Reach Mahjong

Featured product of the week – Pro Quality Tile Set!

WorTeX — Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:19 +0000

Our featured Reachmahjong.com shop product of the week is the Pro Quality Tile Set (Take).

The Take set is one of the most popular articles in the shop with it’s excellent quality and clear and detailed carvings. It comes with optional red fives to spice up your games, and there are gems socketed in the red five of dots!

The tiles are firm and with the set weighing in at 2kg you can really feel the game by handling the tiles.

The set also comes with scoring sticks, 4 dice, a dealer button and a complimentary keychain.

Order your own Take set today! Head onto the product page by clicking the picture below!

WWYD 2012/05/23

WorTeX — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:03 +0000

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Tune into the International Online Riichi Mahjong Competition next weekend!

WorTeX — Sun, 20 May 2012 18:23:29 +0000

International Online Riichi Mahjong Competition will be held by Korean Mahjong League on the 27th of May starting from 18:00 JST (11:00am Western Europe, 05:00am East Coast US) on Tenhou.net with 24 participants total from Russia, China, South Korea and Japan.

You will be able to spectate the games through here.

For more information visit the Korean Mahjong League and the official Tenhou page (in Japanese)

WWYD 2012/05/16

WorTeX — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:43 +0000

WWYD

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ACEN Mahjong Taikai 3 results

WorTeX — Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:57 +0000

Here are the results from the Mahjong Taikai 3-tournament held in ACEN on the 28th of april, which was organized by Chicago Anime Mahjong Players and sponsored by Reachmahjong.com!

A total of 16 people attended the tournament which used a shootout-style format where two people advance from each table until there’s 4 players left for the final table. Everyone started with 25000 points each table and played a east/south session.

The winner was Antonio “Tony” Hernandez who dominated the final table with the runner up Brian Mikolajczyk who lost the first place only by a difference of 4600 points. Third place was Ben Lewis and the 4th was Thomas Horton.

Here are the results of the final table:

1st Tony 52000
2nd Brian 47400
3rd Ben 2700
4th Thomas -2100

Featured product of the week – Junk Mat!

WorTeX — Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:56 +0000

Our featured Reachmahjong.com shop product of the week is Junk Mat.

Junk mat is the perfect surface to play on and to protect your table and your precious tiles from scratches.

The mat is made of neoprene and comes with plastic borders so wall building is a cinch.

The borders even have trays for the scoring sticks during the game.

Junk mat is portable and comes with a carry bag for easy transport and storing.

Order your own today! Head onto the product page by clicking the picture below!

European Riichi Championship 2013 announced

WorTeX — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:32:17 +0000

Earlier today the site for the upcoming European Riichi championship 2013 was opened. It will be the third tournament to carry the prestigeous task of deciding the best of Europe.

The tournament will take place in Austria between 18th to 22nd of September 2013 and is organized by mahjong club Great Dragons. Acting as the venue is Schlossberg Vineyards in Bad Vöslau, just 40 kilometers from the city of Vienna. The entry fee for the tournament will be 100€ and will have 10 han-chan sessions. The number of participants is limited to 80 and player quotas for each country will be announced at a later date. There is also a team tournament before the invidual tournament. Rules of the invidual tournament and the team tournament will be announced shortly.

For more information about the tournament visit the organizing mahjong clubs site www.greatdragons.at and the vineyards site www.weingutschlossberg.at

WWYD 2012/05/09

WorTeX — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:47 +0000

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WWYD 2012/05/02

WorTeX — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:30 +0000

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WWYD 2012/04/25

WorTeX — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:46 +0000

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MahjongMart.com is now the ReachMahjong.com Shop!

jenn — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:38:04 +0000

For the past 5 years MahjongMart.com has been offering unique mahjong sets straight from Japan at competitive prices. Hundreds of people from all over the world have ordered products from MahjongMart and we are grateful for all the business and support.

Now we are ready to combine our two sites and offer you the ReachMahjong.com Shop! We are striving everyday to make RM.com your number one stop for Reach/Riichi style mahjong and now you can get mahjong tiles and goods at your favorite website.

We’ll be working hard to get used to our new setup over the next month or two, but make sure to check out our products, tell us what else you want to see and give us feedback on the products you’ve already tried out. If you order Jenn’s book from our site she’ll sign it for you before dropping it in the mail as well.

To view products and place orders, just click on “RM Shop” located on the far right of the menu. Be sure to keep us in mind for your next home game, your personal collection, or gifts for your friends. Happy shopping!

WWYD 2012/04/18

WorTeX — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:20 +0000

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WWYD 2012/04/11

WorTeX — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:38 +0000

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Upcoming mahjong tournament in Chicago !

WorTeX — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 06:23:36 +0000

Chicago Anime Mahjong Players is hosting Mahjong Taikai 3-tournament at Anime Central (www.acen.org) on the 28th of April!

Place: Rosemont, IL
Date: Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 6:00pm ~ 2:00am
No. of seats: 16
Format: Two advance to next round from each table
Venue: TBA (check out their facebook page below)
Prizes: Top four will receive prizes sponsored by Reachmahjong.com!

There will be Riichi mahjong Workshops and Freeplay during the Tournament.

Follow them on facebook

WWYD 2012/04/04

WorTeX — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:36 +0000

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WWYD 2012/03/28

WorTeX — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:00:28 +0000

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Jong-cast #58 – March 2011

WorTeX — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:23 +0000

Jenn and Garthe talk about end of league, Phoenix cup and Champions league

JPML on Internet TV! Including Jenn and Garthe!

jenn — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:04:53 +0000

Your favorite American Mahjong pros and mahjong podcasters (at least we hope we’re your favorite, as we’re the only ones) are going to be playing mahjong on a live stream on Saturday, March 24, 2012!

Catch us on ustream on Konami’s own channel: fightclub573 from 12:00-18:00 JST (03:00-09:00 UTC+0, 23.03.2012 23:00-05:00 EDT)

Other pros scheduled to appear: Asataro Nada, Takeo Kojima, Kazunori Takizawa, Hisato Sasaki, Dump Ohashi, Aki Nikaido, Rumi Nikaido, Yukiko Izumi, Kozue Miyauchi and Akira Wakutsu!

We’ll be playing the Triathlon (East-only, East/South, 3-player) and going up against the Mahjong Fight Club players that won their way to the Jango Finals (雀豪決定戦): To determine the

true king of all Riichi Mahjong!

Jong-cast #57 – December 2011

WorTeX — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:45:41 +0000

Jenn and Garthe talking about Macau Asian Pacific Poker Tour and the results of OUI-tournament

Strategy talk about playing it small.

Subscribe to listen to the podcast on iTunes or download the podcast here.

WWYD 2012/03/21

WorTeX — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:01:44 +0000

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Baden, Austria 2012

Gemma — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:45:16 +0000

It was my first success of last year and I came out of my trip to Austria with a really fabulous trophy. It was an amazing day thanks to Alexander Doppelhofer – who everyone should know in the riichi mahjong community, he is after all one of the game’s most passionate promoters.

I’m very happy therefore to let you all know that Alexander is running another tournament in Baden for 2012. It has no less than two ranking points so it should already be highlighted in your calendar.

I will of course be there to defend my title and I expect the best of you to be there to challenge me. Plus, you can enjoy the amazing Austrian hospitality whilst you’re there (check out Alexander’s schedule).

For more details, visit the site: www.greatdragons.at

Look forward to seeing you there!

Jong-cast #56 – Nov 24, 2011

admin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 12:00:57 +0000

Subscribe to listen to the podcast on iTunes or download the podcast here.

