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.

[swagen2167]

Originally posted by Eight♥Six:

I think admitting your faults is a good first step to getting out of adept 2
Just don't be too hard on yourself
That being said I've been in adept 2 for the last 4 years XD

You'll get there just don't take it so seriously and remember to have fun, you have a love for the game (and also abit of a hate ahaha)
But I have faith you'll get into gold

I'm not so sure of that. There is still a good amount of luck in this game. I have games where I discard a terminal that has 2 already on the field and get Ron'd anyway. Sometimes the right play doesn't work anyway.

[1.2M | Missingno.]

I'm not sure you're thinking about defense correctly here. A previously discarded tile is only truly safe against the player(s) who discarded that tile (or anyone who declared Riichi before it was discarded).

Seeing two 9ps discarded only and having another in your hand is only enough to tell you that no one has a pair of them waiting to become a triplet. But it doesn't rule out the possibility of 78p, and that's the truly dangerous wait since this two-sided ryanmen is a strong shape players will aim for.

The danger level of a tile is more dependent on how many copies of the surrounding tiles you can see - if it's late in the hand and you still don't see 78p anywhere, there's a good chance someone has them in their hand. In fact, if you see some of the 69p but still don't see 78p, it's even more likely that someone is looking for the remaining 69p to complete their 78p.

[Eight♥Six]

When you put it like that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I think I can get to gold, thanks for the laymen terms of explaination i'm slow when it comes to that and typically play suji defence I can rarely determine whats unsafe to drop if there is no suji, luckily I can roughly tell when someone is in tenpai or reaching tenpai

As for defence there is more skill there involved than a luck factor if you can actually read discards and the state of the game. that being said there are times where literally no tile in you hand is safe to drop and the probability of this happening increases the more you open your hand

But yeah thanks for that knowledge I'll defo utilise that information in future games
I'll no longer be taking the highway to the danger zone

[swagen2167]

Originally posted by Missingno.:

I'm not sure you're thinking about defense correctly here. A previously discarded tile is only truly safe against the player(s) who discarded that tile (or anyone who declared Riichi before it was discarded).

Seeing two 9ps discarded only and having another in your hand is only enough to tell you that no one has a pair of them waiting to become a triplet. But it doesn't rule out the possibility of 78p, and that's the truly dangerous wait since this two-sided ryanmen is a strong shape players will aim for.

The danger level of a tile is more dependent on how many copies of the surrounding tiles you can see - if it's late in the hand and you still don't see 78p anywhere, there's a good chance someone has them in their hand. In fact, if you see some of the 69p but still don't see 78p, it's even more likely that someone is looking for the remaining 69p to complete their 78p.

Granted, but it's certainly safer to play than a 5p right smack dab in the middle with none of them discarded and nothing surrounding it in site. So relatively speaking, 9p is the safer discard. Besides, when you Riichi, you have no control over what is discarded. The computer does it for you. So when I get Ron'd right after a Riichi, that's not my fault. It was out of my control completely. And that happens to me a lot.

[Eight♥Six]

5p is a tanyao corner stone though, if you don't see 78p junchan or chanta is most likely
so in this situation it is one of the safer tile to drop no?

I also don't get why Riichi is being brought up when talking about defence
you literally can't play defence after you declare riichi
and if you declare riichi after someone else has already done so then expect to get ron'd

Riichi is a fools game and should be avoided imo

edit: unless you have a 3 han, 5 han etc hand or there have been alot of kans or if you have Toitoi and much to my dismay Chiitoitsu

[1.2M | Missingno.]

Originally posted by Eight♥Six:

Riichi is a fools game and should be avoided imo

Well this certainly isn't true, the reward is very often worth the risk. You just gotta be aware that there is risk inherent in all decisions. Everything is a calculated gamble, but if you improve your calculations, your gambles will eventually pay off in the aggregate.

[koboldlord]

There's certainly a lot of people in the gold lobby that choose to just sit with their one-han hand and not riichi. If the hand isn't going anywhere without a lucky uradora flip, it's probably not worth broadcasting the the entire table that you're ready to go out and they should all fold to you specifically.

There's apparently nobody in the silver lobby that does that, though.

If you got some other points in there and don't have a proper win condition yet, then it's more possibly worth some risk.

[1.2M | Missingno.]

When I say "very often", there are exceptions. Fun thing about mahjong is that nothing is so universally clear-cut. But I'm responding to the person that "Riichi [...] should be avoided", that's absolutely wrong. More often than not, Riichi is good.

