. We reshuffled the tiles, discarded a few tiles than, suddenly, she mumbled an excuse and... left. We never saw her again.

Anonymous said...

John,
I hope you will have more chances in the near future to play real 4-player games! Maybe Garthe and I could take a trip down to see you sometime... (Now accepting donations from anyone willing to send us!!)

Walter,
That is a funny story! Poor lady... She probably thought there was only one kind of Mahjong... And poor you! Bittersweetness of the great Limit Hand!
How often do Limit Hands appear in the Winter tournament?

Anonymous said...

- "How often do Limit Hands appear in the Winter tournament?"

Hi Jenn,

Hard to say since all the games are played simultaneously, on several tables. But, seems to me there are less Limit Hands made than in RON2, although lately I've seen a few.

Anonymous said...

Hi!
A question 2all from newb:

Gemma said...
4 Concealed Triples is the first (and only) limit hand I got! I was so happy with it!

六六 七七七 66 ⑥⑥⑥ ⑨⑨⑨ 六

Does winning on 六 makes pon 六六六 exposed? I mean in this case, does this fourth pon remain concealed?

Anonymous said...

stvyp,

Hello and Welcome!!! We are happy to have you join us!

To answer your question, if you win on the 六 from someone else's discard, or the 6 for that matter, then your hand points will include: all triples, 3 concealed triples, for a big hand, but not a limit hand.

For Gemma's example to be a Limit Hand, the winning tile must be drawn from the wall by Gemma herself.

Does that clear things up?

Anonymous said...

Thanks Jenn!
Now it's clear :)

Anonymous said...

Yesterday I won with a 13 Wonders hand on my first try of going for one. Before that the most I've won was a Man Gan hand.