Gemma was in Hannover (quite a while ago)

Gemma — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:00:07 +0000

First of all, I apologize that this report is old news now. I’m going to try and use preparation for my trip to Japan as my excuse. However, considering that I packed the night before I left in a mad panic, it’s not a particularly good excuse…

If I’m honest with myself, it’s probably because it was really not a good performance from me at all. Generally I’ve found the most recent tournaments hard and I wish I could find a solid reason for that. Apart from lack of practice, ignoring the strategy in the books I read etc etc

Okay so we know why I’m rubbish. I guess I just need to tell you how rubbish I was… Well I spent most of the tournament skimming along the bottom of the table, only finally managing to crawl up to 23rd (total of 28 players).

I really, really want to say it was luck. It wasn’t. I was rubbish. I didn’t play well and I made bad choices. This, combined with the problem that all the people I played were really good, meant I lost a lot of points!

I’m going to try and blame nagare. (If you’re not sure what nagare is, you should check out the podcast archive.) I get into these phases which I find hard to break out of. If I’m losing, I just lose. If I’m winning, I just win. These phases go with hands as well. I keep a record of hands I get or nearly get to see what sort of patterns there are in my play. Some weeks all I seem to get are half flushes. Other weeks I just get three-colored-runs. I guess what I really need to do is find a way of breaking the run by…winning!

However, the issue I have is that the worse I’m losing, the more need for a massive hand to make it up. The bigger the hands I’m going for, the more risk. Soooo the more I lose… I need to break the nagare with some cheap wins. That’s going to be my strategy next time. I’ll apologize in advance to the people on my table when I try this.

Apart from me, the tournament went really well. Two home players took the first two places. First went to Richard Stöckemann. Second to Michael Zahradnik. Martin Rep at mahjongnews.com took third. What is remarkable about these three places is that there was around 50k points between each of those positions. That is a huge difference. I’ve often seen the top few places being very close. I don’t think I’ve seen them so far apart.

The organization was also excellent and the location was amazing. It was my first time at the mahjong pub – Kaiser. It was great to hang back after thr tournament, play some casual games and chat with players. They also do amazing currywurst so I recommend that.

Overall an excellent weekend. However, there is one thing that could make it better – More German riichi players! The German Mahjong League (DMJL) is trying to expand their player base. So if you’re in Germany and play mahjong, please contact them! Their website is: http://mah-jongg.de/. If you’re a player in Frankfurt, you can also contact me. I also need new friends to play with!

Jong-cast #55 – Nov 15, 2011

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:00:03 +0000

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Jong-cast #54 – Nov 11, 2011

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:00:37 +0000

Subscribe to listen to the podcast on iTunes or download the podcast here.

Jong-cast #53 – Nov 9, 2011

admin — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:00:16 +0000

Subscribe to listen to the podcast on iTunes or download the podcast here.

WWYD 2011/11/2

admin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:00:02 +0000

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Mahjong Kombat at Kollision Kon

garthe — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:00:20 +0000

As part of their “East kollides with West” theme, the planners at Kollision Kon will be running a two day Japanese Mahjong tournament as part of the convention.

Part of the anime convention, the Mahjong Kombat tournament will give attendees a chance to participate in another part of Japanese culture.

The tournament will take place on the first two days of the convention which runs from November 18-20. Friday the 18th, it will run from 6 PM – 10 PM, and Saturday it will run 6PM – midnight.

This being a Japanese style “Reach” mahjong event, it seems only fitting that Reachmahjong.com will be awarding prizes!

The convention will be held at the beautiful Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, near Chicago, Illinois. Hotelreservations.com advertises a rate of $8600 for a room slashed from $9800 so better book soon as they’re likely to go fast! Actually there also seem to be rooms around $100 too if you feel like roughing it.

Sounds like fun, hope to see you there!

WWYD 2011/10/26

admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:00:09 +0000

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Jong-cast #52 – Oct 25, 2011

jenn — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:00:10 +0000

Subscribe to listen to the podcast on iTunes or download the podcast here.

Jong-cast #51 – Oct 19, 2011

jenn — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 02:51:01 +0000

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WWYD 2011/10/19

admin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:00:41 +0000

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Teaching Mahjong – Again

Gemma — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:00:31 +0000

It’s been a long time since I taught Mahjong. First time was in Taiwan when I was still a student. Second time was when I was back in the UK. Third time was last year in Frankfurt. I’ve had mixed successes and failures but I think overall people have enjoyed themselves (or at least they still return my calls…).

After hauling my Mahjong table up to the fourth floor where my new apartment is, I thought it was finally time to get playing on it. Not having any mahjong-playing friends close, my only option was to make some.

With promises of fun and takeout, five people came over. Two already had some experience of mahjong so that made it easier and they switched with each other while the three least experienced played all the hands.

This was probably one of my more successful initial teaching sessions. I think when you’re teaching someone how to play, it’s very easy to forget that some of the things one now take’s for granted can appear rather exotic to others.

Below are the steps in Gemma’s lesson one plan:

Step One: Let them play with the tiles and put together a straight of each suit and a triple of each of the dragons and winds.

This helps them grow accustomed to the tiles. Particularly important if they don’t read Japanese or Chinese. (Pro tip: Remember to tell them that the bird is the one of bamboos. I forgot to tell them…)

Step Two: Show them the shape of a standard hand and allow them to build one themselves.

Again, you come against problems you wouldn’t anticipate as someone who has played for many years now. You forget that people may assume a straight could go 8-9-1. Or that perhaps you could have W-E-N as a set.

Step Three: Show them how to build the wall and get them to do it.

Not too many problems here apart from when your players seem more excited by building things than playing, making you wonder if you should have just got some Lego…

Step Four: Go through an open sample game.

For this part I tend to play with everyone having their hands open so we can see what everyone is doing and discuss how to build a hand.

The most difficult part is trying to explain and ensure the new players go in the right direction when counting after the dice roll, when dealing and the order of discards.

This is also where I introduce the calls “pon” and “chi”.

Be careful when explaining “chi” that the new players understand when calling chi, they miss a chance to draw and the play moves to the player on their right once they discard.

Be careful when explaining “pon” to new players and ensure they understand that it may disrupt the order of drawing.

However, I don’t introduce dora or any hand points. I believe too many rules at once will overwhelm them and (a) they’ll get frustrated (b) they won’t remember. The most important thing is to get them playing. It may be that what they’re playing looks ridiculously dumbed down, but it’s all new to them and they’ll probably be enjoying themselves.

Step Five: Go through closed sample games

I repeat this step until everyone is more or less familiar with the flow of play. However, it is important that you move on to introducing new rules before your players get bored and wonder what all the fuss was about.

WWYD 2011/10/12

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:00:20 +0000

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Jong-cast #50 – Oct 11, 2011

jenn — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:00:49 +0000

Subscribe to listen to the podcast on iTunes or download the podcast here.

HP (Yaku) Explanation – Flushes (2)

xKime — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:00:10 +0000

From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/529.htm

In this section we’ll focus on the important points when calling tiles at the time of going for a flush hand (one suit hand/somete).

Flush hands can be pretty confusing because all tiles are concentrated and the shape is complex, so it takes some effort when we have to call tiles. Calling tiles should make it faster for us to win the hand, but with inferior calling skills it will only make it more difficult. I will now introduce the basic principles for calling tiles.

Rule 1: Make sure it gets the hand closer to ready (tenpai)
If a hand two away from ready gets to one away from ready, it has gone one step closer to ready and will make you win the hand faster. Getting closer to ready is the vital point of calling tiles.

Player to our left discards , we don’t need this tile.
We already have , and calling doesn’t move us any step closer to ready, and we also lose a valuable chance to draw a tile. Calling a useless tile is worse than passing on it.
Readers should note, there are times where we should call tiles even if it doesn’t get you closer to ready, but that’s more advanced theory (shape) which doesn’t fall within the scope of this article right now.

