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.

[1.2M | Missingno.]

It's like engine analysis in chess, if anyone's familiar with that. The grade it gives you is an at-a-glance rating of how often your decisions matched what MAKA would've done. Don't just stop there though, the important thing is to look through the log, see where the engine disagreed with you, and figure out why. Use that to take notes on what you should be doing differently in the future.

Unlike chess though, mahjong is a game of randomness and hidden information. If you played exactly like Stockfish, you'd never lose at chess. But you can play like MAKA and still lose sometimes if the luck of the draw is not on your side.[i.imgur.com] At least you'll know if you made the right decisions or not, and if you are making the right decisions, you'll eventually be rewarded in the long run.

[swagen2167]

Update: Okay, so here's what's been going on for about 2 weeks. I am in a funk where almost every match I end up in 3rd. Typical game goes like this.

East 1 - Player to my right Ron's player to my left. I draw nothing but garbage all game

East 2 - Player in front of me Ron's player to my left. I draw nothing but garbage all game.

East 3 - Player to my right Ron's player to my left. I draw nothing but garbage all game.

East 4 - Player in front of me Ron's player to my right. I draw nothing but garbage all game.

I end up with 24,000 points because of the 1,000 points I lost when east. The guy to my left has about 14,000 points. And the guys to my right and in front of me are in the 30 thousands. I finish in 3rd and lose between 5 and 10 points.

Once in a while I have a really bad game and finish 4th. But those are very rare. Once or twice I finish 2nd. My net loss over these 2 weeks is about 150 point dropping down to about 425 points in Adept 2.

I honestly don't know how to put a stop to this. I have read the book on advanced tavtice several times and, for the most part, discard safe tiles. I can count the times I've been Ron'd in the last 2 weeks on 1 hand. But I can't make any headway. Most games I'm maybe 2 or 3 tiles away from Riichi with my opening hand but never progress my board state because everything I draw is crap.

Any suggestions? Or is this just the way this game goes?

[Aoitenshi]

swagen2167 a écrit :

Any suggestions? Or is this just the way this game goes?

South game

[koboldlord]

The East game lobbies offer a strong incentive to complete fast and quick hands to close out the game to keep from getting last place. You will see a lot of games that play out like the one you describe, since once a single player hits the point quota to allow the end of the game everybody who isn't in the hole wants to rush to make sure they stay out of the hole.

The South games give every player a minimum of two turns as dealer unless somebody actually busts completely, so usually people aren't in quite such a hurry to rush tiny hands that don't actually change anything. They have to keep up that unbroken string of tiny hands for much longer without somebody slipping a mangan or better through, which just isn't that likely to work.

You can also try 3-player mahjong if you like. Players can't chi a run in 3-player, so one of the main ways to brute force the fastest possible hand is gone. Scores are quite a bit more volatile when there aren't three people trying to brute force all simples.

[swagen2167]

So my latest match just now the guy to my right spent the match beating up on the other two guys and I managed to squeak out an 11 point 2nd place finish. Well, it's something.

[swagen2167]

Finally came away with a big win. First one in 2 weeks.

Mahjong Soul Game Log:https://mahjongsoul.game.yo-star.com/?paipu=250313-bca072b6-4c5e-42e3-9d76-b2eff4590aaf_a938627019

[swagen2167]

Just when it looked like everything was going against me (Riichi on turn 1 that I still lost) I pull it out from a come from behind win at the end.

Mahjong Soul Game Log:https://mahjongsoul.game.yo-star.com/?paipu=250314-dafaeb03-41af-4191-b28e-fe1158bd493c_a938627019

[swagen2167]

What a marathon game I just played.

I didn't win but considering how far back I was, not too shabby.

Mahjong Soul Game Log:https://mahjongsoul.game.yo-star.com/?paipu=250318-64e6f6c7-3e1f-407b-a285-de2292b44ea7_a938627019

[Fentonizer]

I would also like to make anyone feel better by saying I have demoted from Master 1 to Expert 2 in the last 3 weeks. So if you're worried you're bad, you're not as bad as me. Stay strong.

[swagen2167]

Fentonizer a écrit :

I would also like to make anyone feel better by saying I have demoted from Master 1 to Expert 2 in the last 3 weeks. So if you're worried you're bad, you're not as bad as me. Stay strong.

I'll probably be in Adept 2 forever. It's a consistent up and down thing for me. I'm currently a little over 500 points. I usually hover between 450 and 550. Consistency is what's holding me back.

