I'm A Bad Player With No Clue

[swagen2167]

I am a bad player. I freely admit that. The problem is, I don't know what to do in order to get better. With baseball, you keep taking batting practice if you're a hitter or keep working on your curveball if you're a pitcher. If you play the piano, you just keep practicing your exercises. But with this game, outside of the basics, which has a loose similarity to gin rummy, which I am actually good at, I have no idea what to work on next. There is too much to this game.

For example, over the last few days I've watched videos on all the different yaku, dora, discard, defensive play and what honors to hold onto. Hours and hours and doesn't even scratch the surface of what's involved in this game.

My grandmother played mahjong with the ladies 60 years ago. I should have had her teach me because right now I am totally frustrated. It seems like my wins, which are few, are luck. I just happened to have a good hand. My losses, I am sure, are simply from bad play which ultimately comes down to knowing what to discard and when. This is where I seem to make one bad choice after another.

So here is my question. Is there a video series or even book that will teach me step by step from beginning to end how to play this game and how to get good at it?

Any tips you can give me where to look will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[matija123123]

There is a Ricchi Book 1 by daina chiba, it's a free pdf that you can download. Also just like with stuff like baseball and piano you mentioned you have to put a lot of time into mahjong or anything really, if you are new to mahjong you can't expect to be good after few hours just like you can't expect to be good at a piano after 4 lessons it takes years to get actually good at hobbies.

[swagen2167]

Originally posted by matija123123:

There is a Ricchi Book 1 by daina chiba, it's a free pdf that you can download. Also just like with stuff like baseball and piano you mentioned you have to put a lot of time into mahjong or anything really, if you are new to mahjong you can't expect to be good after few hours just like you can't expect to be good at a piano after 4 lessons it takes years to get actually good at hobbies.

That much I figured. But if you don't know where to begin, there's little chance you'll ever get good no matter how much you play.

[Ruldra]

Apart from simply playing and observing your mistakes, you need to do some studying. Riichi book 1 is a good starting place - skip the first 2 chapters and jump straight to tile efficiency. Take your time reading it as many times as needed to understand the concepts. Also in the official site there's a classroom section with several articles worth reading: https://mahjongsoul.yo-star.com/classroom

Beyond that, you check the log after every match and review your discards, see if you could've been more efficient.

[swagen2167]

Is there a way to share the results of my match here?

[swagen2167]

Well, thanks foe all the help. The book was a big help. I'm glad I'm a quick study. My last 6 matches, one 1st place, and four 2nd place. I'm at 58 of the 80 points I need to get to 3 star novice. I think I can hold my own at this point. But there is a lot of luck in this game. The match I came in last I made the only logical discard in 2 games and got clobbered both times. It happens. Anyway, thanks again for all the help.

[swagen2167]

Okay, I just had the absolute worst luck. One game I'm waiting on 1 of 8 possible win tiles. Another game I'm waiting on 1 of 6 possible win tiles. Another game I'm waiting on 1 of 5 possible win tiles. I got hammered each game and finished with negative points. I went from being just 4 points away from making it to the next Novice level to under 40 points total. This game can be so frustrating.

[Brma]

That just be how it is sometimes lol

I can't tell you how many times I'm thinking, "I can either get rid of the 4,5 of Characters. Or I can get rid of the 4,5 of sticks." If I get rid of the sticks I draw 6 sticks, if I get rid of characters I draw 6 characters lol it happens.

[1.2M | Missingno.]

Originally posted by swagen2167:

Is there a way to share the results of my match here?

Log -> Share icon (in between the star and View on each game). I'm sure there are plenty of people here willing to review games for you.

You can also try plugging it into engine analysis[mjai.ekyu.moe], but I don't know how useful you'll find this as a beginner. The computer can tell you what it would've done, but it can't explain why it makes those decisions, so you have to be able to try and work out for yourself what its reasoning might've been.

[swagen2167]

Originally posted by Missingno.:

Originally posted by swagen2167:

Is there a way to share the results of my match here?

Log -> Share icon (in between the star and View on each game). I'm sure there are plenty of people here willing to review games for you.

You can also try plugging it into engine analysis[mjai.ekyu.moe], but I don't know how useful you'll find this as a beginner. The computer can tell you what it would've done, but it can't explain why it makes those decisions, so you have to be able to try and work out for yourself what its reasoning might've been.

Thanks. I hate this game sometimes.