Rule 2: After calling, the hand shape doesn’t change

In this hand, we should call any tile except one.
This is, bumping (pon) after someone discards it. The reason is that the remaining is empty (because we’re already using three , there is only one left)
What if the person to our left discards , what should we do? As long as there are no other especial situations (for example if all were already dead), we shouldn’t touch this tile. Because is a good shape, calling this tile doesn’t move us any step closer to ready and it also changes the shape of the hand erasing a good shape.

Another example.

There is no problem aiming for a full flush with this hand, but when the person in front of him discarded , this player bumped it. This, I wouldn’t recommend.
Look carefully at the composition for this hand:
+++
Forming a set with breaks up a complete group (mentsu) and also an incomplete group (taatsu) which could have made another group; the gains do not make up for the losses. The shape is not the same now that is on a set, and we only remain with a lone to use and maybe letter tiles (jihai) as well to finish this hand. All this did was making the hand more painful and difficult to win.

If this was discarded by the person to our left, there would have been no problem (you may chow/chii this tile).

Rule 3: Pay attention at the way you call tiles.
In flush hands we have many tiles of one single suit in our hands, so when the person to our left discards a tile we normally have more than one way to call it.

Person to our left discarded , what should we do?
The right answer is calling it with , and discard , thus it the remaining shape is with a four sided wait ().
A mistake many beginners make is calling this with and discard too anyway, ending up with , waiting on only .

As far as flush hands concern, we’ll drop this here. In the next article, we’ll discuss pair-based hands (Toi-Toi (all bumps) and Chii Toi Tsu (all pairs)).
——————————————————————————————————————————————–
Garthe’s Commentary

Yeah, no kidding on the whole hard to read waits thing. It reminds me of a hand I had in the semifinals of Masters that is just one more classic example of me winning by playing wrong.

I had already won the first 2 games so my spot on the final table was already virtually assured. The real contest was between Ogawa and Imazato for the second spot from our table.

The 3rd hand of the east round, Imazato Reached after I had gotten to ready with this

Dora was ! Just waiting for , I was fretting over what I would do if I had a chance to improve my wait. It’s fun to play with everyone watching but nerve-racking too as I really didn’t want to make a mistake in front of everybody.

What should come but . Throwing seemed like the obvious choice but for some reason, I just couldn’t see what I’d be waiting for besides . Even now I had to get my tiles out, put the hand on my bed and start taking out pairs to finally see that I was also waiting for .

Unable to find the right answer at the time I opted to just stick with the current crappy wait and discard the tile I’d just drawn. That prompted a hapless Ogawa to believe that would be safe and he discarded my winner. 16,000 points plus shock and amazement oohs and ahs from everyone watching as Ogawa’s final table hopes went down the drain.

I’m not saying that my play was necessarily wrong. There are definitely reasons one could argue it is a viable play. I’m just disappointed that I only made the right play by not being able to see all the plays that were available.

Go ahead and separate out your groups to see what you really have like he did in the 3rd example of the column. It will be a dead giveaway that you’re going for a flush but chances are the other players will be on to you anyway. It’s also a little embarrassing to have to do it that way, but what’s a little embarrassment compared to 16,000 points! You still get the last laugh.

WWYD 2011/10/5

admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:00:13 +0000

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Jong-cast #49 – Oct 4, 2011

admin — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:00:39 +0000

Subscribe to listen to the podcast on iTunes or download the podcast here.

Jong-cast #48 – Oct 2, 2011

jenn — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:35:06 +0000

Search for the Reach Mahjong-cast on iTunes to subscribe or download the latest podcast here.

WWYD 2011/9/28

admin — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:00:45 +0000

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Joyjan Beta Testing Promotion Results for August

admin — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:00:06 +0000

After a long wait, the results are in!

During August RM.com forum members tested Joyjan.net‘s software. This month you sent us your game numbers and the top 5 players get their choice of a ReachMahjong.com T-shirt, a signed copy of Jenn’s book or a dragon tile set. 6-9th place players get an exclusive RM.com strap.

Here are the results:

1st: fso, 88 games
2nd: 竹井久, 66 games
3rd: Samuo, 61 games
4th: triplebreak, 43 games
5th: greenbluered, 22 games
6th: xKime, 12 games
7th: WaveMaster, 10 games
8th: Izzy, 8 games
9th: Artalyx, 3 games

The September promotion is still running so be sure to get more games in for the rest of this week! Details are here.

Oranda Sai-Kou

WorTeX — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:00:35 +0000

The Oranda Sai-Kou tournament held in the city of Utrecht was probably this year’s high-point of the European riichi mahjong scene. With 68 participants from ten countries gathering to Den Hommel (The Bumblebee) for nine sessions of riichi, this was the longest RCR event ever held in Europe.

This tournament also determined the Dutch Champion, who has been decided with total score from two separate tournaments that took place this year.

The winner was not clear until the last session, and a lot players had the chance to win the tournament. Many had held the first place position at some point during the event, and after the first day many thought that Jean-Marc Dedieu from France would be taking the first place. He had scores of over 130 000 after the first day and even scored a yakuman Su Anko (Four Concealed Triples). In the end the three best players were Bert Claessen, Sjef Strik and Nicolas Poilleux. Of course I had already made the prediction of Sjef and Nicolas making it to top five in the pre-report, but I was really surprised about the winner Bert Claessen, a name I had never heard before. With his final score of 175,100, I’m not certain if made a yakuman or not, or was his play just superb in every other fashion. I’m probably just a bit bitter about my final position.

Yours truly got the fourth place by playing really, really consistently throughout the weekend. I played on table 12 every single session and it usually was me who had to keep the score. I’m surprised how people can play the game, sometimes not actually knowing what they scored. The gong was also a bit confusing since the tournament used the 75+15 minute rule, which states that game plays out normal for 75 minutes, and if you’re not finished by then, you can finish your current hand and play one more.I had problems figuring out their announcements about the time and hands, thankfully only one of my tables wasn’t finished before the 75 minute mark.

First session was great. Getting a sanbaiman hand really got the blood flowing but after that it was a steady run of placing either 2nd or 1st with bad scores. Didn’t even score a haneman or a baiman hand once if I remember correctly. The only session I got a negative score in was my single 3rd place finish with -7900 (-3000 uma (placing penalty) included) so I must have done something right.

My play was my usual style if you can call it that, not taking unnecessary risks but going for it when I was the dealer. I had great time abusing the Kuikae (Chow Switch) rule when I tried really hard against people who had declared riichi, claiming tiles and throwing the claimed away to keep me ready and not drawing any dangerous tiles. I only played into a couple of hands throughout the tournament that I can recall. That still proves I have a long way to go, but I’m satisfied with my overall results of this tournament.

Of course I have to mention that Gemma reached her goal of being 30th in the final scores yay!

I really noticed that people have been improving a lot as players. A couple of years ago it was a struggle against people going obvious Toitoi (All Pungs) and Honitsu (Half Flush) hands every single time, but now it seems people are realizing the importance of riichi in RCR, and are starting to sway away from the MCR/CO (Chinese rules) style of play. Also people are starting to play faster and most of the tables were done before the gong rang.

In conclusion, the tournament was great and I hope that the tournaments in the future will use this tournament as a benchmark in regards to the atmosphere, and level of play.

WWYD 2011/9/21

admin — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:00:33 +0000

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Oranda Sai-Kou Tournament Day Two

Gemma — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:00:24 +0000

(See the report from Day 1 here)

With no hope of placing in sight for me, I could instead turn my attention to the performance of the other players.

In particular, the French players. I’m amazed at how their numbers have increased in such a short space of time. But not only that – they’re really good! Rarely do you see the Dutch having to put up a fight on their own turf. For quite some time it looked like the first spot would go to a Frenchman, if not all the spots.