In the context of teaching beginners, I would say that when in doubt, you should Riichi. Over time you can start to learn when dama is preferable, but any time you're not sure, just go ahead and Riichi.

Reasons to Riichi:

• Good wait. If you're waiting on 7 tiles or more, slam it.
  
• First row of discards. If you're that fast, slam it.
  
• You're dealer and want to keep your seat. It's perfectly fine to intimidate other players into folding. You get the tenpai points, and a renchan.
  
• You're not dealer and you want to kick the dealer out of their seat. Again, intimidation is valid.
  
• Low value without Riichi. Prior to mangan, every han doubles the value of your hand, so in terms of EV that doubling is well worth a small hit in odds of winning.
  
• Someone has called kan. That's more chances for ura.
  
• You have no other yaku. Get one.
  
• You have a suji trap or other tricky wait that a Riichi can bait out.
  
• Someone else is in Riichi, and you're waiting on a live tile. Reset the other two players' information and make it harder for them to know what's safe to both of you.

Reasons to dama:

• Last row of discards. Save the stick.
  
• Hand has room to improve, and the number of tiles you can draw that improve the hand are more than the number of winning tiles. Consider that last part, don't tunnel vision on an upgrade you aren't actually likely to get.
  
• Mangan or better without Riichi. Or South 3/4 and already worth the exact value you need. Maximize your chances of winning.
  
• You have a lead and you'd actually rather just fold, or even just stay in tenpai for now but retain the option to fold as soon as you draw something dangerous. This depends on how much of a lead you have and how late in the game it is.
  
• Someone else is already in Riichi, and you're waiting on their genbutsu. Let someone fall for the trap.
  
• Less than 1000 point difference between you and a player behind you. Don't just drop yourself below them. This only applies in late South though, doesn't matter yet in East because there's still so much time.

[swagen2167]

Okay, I still don't get this. How do you fold? There is no fold option. You still have to play a tile. So what exactly is folding?

[koboldlord]

You pick a player. You tell yourself, "I'm not discarding a winning tile to THEM!" And every turn you pick your discard tile based entirely on what you deduce can't be their winning tile. If you discard into somebody else's win, that's too bad, but you weren't folding to that other player.

Sometimes you can deduce a guaranteed safe tile, based on their discards and recent discards by other players. Other times you have to make your best guess and hope you're right. Sometimes their winning tile is stupid and unguessable, like a pair wait for an honor tile that already has two copies in the discards. Sometimes they picked an intentionally stupid wait because they thought somebody might fold and a really stupid tile to wait on is ironically more likely to get dropped.

People seem to talk about folding like it's a 100% thing, but it's more of a 75% to 90% sort of thing, most of the time. Eventually you often run out of safe tiles and have to start guessing. Sometimes you still deal in, just a lot less often, and ultimately if you can lower the number of times you deal into a 12,000 point hand you'll do better overall even if you can't completely eliminate those games entirely. That's okay.

[Eight♥Six]

Originally posted by koboldlord:

Sometimes their winning tile is stupid and unguessable, like a pair wait for an honor tile that already has two copies in the discards. Sometimes they picked an intentionally stupid wait because they thought somebody might fold and a really stupid tile to wait on is ironically more likely to get dropped.

This is a suji trap right?

[1.2M | Missingno.]

Suji refers to tiles that are three apart.

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

If a players has discarded 5, they can't have 34 waiting on 2-5 or else they'd be in furiten. So by process of elimination you can infer that 2 is statistically safer than other tiles you don't have information about.

But you can't rule out 13, 22, or 2 tanki. If they actually are waiting on a tile that's suji to their discards, that's called a suji trap.

[Eight♥Six]

Ahhh I see, what about what Koboldlord said is there a term or nah?

[koboldlord]

That particular one is 'jigoku', or evocatively translated, 'Hell Wait'. It's easy to understand how it works and you don't have to understand any complicated topics to try to use it against other players.

I would not deliberately try to set it up, but if you're reaching tenpai with a choice of one pair wait or another pair wait you might consider a Hell Wait over a non-descript tile that is normally a better choice.

[Eight♥Six]

I meant more about the waiting on a tile thats really hard to read such as a west wind tanki(?) when you're not in the west seat or in a west round

I know Jigoku is when you're waiting on 1 remaining tile of a set and worst case that tile can be in the dead wall