[swagen2167]

Mahjong Soul Game Log:https://mahjongsoul.game.yo-star.com/?paipu=241209-5c555166-784f-476e-a4a8-c19950170c54_a938627019

Mahjong Soul Game Log:https://mahjongsoul.game.yo-star.com/?paipu=241210-0d61074a-be7a-42a5-8fb4-ca42dd099564_a938627019

Mahjong Soul Game Log:https://mahjongsoul.game.yo-star.com/?paipu=241209-7a3029ff-b07c-419c-94f9-f6ba3be520d7_a938627019

Mahjong Soul Game Log:https://mahjongsoul.game.yo-star.com/?paipu=241208-cfd83568-3fab-413c-a38a-2c61eea17360_a938627019

And then I'll get blown out, finish 4th and lose all the points I gained. Right now I'm Novice level 2 with 26 points. I was as high as 76 points. But as soon as I get up there, it all turns against me a good 3 games and I'm back down into the teens or twenty's it's very frustrating.

[1.2M | Missingno.]

Looking through game 1:

East 1:
Non-value winds should almost always go first. You can keep 9s for a bit since you have 8s to go with it.
Later you dropped 1p while you had 2p. While 1245p is an awkward set of shapes and you'd probably drop these if you had something better, that isolated 9m is even worse.
No reason to keep White Dragon either, two are already gone.
I would not chii 3s here. You broke the 456s shape in your hand, so you're 2-shanten with some very poor tile acceptance from here. You've lost the ability to accept 1m into this hand since you now need to force open Tanyao, and even if you get it your hand can't get any better than 1000 points. Fast and cheap is good, slow and cheap is not.

East 1-2:
You have no yaku after that chii. This hand is dead.
Once that riichi comes out, you've got to fold - especially since your hand can't win anyway. Drop tiles that the player in riichi has already dropped, and tiles that other players drop after the riichi that they didn't call ron on.

East 2:
Why drop 9p from 89p? A lone East is not worth keeping. You can keep it over a lone 1/9, but not one that's part of a shape.
Why drop 11m? Perfectly good pair!
44688m is an interesting shape. It can become 45688 or 44678. I assume you're trying to hard commit to Toitoi, but even still there's no use in holding onto the 8p. Might as well keep your options open.
Likewise, keeping 244m would've at least allowed you to accept 3m.

East 3:
Again breaking 89m. You have a lone 1m and four different lone honors, all of these should go before you break any shape.
8m pon takes you from 1-shanten to 1-shanten. It's honestly not the worst thing since it does improve your tile acceptance, any of 56p34s could be converted into a pair if you draw those, but I generally dislike almost any call that does not actually get you closer to tenpai. You're giving your opponents information and making it harder to fold if you need to. And you've skipped your chance to draw a tile that could've just been tenpai.
You dropped the red five rather than a non-shiny five???? You just gave up 1000 points! And if that tile had dealt in...

East 4:
4s pon risks what's known as Atozuke, meaning your yaku is not fully confirmed yet. If your Green Dragon doesn't become a triplet and only stays a pair, your hand will be invalid. And in order to pon Green later, you'll still need another pair - you do have 55m, but if you're locking it to be a pair you're losing a lot of options that the 24556s shape could've been. Now it pretty much has to be 23455, whereas it could've been 345567, 344556, 445566, or 455667. Atozuke can be okay if your hand is really good both in terms of value and speed, but here you should let 4s pass for now, don't open until you see the Green Dragon or it's getting late in the hand.
Then you made two more calls that left the Green Dragon as a pair only, meaning you wound up with no yaku at all.
You were lucky to draw into 5m and now you're back to Atozuke - you can win off of Green Dragon but not 5m. And you had to get rid of the dora to do it, dropping this hand from 3900 to 2000.

South 1:
Why did we drop 789p????? That's a complete group!!!!!
89s too????
This call is again Atozuke, and now that your hand is open it loses Iipeikou. If this hand had stayed closed, Riichi + Iipeikou + Haku could've been worth 5200, now it's only 1000. I don't mind ponning the White Dragon to confirm it, but I would not go Atozuke for a 1000 point hand. Only saving grace is that this call did fix your earlier mistake dropping 9p, you fixed your potential Furiten, but that was entirely avoidable.



So the two main things you need to work on are tile efficiency and yaku. Which are pretty much what most beginners have trouble with, don't feel too bad about anything I've said here.

For tile efficiency, it seems like it's almost a reflex on your part to toss out 1/9 any time you see them, not even noticing when they form a group. Toss tiles that are completely isolated before you toss any tile that is connected to something else in your hand.

There are a lot of good efficiency resources online to study, Riichi Book 1 was already linked above, also check out the interactive tile efficiency trainer[euophrys.itch.io].

When it comes to yaku, you just gotta stop clicking the shiny chii/pon buttons every time you see them. See button click button is a common trap for many newbies. Do not open your hand until you know why you are opening your hand. Any time you aren't sure what yaku you can get, you can always get Riichi just by staying closed. At this stage, I would even advise trying to play some games where you commit to only going for closed Riichi hands, just to practice.