During the course of Day Two of the tournament, it seems that the Dutch woke up to this threat and pulled out their A game. Bert soared into top spot closely followed by Sjef, over players such as Jean-Marc, Quentin and Nicolas. Nicolas did manage to place still in third.

How about Tom Mustonen? My hopes were so high! And he was so close to placing but just fell short at fourth. Although he had some really strong games, his last two tables just didn’t net him the points he needed. He assures me that next tournament he will be walking out of the hall with a trophy! He’ll be writing his own report for RM.com so make sure you check back to find out how winners played.

As for myself, a respectable 30th. Nothing good, nothing bad. I just cruised throughout the whole tournament. I never got any massive hands and I probably should have defended more than I did. Each game I played was very tense though and there were no easy points at hand. I’ve noticed a dramatic shift from a play style where there was virtually no defence to one where almost each player I met at the table was prioritising defence. It’s a good trend and one that will lead to tougher games.

Finally, Janco should be mentioned for running an extremely smooth tournament. That sort of organization is never easy but he did it brilliantly. All in all another excellent Dutch tournament that does justice to a country of strong players.

Oranda Sai-Kou Tournament Day One

Gemma — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:29:48 +0000

Day one of the Oranda Sai-Kou tournament in Utrecht, Netherlands. I am tired. And for no good reason either. I got plenty of rest on the train here. (I thought I’d get my excuses in a little early!)

For those who checked my twitter, you’ll already know that my day was a bit of a mixed bag. Started off badly, recovered a little, lost it again, gained it back big time, and then cruised until the end of the day.

This is what makes two-day tournaments so good. I still have a fighting chance to improve myself tomorrow, or prove that any thing I have ever gotten has been pure fluke. Only tomorrow knows!

Tom (Wortex) who is also representing for RM.com is the one people should really be watching for. When he’s got his game on, he’s just sooo good and this weekend seems to be one of those times. I’m more excited to see how he plays tomorrow than I am for my own play.

Organization so far has been great. The only grumble I’ve heard so far had been about the short break for lunch (30 mins) but if you want to fit five hands in a day, that is sort of inevitable without us all wishing very hard for another hour in our days.

I’ll bring you another report tomorrow! Wish me some luck, but Tom the most luck!

Yuki Michi’s blog

xKime — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:00:20 +0000

From: http://ameblo.jp/yukimichi/entry-10977133544.html

Good morning!

Today is the fifth session for the C1 league.

It means that it’s the last session for this season.

The top five people will move to the next league, and I’m number 13 right now. At the moment I have a difference of 100 points with the person on 5th place, so it will be very hard to move up, but I’ll do my best, with all my might!

Writing this right now I suddenly realized that I often use the words “do my best, with all my might.”
Back in junior high, our teacher used to say “‘with all my might’ isn’t an expression you should simply use just for any reason.” She actually said why, but I forgot (even though it was such an important thing ^^;).
But ever since then I’ve used this phrase a lot and I ended up actually doing my best, so these words are “with all my might!” and doing things “with all my might,” so these words impacted my actions.

Even now, whenever I’m about to write “with all my might” in a blog or something, or when I’m about to say it, I stop for a second but since I really mean it when I say it, I doubt my teacher would be mad if I used the expression. I only use it at times when I really feel that way. ^^

I forgot the exact point of what she said, but I think she meant we shouldn’t just use this phrase casually.

Anyway, see you later!

(August 6th, 2011. Yuki Michi)

WWYD 2011/9/14

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:00:06 +0000

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WWYD 2011/9/7

admin — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:00:35 +0000

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Joyjan Promotion Begins Again

jenn — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:01:05 +0000

Throughout August, ReachMahjong.com forum members tested on the new mahjong software Joyjan. For one month you tracked your games and winners will receive prizes very soon.

We had such a good time that we’re running the promotion again in September. Starting September 6th and running until September 30th all players that are registered on the ReachMahjong.com forums have the chance to win exclusive RM.com prizes.

For the past few months ReachMahjong.com has been hosting ads for Joyjan. This is a great chance to share their opinions and desires for the new game and get the first foot in the door for this new software.

To participate:
1. Register an account on the ReachMahjong.com Forums (if you’re already a forum member skip this step)
2. Download the Joyjan software form Joyjan.net
3. Play live games and keep track of the game number
4. Write and discuss opinions and software issues in the Rm.com Forum thread or e-mail any problems you find to jenn@reachmahjong.com.
5. Email jenn@reachmahjong.com by September 5th with:
-Your RM.com Forum Username
-Your Joyjan.net Username
-A list of all game number of all games played from August 2-31st
-Your mailing address for prizes (see below)

Prizes will be determined by number of games played:
-All players will receive an exclusive ReachMahjong.com patch
-Top 5 players can choose between a signed copy of Jenn’s book Reach Mahjong:The Only Way to Play, an exclusive RM.com What Would You Discard t-shirt or a Dragon Tile Set (available in the ReachMahjong.com Shop)
-Players 6-10 can choose a blue or green exclusive ReachMahjong.com phone strap.
-Players 11-15 will receive a $5 coupon to the ReachMahjong.com shop.

Only live games with 4 players will qualify for prizes. All prizes are subject to change without notice.

Garthe and Jenn will be playing regularly as well. Also, since this software is bilingual, there will be players from Japan live! So join us and let’s get more online mahjong going!

WWYD 2011/8/31

admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:00:59 +0000

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New champion of the world! (of North Kanto)

garthe — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:00:32 +0000

You may have noticed in the last couple of weeks that everything I say has a slightly louder ring of authority. That’s because I finally won my first title last Sunday in the North Kanto local league.

North Kanto Champion, Gartheeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Ok now that I’ve got the grandstanding out of the way, return to my normally humble self. Haha, oh I kill me!

But really, I’ve been having a remarkably good streak for the last couple of months and I can’t for the life of me figure out what I’m doing right. In fact, maybe not doing things right is the answer because what I do notice is just one mistake after another. The key to my success is that somehow the mistakes turn out right.

A perfect example comes from a play I made to win the second game in the final session of league play. Going into the last turn as dealer I was in the lead and tried to end it with a quick cheapie but instead threw a 5800 point hand to the dealer, giving him the lead. Ouch! First mistake.

Next hand I was going for a full flush when another Dora, 4, showed up in the wrong suit. It actually made 7 pairs a possibility until finally on the 16th draw I got to ready with this:

draw

The real pisser was that the very draw before I got to this, both my lower house and the dealer threw . I didn’t want to reach that late, already 16th draw, and risk losing another 1000 points but I had no set Hand Point. So I was waiting for , but only gave me a Double Run, allowing me to win off someone else. Then on my last draw I drew another Dora!! With no more draws and the hand now like this what would you do?

draw

Can you see all the options? My choices were to drop , , or . I really preferred the option because I tend to like big waits, , except that having already discarded earlier it would put me in a missed win situation. So I dropped the , and stayed with my same crappy wait. Lo and behold, what should the dealer’s last discard be but the last !!!

8000 points and a stunning come-from-behind-from-ahead victory for me!

Mostly stunning I guess because Ogawa and the parlor manager, who had been watching behind me, immediately pointed out what “genius” it was for me not to have thrown my other on that last discard. That would have given me Simples so I could win on from anyone!

If only this genius had noticed that option, that’s probably what he would have done.

And that about sums up my success lately. I’ve scored the highest two months in a row on Fight Club. My winning percentage at work is close to 40% in that time also. And I won North Kanto, no small feat actually given that my final table included Sawazaki Makoto, and Yoshida Yukio, two of the strongest players in our entire league. Through it all, I make one blunder after another and somehow they just keep coming up smelling like roses.

