MAHJONG SESSION 08-11-2007

Some belated analysis and play anecdotes for the mahjong session on Deepavali. It has been some time since the game, and my memory is spotty, so I may not remember all the information.

Hand #1

This was my hand after several go-arounds.

I was South. I needed either the 3B or the South Wind, and I would then be ready to wait for the other tile to go out. Or I could be greedy and discard one of the winds and do an All Types with the Green Dragon.

SJ opposite me was most probably also doing an all types hand as well, with the following exposures:

SJ discarded South Wind and I punged it. At this point, East and West Winds were dead, so there was a high chance that SJ needed the North Wind to get ready or even go out. I had enough points to win without all types, so the logical thing would be to give up all types and discard Green Dragon. I would then be ready to go out with 3B.

I am always perfectly logical on hindsight. Something in my make up prevents me from being logical at the point of play. Bad…very bad. So naturally I went and discarded North Wind to keep the All Types option.

Of course, SJ won with that tile.

Hand #2

I ended with this hand very early on in the game:

So many possibilities exist for this hand! The least would be a mixed triple/shifted chow, which can then combine with all fives or maybe middle tiles maybe (but then I would have to get rid of the threes).

I managed to draw a lot of fours and fives throughout the whole game. Practically every draw was either a four or a five.

There can too much of a good thing, perhaps, especially when one is so easily excited and confused as I. Because I had so many choices and so many ways to shift, I was too busy trying to shift things around trying to get the maximum number of combination (I could maybe get mixed triple chow + all fives + middle tiles) and points out of the hand that I totally confused myself in the end and ended up keeping and discarding the wrong tiles.

I won’t go into the analysis of the subsequent play because thinking about it makes me want to jump out of the window. ^_^

Needless to say, I didn’t win this hand.

Hand #3

I didn’t win this hand either, but it was rather fun to build this hand. Started out with:

I didn’t know what to do with this hand. Maybe a mixed triple/shifted chow. Whatever it was I could discard the honor tiles since they did not appear to contribute to the general scheme.

Drew a 5C, discarded West. Drew an 8B, discarded Red Dragon. Drew 5C, what next? Decided that the 1D was too disconnected to be useful, so I discarded that. Now my hand looked like that (after only one go-around):

I supposed I could have continued to pursue the mixed/shifted triple chow, but fate tempted me with a discarded 5B from one of the other players. I suddenly realized I had the makings for Reversible Tiles if I discarded the character tiles. I lamented the discard of the 1D earlier. If I had noticed the pattern, I could have kept it. I guess this is why practice and trying out new stuff is so important. Otherwise we would hardly be able to recognize some of the more special combinations when it is staring at us in the face.

Now, I didn’t think there was much difference between either option points wise, but the hand seemed to be closer to going out with Reversible Tiles. Also, Reversible Tile wins were rare in our group and a first for me, so there was a novelty factor too.

I punged the 5B and 8B pair subsequently and konged the 6B as well, in the process getting rid of the character tiles. I managed to draw a 2D and was ready to go out with either another 2D or a 5D. But I was too late. Someone else won the game.

Later I found out that WJ was also building a Reversible Tiles hand too!