Concealed Hand - 2
Tile Hog - 2
Two Concealed Pungs - 2
Pung of Terminals/Honours - 1
One Voided Suit - 1
No Honours - 1
Two Flowers - 2
Total Score - 11
This wasn’t any particularly high scoring hand, but we were all fascinated because this was the first time anyone of us won on a “composite” hand like that, with all the scoring elements having no more than two points each.
My usual practice is to develop my hand towards base elements or hands having at least a 6-faan scoring, such as mixed shifted chows, all pungs, half flush etc, combined with elements such as all chows, dragon pungs etc to make the minimum eight points. I can’t speak for the rest of the group, but I get a little stressed when I don’t see at least a basic 6-faan possibility in my tiles after the first few draws. Many times, when I get such hands, I tend to force my tiles towards these minimum 6-faan base possibilities and I usually end up losing the hand because I am too slow in getting ready.
For example, for AJ’s hand above, I would never have ended with this. I would most probably have tried to go for a mixed or pure straight and kept drawing tiles until I had it. And I would probably have lost this hand.
WJ’s strategy in dealing with the above seems to be to go for fully melded hands, also a 6-faan element. However, since she has to rely on other players to make her sets, more often than not, she does not get to win when she tries this.
Reading about playing strategies from various sources made me realise that “composite” scoring is actually quite popular among expert players and could be pretty useful in solving our issues with not so spectacular deals. The most frequently used faans to develop these “composite” hands seem to be:
Fully Concealed Hand - 4
Concealed Hand - 2
All Simples - 2
All Chows - 2
Short Straights - 1
Mixed Double Chows - 1
One Voided Suit - 1
I gave it a try during our sessions but found this strategy quite difficult for me. Firstly, it was difficult to make fully concealed hands work in the first place. I ended up with many dead or almost dead hands. Probably I am just not so good at shifting my tiles around to find other combinations. Secondly, having so many small faans to keep track of confused me, and I spent half the time counting faans rather than paying attention to the play. And naturally play slowed down because everyone had to wait for me.
I had a small discussion with EP about the feasibility of making winning hands from a combination of small faans, and we decided it was not as easy as we thought. Firstly, making concealed hands do not come naturally to us, and probably not to most players, except those who are well versed in Riichi. Secondly, if one does not intend to depend on fully concealed hands, one would need a combination of many small faan elements and it would be rather difficult to keep track of the possibilities of all the small faans in fast paced tournament situations.
I am curious about the success rate of such “composite hands” during MCR tournaments. It would have been interesting to see how often such hands go out, and perhaps convince me sufficiently of the viability of such play to keep practicing at it until it works.
On a side note, I am also curious about the success rate of players who deliberately set out to make fully concealed or even just concealed hands during MCR tournaments (not hands that merely happen to turn out concealed). Do a lot of opportunities get lost, do these players win often enough to make it worth their while?
Lastly, I would like to quote Mr Tom Sloper, a well known American teacher and player of mahjong, in a recent news group post regarding recordkeeping during tournaments (post -rec.games.mahjong) :
“Then again, it may be that the majority of players are already satisfied, with not having any hard data at all!”
Oh, Mr Sloper, just the availability of information on winning hands during these tournaments would be useful about right now! (^_^)
4 comments:
I only just discovered yours and EP's blogs today. MCR strategy and analysis: wonderful!
I hope it's okay to comment on one of your older posts. I like your expression "composite hands". These are indeed quite a valuable strategy, if they are closer to finishing than e.g. Mixed Shifted Chows. Usually when you end up with a composite hand, it's because you're too far from any patterns worth 6 or more points, and the tiles you pick fit with your hand, without bringing you closer to a 6, 8 or 16 point pattern. The strength of a concealed hand is that it's easier to optimize for a multiple wait. Sometimes with composite hands you can only win on selfdraw, but don't forget that an 8 point selfdraw equals a 24 point hand on a discard, and if you're waiting for 2 or even 3 different tiles, the chances are you'll get that selfdraw.
How often do people go for such hands in tournaments? It depends on the experience level and playing style of players. My guess is 1 or 2 wins out of 16 is a composite hand. I have no actual statistics to back this up, but that's my feeling.
Tina, thanks for your comment! Your insights are most appreciated! JT and I came up with the term 'composite hands' because we cannot think of any better way to describe hands without any main/distinguishing fan.
While it may be a valuable strategy, so far, in our group, no one really does it. I suppose this could be due to: the fact that many of us do not play competitively, so the mindset in building hands tends towards slow but high-scoring fan; or that many of us are beginners, that it is difficult to remember all the 1- and 2-point fan in order to build up a composite hand; or just too used to our local Singapore variant, which utilise very few types of patterns/fan.
As JT laments in her entry, statistics of winning hands (especially in tournaments) can really help us improve our strategy and play. Unfortunately, it is admittedly difficult to keep such statistics, as was recently discussed on the mahjong newsgroup.
It probably makes good sense that players in your group don't go for composite hands very often. It takes quite some experience and familiarity with all 81 fan. For a beginner it is much better to concentrate on the medium-value fan (6-24 points). But then, when your group saw a composite hand it precipitated a very nice discussion, and so in the future, they might appear a bit more often. Seems to me you have a very good habit of discussing strategy with each other, which is bound to improve the skill of all your players.
Hi, Tina,
Thanks. Made my day to see your comments!
I thought from reading various strategy "guides" around the place that composite hands were pretty common for expert players. I remember reading Hatsune Mai's and Kajimoto Takunori's Chinese Official mahjong (COMJ)and marvelling at the combinations of small faans to make the minimum 8 points. However, as you have commented, it takes familiarity with all the faans and, may I add, a fast brain to actually make it work. To date, we have ever only witness that very hand I posted at our table. Your comments kind of spur me on to try the strategy again if I have the chance.
We all happen to be of rather competitive nature in the group, and we are always interested to see how to do better. This always precipitates some kind of discussion, though we may not always agree (eh, EP?) I am most glad that we have a number of platforms, including my own blog, to share our views.
Hope to see more from you!
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