It reminds of one of my favorite shirts a buddy of mine used to wear saying, “Be strong, be wrong!” Well, I got that right anyway.

Time to get lucky.

1st ReachMahjong.com Cup Hand History (South-4-1)

admin — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 12:00:31 +0000

South Round, 4th Hand, 1 Continuance

Lucky Tile:

———————————————————————————————-

Dealer: Naoki Setokuma (48,000 – 1000 = 47,000)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

———————————————————————————————-

South Seat: Yoshiaki Ichikawa (25,400 – 1,000 = 24,400)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

———————————————————————————————-

West Seat: Okubo (41,700 + 3000 = 44,700)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Pon

Discards

Final Hand

Pon:
Pon:

———————————————————————————————-

North Seat: Shunsuke (4,900 – 1,000 = 3,900)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

WWYD 2011/8/24

admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:00:10 +0000

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Oranda Sai-Kou Tournament

WorTeX — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:00:25 +0000

With over 50 registered players, one of the biggest riichi tournaments this year with 2 MERS ranking, Oranda Sai-Kou will be held in the city of Utrecht in The Netherlands. The event will take place from 17th to 18th of September in the city’s Mind Sports Center ‘Den Hommel’ which literally translates to “The Bumblebee” and was the stage for World Mahjong Championship 2010.

What makes this event special, is that there are nine 90 minute sessions played, which is the most out of any tournament in Europe so far. This of course means that the skilled players will excel in the long run rather than someone just getting lucky for a couple of sessions.

The tournament will also decide the Dutch Champion, and that is the other big change. Before this tournament, the champion was decided with the best overall score from two events, the Cherry Blossom Tournament and Kinryu Majan Taikai.

There are players from at least seven different countries attending, with Dutch majority, but the French coming close second. There are a bunch of people who have proven themselves to be worthy opponents among all the players registered, and you cannot count out anyone, especially when you have nine sessions to play. With almost 70 players registered, this tournament is looking to be the largest Riichi event in Europe in 2011.

Making a top five prediction for the tournament is really hard and a bit silly, but my prediction is as follows: Marianne Croeze, Janco Onnink, Sjef Strik, Joel Ratsimandresy and Nicolas Poilleux.

Details about the tournament in Utrecht can be found on the Nederlandese Mahjong Bond.

1st ReachMahjong.com Cup Hand History (South-4-0)

admin — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 12:00:50 +0000

South Round, 4th Hand, 0 Continuance

Lucky Tile:

——————————————————————————————————-

Dealer: Naoki Setokuma (35,000 + 13000 = 48,000)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

										Self-Draw

Discards


									Reach

Final Hand

Self-Draw:

——————————————————————————————————-

South Seat: Yoshiaki Ichikawa (30,400 – 5,000 = 25,400)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards


							Reach

Final Hand

——————————————————————————————————-

West Seat: Okubo (45,700 – 4000 = 41,700)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

——————————————————————————————————-

North Seat: Shunsuke (8,900 – 4,000 = 4,900)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

HP (Yaku) Explanation – Flushes (1)

xKime — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:00:42 +0000

From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/527.htm

In the last articles we discussed the conditions to make a flush hand, these following two articles will try to explain the vital points when making those hands.

Flexibility

After you get your starting hand, you have to consider the possible HP/yaku (mentanpin, half flush (hon itsu), kuitan (open tan yao) with 2 dora (lucky tiles), etc); that’s the habit most adept players must develop. Because if you plan ahead you can reduce your thinking time afterwards, and you can select more easily the best tile to discard.

When they recieve a starting hand with a few tiles in the same suit, beginners think of nothing but half flush, and erradicate completely all other small possibilities, this could influence the hand-winning percentage. Because at the beginning of the hand you only have 14 tiles ahead of you, and you have still 17 draws ahead of you, there’s a good chance things might change.

Here’s a concrete explanation of going for half flush:

The lucky tile (dora) is a random honor tile.

This is a real starting hand I have gotten, it was the South Round, therefore East is not a value tile (fan pai).

9 tiles in cracks (manzu), and it includes a 667799 shape. If we keep this hand concealed (menzen) it’s going to be hard to proceed. Therefore, in this hand a Half Flush is within scope.

But is a flush the only possible evolution for this hand? The answer is negative. If we draw or , we have the possibility for a conealed Peace Hand (pinfu).

If we only think about tile efficiency, here we would discard . But in this match I discarded , it’s very subtle, but it leaves the possibility open for Half Flush or Peace Hand at the same time. Beginners tend to rush to discard in this kind of hand, it may be arbitratry, but discarding so early on can make the other players feel uncomfortable and they’d begin being cautious about you, which is not a good thing.

The mahjong tiles don’t know what you want to draw.

“With this hand, I only need to draw a few more cracks and I’ll have a Half Flush!”

You see this kind of thing in many mahjong forums, many people believe this is the basis to go for Half Flush. In fact, speaking in all consciousness, when I say　”With this hand, I only need to draw three more , three more , three more , and I’ll have Big Three Dragons! (Dai San Gen)” it’s not any different.

The big problem in beginners is that they play what Japanese people like to call “e awase maajan” (e awase = “drawing pictures”; maajan = mahjong) — in your heart there is only room for one “ultimate final shape”, and you believe your hand will evolve just the way you want it to, what some people call “ideal shape” is something hard to imagine, it makes the hand lose all its flexibility for change.

In fact, mahjong tiles can’t now what you want to draw, and can’t adapt themselves to your desires. Drawn tiles are just a random occurrence. Even if we had an 80% chance of making a Half Flush, erasing the remaining 20% could be unfortunate.

When playing mahjong, every turn what you should ask yourself is not “what do I want to draw,” it should be “if I drew x, what should I do?”

Remember, you cannot control your future draws. What you must do, is make your strategy based on the tiles you draw afterwards, and not according to your ideal, but according to what is possibly benefitial.

Coming back to the example from a while ago, I discarded and the hand became:

After discarding 1p I had already planned inside of me for the rest possibilities:

a) Draw cracks or East Wind: Possibly discard , because at that point cracks and letter tiles (jihai) already offer enough possibilities for groups (mentsu).

b) Draw or : Discard . Because the possibility for a concealed Peace Hand is high, meaning the opportunity cost for the Half Flush becomes higher.

c) Draw : Discard . No new incomplete group (taatsu), maintaining the balance between Peace Hand and Half Flush.

Many beginners thing they just have to decide and plunge ahead with that plan, when in fact you must practice “formulating a future plan for the tiles you will draw.”

In this game my next draw was , even though Half Flush is only worth two Hand Points (han), in this situation it’s the easiest way to win; discard . As long as I don’t draw afterwards, the possibility for Half Flush is pretty big.

Later on I called pon on and , drew another and added it to form a quad (kan), and ended winning 3200 points.

In short, what I want everyone to remember from this article is:

1. Secondary tiles can be part of your final shape, under most situations there are many of these. It’s pretty important to give flexibility for the hand to develop especially in the first row of discards.

2. You must not blindly charge towards one direction to please your heart’s desire, you must adjust your strategy based on the tiles you will draw.

(to be continued)

———————————————————————————————————-
Comments from Garthe

The statement I would like everyone to revisit is the, “…if I only draw a few more cracks, I’ll have a half flush!”

Indeed, but if we only draw a COUPLE more different tiles, we’ll be ready with Peace and probably at least a shot at Double Run. In normal parlor rules, getting to ready fastest with the hand closed is generally a pretty good strategy because of the possibility of getting Ippatsu or Hidden Dora. More often than not, we’re better off going for tile efficiency than big points.

And also, don’t forget that Half Flushes lose value when not concealed. Without Dora or value tiles in this hand, its value is practically the same as a Reach+Peace hand anyway.