[swagen2167]

Thanks for all this. FWIW, my strategy, based on my experience is to get rid of all 1s and 9s. I do this because it seems whenever I keep them and get that 123 or 789 run, I end up at the end with no Yaku, I'm assuming because those runs give you limited combinations for Yaku. Am I wrong? If not, then that is why I immediately get rid of the 1s and 9s. After that, I get rid of worthless winds and then worthless dragons. Next I get rid of any tile that has already been played. Ultimately, I try to minimize my chances of having someone call Ron on me. I prefer defense over offense only because of how many times, early on, I played aggressively and almost always got blown out. At least of late, I rarely have Ron called on me. Yes, my hands are low value. But if I can come in 2nd consistently, eventually I'll reach the next level. That's where my mindset is and hopefully explains why I play the way I do.

As for calling Chi or Pon, if I don't then I'm essentially waiting to draw those tiles on my own. And if I have 34 and there is only one 5 or one 2 left to draw, I'm not going to pass up the Chi if someone tosses that tile for me. If I do, I'm left with 34 that does me no good.

The more complex shapes, yes, I'm not experienced enough to know what to do with them so I usually just go with my gut and what's already been tossed out.

I'm going to play my first game today. It's been a busy day. I'll post my results, good or bad, when I'm done. Thanks again for the help. I'll try to incorporate some of what you told me and hold onto the 1s and 9s a little longer if I have a pair. I assume though that I will need a dragon or relevant wind set in order to be able to win if I have a 123 or 789 run. Correct?

[swagen2167]

Well, I played 2 hands all wrong. Then I got a really great hand that I managed not to screw up and made it up to 40,000 plus points and 1st place. But then at the end one of the players got a full flush and 24,000 points, knocking one player to negative and dropping me to 2nd. So I had good luck and bad luck that was a wash and finished with a decent game.

I am now at 54 of the 80s points I need to make it to to Novice 3

Mahjong Soul Game Log:https://mahjongsoul.game.yo-star.com/?paipu=241212-43b1e578-48f1-4eaf-945c-3d7809d09362_a938627019

[1.2M | Missingno.]

Originally posted by swagen2167:

FWIW, my strategy, based on my experience is to get rid of all 1s and 9s. I do this because it seems whenever I keep them and get that 123 or 789 run, I end up at the end with no Yaku, I'm assuming because those runs give you limited combinations for Yaku. Am I wrong? If not, then that is why I immediately get rid of the 1s and 9s.
[...]
As for calling Chi or Pon, if I don't then I'm essentially waiting to draw those tiles on my own. And if I have 34 and there is only one 5 or one 2 left to draw, I'm not going to pass up the Chi if someone tosses that tile for me. If I do, I'm left with 34 that does me no good.

Riichi. As long as you stay closed, you can always get Riichi. You may not be able to open your hand, but that's okay, because you shouldn't be opening every hand anyway.

This is why I tell new players to treat Riichi as your default and only open when you have a good reason to. Over time, you will learn good reasons to, but any time you're in doubt, Riichi.

Don't break up a perfectly good hand just to force it to be open, stepping back in shanten and efficiency just to maybe win 1000 points in the end. Just let the hand naturally guide you whereever it's going - quite a lot of them will want to be Riichi. That 789 tells you this should be a Riichi hand.

Remember, Riichi is the protagonist of this game. It's the most common yaku, you should be going for it a lot.

Next I get rid of any tile that has already been played. Ultimately, I try to minimize my chances of having someone call Ron on me. I prefer defense over offense only because of how many times, early on, I played aggressively and almost always got blown out.

In the early game? This isn't quite how defense works. Expect that no one is in tenpai yet to ron you.

Once you see a Riichi stick, or an open hand that looks particularly dangerous (what I mean by particularly dangerous is a little more advanced, but basically don't be afraid if it looks like 1000), that's when you have to make the push/fold judgment. But until then, push until you have a reason to fold.

In fact, there's a principle where early on, if you have two or more equally useless tiles, you toss the more dangerous one first, that way you won't have to toss it later. Holding onto a 'safety tile' for later lets you stay in the hand a little longer, as opposed to being stuck with a dangerous tile that you cannot possibly push into the dealer's Riichi and now you have no choice but to fold.

Also note that a closed hand is much easier to fold, because you have more potentially safe tiles to choose from. Anything you've called is locked and can't be thrown even if you know it's safe, cutting your options.

Also also note that you're in Bronze Room and a lot of opponents here will frequently screw up and not have a valid hand. I don't think you need to be too afraid yet! At your level you should be learning to build hands correctly first, then you can worry about folding them.

[swagen2167]

Thanks. How exactly do you fold? I hear people talk about it but have no idea how to do it. I don't see a fold option in the game. Could you explain the process? Also, if I do fold does that mean I don't get points taken away from me at the end of the game?