MAHJONG SESSION 08-12-2007 - CONTINUED

Following the rant on knitted hands, here are two slightly more interesting hands that happened during the last game.

Hand #1


I started with a hand consisting of quite a number of high suit tiles, so I decided to go for Upper Four as the base hand. Play went extremely well and I managed to discard all the lower suit tiles and honour tiles after only about 8 to 10 draws to end up with this:




I only needed to pung any two of the three pairs and discard the 6C and Upper Four would be in the bag, plus points for All Pungs too. At this point, only one 9B was out, so I had plenty of chances.

At this point, AJ discarded a 9B.

Here lies my dilemma, should I get ambitious and ignore the 9B, and hope to draw 8B and/or 9D from the wall to make Three or even Four Concealed Pungs? Or pung the 9B, considering it was the last 9B?

I decided in favour of a more conservative move, and punged the 9B. Getting the hand ready ranked higher among my priorities for this hand. I still have a chance for additional points from Three Concealed Pungs if I happened to draw the winning tile, 8B or 9D, myself.

Very soon after, SJ discarded a 9D and I went out on it. So much for Three Concealed Pungs. The hand came up to 25 points, not too bad.

While counting points, EP and AJ pointed out that I could have ignored the 9D and waited to go out on the 8B since it was still early in the game. Winning with the 8B would have garnered me an extra 16 points from a Pure Shifted Pungs in the bamboos. If I did draw the 8B myself, I would also have Three Concealed Pungs.

I must admit that I didn’t notice the Pure Shifted Pungs possibility in my hand. However, I also wonder if I would have passed by the chance to go out on the 9D had I been aware that 8B would have been a better wait. I was rather fixated with being able to go out than making any kind of bombastically high value hand.

EP and AJ felt that it was a waste of a good hand not to pursue the more expensive alternatives, but I didn’t really feel too bad about it. Self drawing seems so uncertain that I’d rather bank on a sure win for this hand.

Hand #2

This was my hand after some early draws and discards:




What would you have done with it?

I thought of

1) All Terminals and Honours. But I would have to throw away the 2B pair and try and get partners for the remaining honour and terminal tiles.
2) Just All Pungs

I decided to play by ear and hope that I could get another honour or terminal pair before someone tempted me with a 2B discard.

I punged the East Wind and 1C pair subsequently. Unfortunately, I was faced with the 2B discard before I had gotten another terminal or honour pair. Decision time.

These days, I play pretty conservatively. So I decided to give up the ATH (just a little too far from getting ready) and just concentrate on All Pungs. I punged the 2Bs.

Quite soon after, I punged the last White Dragon set and decided to wait on South to go out.

What irked me was that I totally missed the fact that had I chosen to wait on any of the Dot Tiles, I would have All Types as well! Arrgggh!

I did manage to go out on SJ’s South Wind discard later, netting 17 points for this hand. But I got needled some by EP for missing the All Types, since I had been making All Types hands quite frequently lately. Seems like playing mahjong is not doing too much for my memory after all. ^_^