Finally, I’d like to consider one more way to play this hand. He didn’t say at what point he called the 7c but it sounds like it might have still been relatively early. With 4 pairs already in the hand, I would have probably tried to keep it closed and go for Half Flush+7 Pairs or Half Flush+3 Concealed Triples. Both hands will be at least mangan(8000 points) with a good possibility for haneman(12,000). From a tile efficiency standpoint, one could certainly argue against opening the hand here as he now needs 2 of a very specific 6 tiles to complete the hand. Closed, nearly any cracks move us closer to ready and even any letter tiles are potentially useful, especially Dora.

And I have more faith in my opponents clamming up with cracks and letter tiles once I’ve called for something. Even closed, it will still be pretty Pretty obvious I’m aiming for a flush, but many players will assume that I am not ready until I call for something. If I can get to ready and not Reach, I think I have a better chance of winning the hand as opponents will think they still have time to safely get rid of that dangerous tile.

For me, the possibility of those monster hands (or even baiman if I draw a couple Dora) is well worth the risk of losing the hand because I didn’t steal tiles.

WWYD 2011/8/17

admin — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:00:07 +0000

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1st ReachMahjong.com Cup Hand History (South-3-0)

admin — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 12:00:03 +0000

South Round, 3rd Hand, 0 Continuances

Lucky Tile:
Hidden Lucky Tile: Lucky Tile:

——————————————————————————————————-

Dealer: Shunsuke (12,900 – 4000 = 8,900)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

——————————————————————————————————-

South Seat: Naoki Setokuma (27,000 + 8,000 = 35,000)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

								Self-Draw

Discards

Final Hand

Self-Draw:

——————————————————————————————————-

West Seat: Yoshiaki Ichikawa (32,400 – 2000 = 30,400)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

——————————————————————————————————-

North Seat: Okubo (47,700 – 2,000 = 45,700)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

WWYD 2011/8/10

admin — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:00:54 +0000

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1st ReachMahjong.com Cup Hand History (South-2-0)

admin — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 20:00:29 +0000

South Round, 2nd Hand, 0 Continuances

Lucky Tile: , Hidden Lucky Tile:

——————————————————————————————————-

Dealer: Okubo (52,700 – 5000 = 47,700)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

——————————————————————————————————-

South Seat: Shunsuke (14,900 – 2,000 = 12,900)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

——————————————————————————————————-

West Seat: Naoki Setokuma (18,000 + 9000 = 27,000)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Self-Draw

Discards

Reach

Final Hand

Self-Draw:

——————————————————————————————————-

North Seat: Yoshiaki Ichikawa (34,400 – 2,000 = 32,400)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

JoyJan is Back Up!

admin — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 05:24:40 +0000

You may have read about our exclusive RM.com promotion on Joyjan.net. The site was down for a couple days but now it’s back up! So be sure to check out the details of our promotion here, sign up on Joyjan and get to playing!

A pro’s awareness

xKime — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:00:59 +0000

Starting in August ReachMahjong.com will host a new series of Professional Blogs. These will be translated blog entries from the top pro players in Japan. This column will continue biweekly, being published on Fridays. Thanks to xKime who is translating these entries. If you’d like to see a certain pro’s thoughts don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll do our best to get you one of their blogs. This first entry is from Takeo Kojima, Mr. Mahjong himself as he wrote last year on the Mahjong Fight Blog.
Source: http://mp.i-revo.jp/user.php/kojima-pro/entry/141.html

I don’t play just to win without thinking about anything, and I don’t want to play like that. Why? That’s because I’m a professional player. If you’re an amateur player, then it doesn’t matter how you play. I think it’s okay if you play just to win, or even if you play only to complete hands.

For example, octave waits (moro hikkake) like discarding and winning on , or discarding and winning on or . Pair waits (tanki), gutshot waits (kanchan) or simple winning hands without any other HP (yaku). As a professional player, I feel like this kind of win is a little embarrassing. Even though there are professional players who say “There’s nothing wrong with that kind of win,” I doubt their sense of play. As a professional player, I think I should have at the very least some sense of beauty.

So, does that mean professional players don’t win on edge waits (penchan), gutshot waits or with octave waits? That’s not so. Sometimes we wait with those ready (tenpai) hands. There are many cases where we wait on a pair of dora (lucky dragons/tiles), or other HP like Three Colored Runs (San Shoku) or Full Straight (Ittsuu). We usually don’t just make a Reach (riichi) hand with nothing else.

When everything goes according to plan and your opponent discards your winning tile, if they think or even say “that’s a good wait,” they do not say it but they’re probably thinking “I’m beaten…”. Winning like that is professional.

I say it a lot, but if everyone (non-pro players) thought or said “What’s so special? You play just like we do,” that would be embarrassing.

This is the difference between Mahjong and go or shougi (Japanese chess). In go and shougi you can see everything, so there is no point in making strange moves.

However, in mahjong you’re fighting with draws that aren’t visible, so there are many strategies a player can make.

Therefore, a professional player must put on a professional fight. There is no other option.

I let a chance for good results slip away at the 16th Special Tournament “Regain Cup” (第 16回特別大会 Regain杯) (on Mahjong Fight Club). I participated in the Mahjong Triathlon mode and got a high score by the time I finished the Half Games (tonpuusen) and Full Games (hanchan) sessions, and next in my specialty: 3 Player Mahjong (sanma) I could have assured a good result if I scored high in the last game, but it ended with me and the dealer (oya) both going for a hand in bamboos (souzu) and I ended up giving him a dealer baiman (24000 points).

Nevertheless, in this mahjong triathlon the mode of play changes every game, so you never get tired and it’s very fun. There are chances for all users and I felt like there was a good sense of competition.

For anyone that I didn’t get to play with this time around, be sure to play again next time. -Takeo Kojima (2010-09-06)

———————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Comments from Jenn:

I am a player that was born and bred on Kojima-sensei’s way of playing. His were the first books I read and his style is what I studied as I grew as a player. The idea is definitely more about shape and HP and less about speed. As a result I have a special place in my game for 3 Colored Runs (sanshoku) and Full Straights (Ittsu).

As far as waits go, we often preach good waits on ReachMahjong.com. However, there are many times when a side wait (penchan) and gut shots (kanchan) are good waits. The idea that an octave-riichi wait (moro hikkake), as sensei explained above, is an older way of thinking and the new generation, even of respected professionals, is moving away from that way of thinking. The game is getting more and more competitive and the truth is that to succeed in this industry most players just can’t afford to play such a readable game. If an opponent knows that you will never discard a to wait on an , the chance of them beating you becomes to great.

Watch Kojima-sensei’s game. He plays a beautiful form of mahjong that you won’t get the chance to see from the new breed of pro’s. And, he still wins.

WWYD 2011/8/3

admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:00:25 +0000

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Beta Testing on Joyjan – RM Exclusive

admin — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:00:43 +0000

For the past few months ReachMahjong.com has been hosting ads for Joyjan, an online Riichi game. We are now participating in hard-core beta-testing on Joyjan and all RM.com readers are invited to join as well. Not only will you all players get to share their opinions, desires for the games and get the first foot in the door for this new software, but RM is also going to put up prizes for all forum users that participate in this testing.

Starting today and going until August 31st, all players that are registered on the ReachMahjong.com forums have the chance to win exclusive RM.com prizes.