[Fentonizer]

Are you using MAKA? Try to highlight an obvious area of your game that it always flags. I've been focused on making sure that my opening discards do not make MAKA unhappy, and if I make progress on that, then it doesn't matter how the rest of the game goes. Baby steps and all that. Now I frequently go the entire first row of discards before MAKA has any suggestions.

[swagen2167]

Fentonizer a écrit :

Are you using MAKA? Try to highlight an obvious area of your game that it always flags. I've been focused on making sure that my opening discards do not make MAKA unhappy, and if I make progress on that, then it doesn't matter how the rest of the game goes. Baby steps and all that. Now I frequently go the entire first row of discards before MAKA has any suggestions.

My problem is late game. But the mistakes I make are so complex at this point that there is no way I am keeping all that straight in my head. Usually, when I'm 1 or 2 titles away from Riichi, I'll discard a card that ends up getting me drilled. Logically, I believe it's the right call. But obviously, I'm wrong.

My biggest problem is something like this. I'm holding

2,3 of whatever suit. I draw a 3. Do I keep the 3 and discard the two (everything else is a complete run) or do I discard the 3 I just drew and hope for either a 1 or 4. That's the kind of stuff that trips me up. Mathematically, you keep the 2,3 (depending on what's already discarded) because you have more chances to draw a 1 or 4 than you have of drawing another 3.

It's little stuff like that. It gives me fits because half the time I choose wrong. That's why my games are 50/50 wins (1st or 2nd) and losses (3rd or 4th). And I have more 4th place finishes than 3rds and more 2nd place finishes than 1st. In the end, it pretty much all evens out, which is why I have been in Adept 2 forever.

[swagen2167]

Question: Okay, I've been playing this game for a while now. How do I get one of those fancy looking avatars? Can I get one with all the copper I have or do I have to actually shell out real money?

[Fentonizer]

swagen2167 a écrit :

Fentonizer a écrit :

Are you using MAKA? Try to highlight an obvious area of your game that it always flags. I've been focused on making sure that my opening discards do not make MAKA unhappy, and if I make progress on that, then it doesn't matter how the rest of the game goes. Baby steps and all that. Now I frequently go the entire first row of discards before MAKA has any suggestions.

My problem is late game. But the mistakes I make are so complex at this point that there is no way I am keeping all that straight in my head. Usually, when I'm 1 or 2 titles away from Riichi, I'll discard a card that ends up getting me drilled. Logically, I believe it's the right call. But obviously, I'm wrong.

My biggest problem is something like this. I'm holding

2,3 of whatever suit. I draw a 3. Do I keep the 3 and discard the two (everything else is a complete run) or do I discard the 3 I just drew and hope for either a 1 or 4. That's the kind of stuff that trips me up. Mathematically, you keep the 2,3 (depending on what's already discarded) because you have more chances to draw a 1 or 4 than you have of drawing another 3.

It's little stuff like that. It gives me fits because half the time I choose wrong. That's why my games are 50/50 wins (1st or 2nd) and losses (3rd or 4th). And I have more 4th place finishes than 3rds and more 2nd place finishes than 1st. In the end, it pretty much all evens out, which is why I have been in Adept 2 forever.

Well, MAKA can still help you here. If you made the correct choice and got unlucky, then you can brush it off, it happens. If MAKA says what you discarded was wrong, then you can look at why.

If you've got any game logs you want to share that you feel particularly stand out, I'd be happy to take a look.

[koboldlord]

swagen2167 a écrit :

Question: Okay, I've been playing this game for a while now. How do I get one of those fancy looking avatars? Can I get one with all the copper I have or do I have to actually shell out real money?

If you're just looking for new characters, you accumulate gift items over time if you play in the silver or higher lobbies. Bronze lobby gets you nothing ever. You can choose to give gift items to your starter character to unlock emotes and a costume change, or you can donate them to get gacha pulls for a new character. Odds of actually getting a new character from a gacha pull is 1 in 20, and you need to donate 50 points worth of gifts to get one pull. You also get a couple pulls from events a few times over the course of a year, and may have used some already.

If you're looking for a costume for an existing character, you need to grind hundreds of gifts or play thousands of games to get a 'Bond' number up to its maximum, and then put around ~6 gacha pulls worth of resources into an unlock. Each character gets one costume this way.

You can also pay real money for other costumes, but not the same costume you get by grinding. The real money costumes cannot be obtained by grinding, although you can also get them by being a famous streamer on twitch or by being a world-class mahjong player who can win tournaments.