To participate:
1. Register on the ReachMahjong.com Forums
2. Download the Joyjan software form Joyjan.net
3. Play live games and keep track of the game number
4. Write and discuss opinions and software issues in the Rm.com Forum thread
5. Email jenn@reachmahjong.com by September 5th with:
-Your RM.com Forum Username
-Your Joyjan.net Username
-A list of all game number of all games played from August 2-31st
-Your mailing address for prizes (see below)

Prizes will be determined by number of games played:
-All players will receive an exclusive ReachMahjong.com patch
-Top 5 players can choose between a signed copy of Jenn’s book Reach Mahjong:The Only Way to Play, an exclusive RM.com What Would You Discard t-shirt or a Dragon Tile Set (available in the ReachMahjong.com Shop)
-Players 6-10 can choose a blue or green exclusive ReachMahjong.com phone strap.
-Players 11-15 will receive a $5 coupon to the ReachMahjong.com shop.

Only live games with 4 players will qualify for prizes. All prizes are subject to change without notice.

Garthe and Jenn will be playing regularly as well. Also, since this software is bilingual, there will be players from Japan live! So join us and let’s get more online mahjong going!

Pair Theory (Part 2)

xKime — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:19:41 +0000

This is from an actual MFC hand history, sitting North. If you draw 9 of bamboos in the 4th turn, what would you discard?
For a Group Hand(i.e. 4 groups +1 pair, the standard winning shape) the most efficient discard would naturally be 9 of bamboos.
In appearance, since this hand has many pairs it looks like it should be easy to form a group hand, but it isn’t. At the time we only have the 789 completed run (shuntsu). We still need one of the remaining two 4 and 9 of cracks (manzu), 3 of dots (pinzu) and West Wind (shaa) to have a chance at winning the hand. There are only two tiles remaining of each, so the tile efficiency here is really low. The most important thing is, we need the pairs to form a good shape, but that’s not easy either.

Therefore in this hand we must go for All Pairs; in this actual game, I discarded 2 of bamboos (souzu).

————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Comments from Garthe
Ah yes, another age old conundrum, 7 Pairs or normal shape. I remember running into it a few years ago in my last game at the OUI tournament. I made the wrong decision, at least regarding what I eventually drew. I opted for 7 Pairs as I tend to do, the tiles I drew afterward would have completed a Simples, Peace, Dora hand.

Distraught that I had knocked myself out of the tournament I looked for support so I could blame the loss on bad luck. I wasn’t so lucky. Both Rumi (who was at the same table that game) and Jenn were surprised that I chose that road, and Jenn’s reason for why the normal shape was so obviously the right choice has stuck with me since that time: if the waits are good, take the easy road, go normal!

I have to admit, as I play more and more, one of the things I’ve noticed on days that I can’t seem to win a game is that I’m often going for a lot of 7 Pairs hands. Sometimes I remember Jenn’s advice at a crucial moment and manage to go normal instead of taking the hard way. But more often than not, I keep my pairs.

I won’t go into a long explanation of why the approach may or may not be justified, especially as it might just be unjustifiable. But perhaps I can still provide a little method to my madness.

The article says that the only loss in discarding 3-dots in the first example is drawing one of the other two 3-dots. First of all, I would argue that that is in fact a pretty big loss because that would have completed a group moving us to one away from ready. 1,2, 4 of bamboos team up to only form a nice potential shape for a group, and we’re still two away from ready.

Second of all, that reasoning also assumes that we’re really no longer aiming for anything but Peace. I would argue that if 7 Pairs is still on the table, a draw which pairs ANYthing else in our hand is also a loss, seven singletons at 3 remaining each gives a loss of 21 tiles. And finally, if we’re ok with just the fastest route to ready then completing the other triples is even something of a loss as we’d still be two away from ready rather than one, four more losses.

I tend to go that route because I dream of hitting monsters. 7 Pairs can become a potential monster with just the addition of one Dora, haneman if self drawn after reaching. If the pairs start tripling up 3 Concealed Triples is usually at least mangan because Reach and self draw are in there as well. And of course if the triples keep coming to the end, yakuman (limit hand)!! 4 Concealed Triples is my favorite hand.

I can appreciate the reasoning for breaking the pair there, but I would keep it and throw one of the bamboos.

One last note, many people thought Kosho Tsuchida was perhaps the best player in Japan until he left our association to start his own and we had to start thinking someone else must be the best player in Japan. Anyway, he was famous for leaving pairs in his hand when no one else would have. What does he know that we don’t?

Well, time to get lucky…

WWYD 2011/7/27

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:00:34 +0000

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UK Open Report

Gemma — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:58:02 +0000

It was a typical english morning for the second UK riichi open in Guildford. The field was significantly greater than the previous UK open with 48 participants. There were also several new faces attending coming from mahjong university clubs across the UK. Several players from France had arrived to compete and also a small but strong selection of Finnish players. Last year’s winner, Ans Hoogland, was also present to defend her title. Following the trend of recent European riichi tournaments, there were five Han-chan planned and so the morning started early at 8.30am for registration. However, unlike recent tournaments, there was no bell for 15 minutes before the end.

I felt pressure being on home ground and also having done well so far this year. I’m also ashamed to say that i haven’t gotten much practice in recent months However, my fears were unfounded for the first four games and perhaps the break in play made me play mahjong with a fresher mind. I scored highly in the games where luck was on my side and pulled in to play defensively when lady luck was not with me. A basic strategy, I know, but one too easily forgotten when stress comes into play.

There wasn’t one particular hand that stood out in my games. Each table was tight though and the level of play was very high. It was especially interesting to meet those players with whom I hadn’t had a chance to play with yet.

The part of the tournament that stood out most for me was the final table. I was drawing first position with Steven Chowney, also from the UK. This last table was where my game suffered. I’d like to blame it on fatigue, but if I’m honest, it was the stress and this is almost always my downfall in tournaments.

Steven managed to pass me by a good margin to take first. I took second and French player Nicolas Poilleux took third.

In conclusion, I need to learn some stress management if I want to improve my game further and also keep up with all these new players joining the tournaments.

Finally, a big thank you to the organizers. Another great day for mahjong in the UK and i hope British players can start to make a real impact on the continent soon!=

1st ReachMahjong.com Cup Hand History (South-1-1)

admin — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 12:00:40 +0000

South Round, 1st Hand, 1 Continuance

Lucky Tile:

Dealer: Yoshiaki Ichikawa (34,400)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

South Seat: Okubo (51,400 + 1,300 = 52,700)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand
River-win: Pon:

West Seat: Shunsuke (14,900)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

North Seat: Naoki Setokuma (19,300 – 1,300 = 18,000)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

WWYD 2011/7/20

admin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:00:35 +0000

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1st ReachMahjong.com Cup Hand History (South-1-0)

admin — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 14:00:44 +0000

South Round, 1st Hand, No Continuances

Lucky Tile: Quad Lucky Tile: Hidden Lucky Tile: Hidden Quad Lucky Tile:

Dealer: Yoshiaki Ichikawa (29,600 + 4,800 = 34,400)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

						Quad

Discards


		Reach

Final Hand

River-Win:
Concealed Quad:

South Seat: Okubo (51,400)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

West Seat: Shunsuke (19,700 – 4,800 = 14,900)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards


								East’s Winner

Final Hand

North Seat: Naoki Setokuma (19,300)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

WWYD 2011/7/13

admin — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:00:34 +0000

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In Garthe’s League

garthe — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:00:49 +0000

Well, it was another long night of happiness on Saturday leading straight into league play on Sunday.

I played tight and smart to win the first game and decided to switch it up at the beginning of the second game. My first hand, dealer, I won with this hand:

Draw:

Except I didn’t win. It was still only the 5th draw and this hand could be such a monster. Dropping 33 means any Character or letter tiles make me tenpai (ready) again. Gees, even 9 Gates was a remote possibility. 1000 points each for that hand just seemed wrong.

Why I like to break things that are working for me I will never know. So I stopped with the tightness, went for the Full Flush, and of course drew nothing but the other suits and the one letter tile of which there were already 3 on the table. By the time I got back to Ready, Kitano had caught up and I threw to her Simples, Peace, 2 Dora for a -7700 start to the game. Not quite the 3000 plus I could have had.

Failing another 3 consecutive big hands I was in quite a funk when I opened my hand to find this in the last of the east round:

Once again, fantastic possibilities, but I just couldn’t pull any triggers, didn’t pon when I had the chance and eventually drew 2 for 800/1600. Phhfthtt!!!

Next hand, I’m dealer again and find myself with this on the 8th or so draw.

I reasoned I’d gone for the monsters enough already. The middle tiles obviously being wanted by the other players, I took the first 7 that came out, and the next tile I drew was the 七.

Take that suckers!!! Not the super monster, but 6000 from each player would just have to do.

Next hand, 5 draws in, I got to ready with this:

Dora was so it was a monster if I got the , a bit disappointing with . If I drew the monster after reaching it’d be another 6000 from each player. But again felt weak, waited quietly, and Koshino eventually threw me the for 12,000 points.

So I won that game running away with it when I tightened back up my play again. What do you think my strategy was for the 3rd and 4th games? That’s right! LOSE!

Nothing big until the 1st South round hand, I got to tenpai (ready) with 7 Pairs and Dora but I was waiting for the Dora. I reached, tightening everyone else up. Oh except for Kitano who was dealer, ponned East, and won off me with a half flush for 5800. She followed that with a 5th draw reach for which I ran out of safe tiles after a few draws and again threw to her Simples, Peace, Dora Dora, Reach. Ouch.

Who knows if I would have won the hand waiting quietly. But it definitely shifts the focus from the dealer to me when I reach. Without the reach, Koshino might not have given Kitano her East, and the hand might have ended very differently.

My gigantic 2nd game win now erased I finished with a mighty plus 2 for the season, leaving me in 36th out of 43 in D1. I’m reminded of Charlie Brown, just wait til next year!

Now, let’s get lucky!!

1st ReachMahjong.com Cup Hand History (East-4-0)

admin — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 12:00:29 +0000

East Round, 4th Hand, No Continuances

Lucky Tile:

Dealer: Naoki Setokuma (20,600 – 1,300 = 19,300)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Pon

Discards

Final Hand

South Seat: Ichikawa (30,300 – 700 = 29,600)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

West Seat: Okubo (52,100 – 700 = 51,400)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Pon

Discards

Final Hand

Pon:

North Seat: Shunsuke (17,000 + 2,700 = 19,700)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Self-Draw

Discards

Reach

Final Hand

Self-Draw:

WWYD is Back!

admin — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:59:16 +0000

Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and you’ll see your “What Would You Discard” section. The section that wasn’t updated for so long that without a year listed, the date on the question actually became relevant again.

Now you can check our WWYD section weekly, every Wednesday, and voice your thoughts on the ReachMahjong.com Forums.

The difficulty of each question is different so there will be something for everyone. See you on the forums!

WWYD 2011/7/6

admin — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:29:15 +0000

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OEMC 2011

admin — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 12:00:43 +0000

While ReachMahjong.com deals mostly in the business and leisure of Riichi Mahjong, we do support our fellow players in events throughout the world and even play in a number of those events ourselves. The next big event in the world of mahjong is the Open European Mahjong Championship (OEMC), 2011 and will be held in Mestre, Italy from July 7-10, 2011, just outside of Venice.

This is the 4th biannual OEMC and while registration for each country is strict, you can find all the information as a fan on the official OEMC 2011 website .

One of the best things of OEMC tournaments is the tile sets made specifically for the event. The set always includes special flower tiles made especially for the region that the event is held. This year images include the famous Duomo of Florence and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. You can read about all the special tiles on Mahjong NEWS:
Special tiles for OEMC 2011

You won’t find the RM.com team at this event but you can be sure we’ll be cheering on our friends who are venturing over to play. Players from all over the world, even as far as Japan, will join together at this event to share new memories and play a lot of good games of mahjong. Good luck everyone! Send us a postcard.

1st ReachMahjong.com Cup Hand History (East-3-1)

admin — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 12:00:07 +0000

East Round, 3rd Hand, 1 Continuance

Lucky Tile:

Dealer: Shunsuke (21,100 + -4,100 = 17,000)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

South Seat: Naoki Setokuma (22,700 – 2,100 = 20,600)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

West Seat: Ichikawa (22,000 + 8,300 = 30,300)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Self-Draw

Discards

Final Hand

Self-Draw

North Seat: Okubo (54,200 – 2,100 = 52,100)
Dealt Hand:

Draws

Discards

Final Hand

Winning a Hand

garthe — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:00:44 +0000

Commentary from Garthe Nelson.

Sometimes your pair might not even look like a pair at all until you actually finish the hand. Consider a hand like the following:

Obviously, throwing the is fastest, making me one away from ready with quite a few options for Ready/tenpai. And this would indeed be a good choice if, for example, it’s the end of the game and I need only to win the hand or finish ready to win the game.

But think about the possibilities if I were to drop the pair of ‘s. Let’s say it’s the end of the game and I need an 8000 point hand to win the game. It’s going to take some pretty huge luck to get there with a Reach only hand. I’m much more likely to create such a hand by dropping the upper pair and going for at least Simples. 456, and even 345 and 567 Three Colored Runs are all within reach. In addition, I might end up with a 3 sided wait if I complete 3 runs in the other suits and my wait shape is . With just a little luck I have a good chance of running into an 8000 point hand where as going with the faster

So that’s a shape I want you to remember. It doesn’t look like a pair right now, but it could become one very quickly. And it’s potential could push you toward discarding a ready made pair in favor of a bigger possible reward.

Finally, I want us, me included, to shy away from saying this or that way of thinking is correct or incorrect. I was most recently admonished by Hiro Yamada for speaking of another player’s strategy in such a manner and of course he’s absolutely right. In the case below, thinking of (12) as a possible run is definitely not incorrect and it is definitely a loss and slowing down the hand if we were to draw the (3) after discarding (1). So thinking in that way is perhaps a “faster” way of thinking, whereas thinking of (2446) as two gut shots is perhaps a more “ambitious” way of thinking.

Now, let’s get lucky!

In Garthe’s Hands:

garthe — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:00:41 +0000

I won my first game of the study session last night. And then lost the last 3. It was perfectly representative of why my results have been so haphazard lately.

In the first game I played pretty tight, giving up many hands early because they just didn’t seem likely to win, and not reaching with my semi-expensive tenpai hands. For example, the last hand of the East round, Setokuma was dealer and I was in the East seat with this Ready hand (tenpai):

Dora was , making this hand at least 5200 points. There were lots if possibilities fir changing to an open-ended wait. Indeed, few players would reach here. Setokuma eventually threw my and I was suddenly only 1800 points behind Hisato in first place.

The next hand, Kojima-Sensei was dealer. After 10 draws, I got to be Ready with this hand:

Dora was so I’d obviously like to change at least that and/or the extra for to give me a full straight. Again, an obvious choice for not reaching, and this time I drew my winner. Almost as the tiles were still falling over when I showed my hand, Kojima was already reaching over to take the from my hand to say missed win reach!! Indeed that is his style and it has often paid off huge for him in many situations but Setokuma agreed that for me in this situation it was better to book the cheap win. We’ll come back to this in a second.

Two hands later, Setokuma had already reached when I got to ready with this hand:

Dora was and he had just discarded the last when he reached. It was going to be hard to change this to a better wait and I was still right behind Hisato. Maybe I could draw my and just give up with the ‘s if I drew something dangerous. Again, a no brainer non-reach…until he threw . Then I start thinking he probably doesn’t need either so now it IS a good reach!

WRONG!

But not necessarily wrong in that it would always be a bad play for all players. The exact point that Setokuma wanted to make was that given the way I’d played conservatively to get that far, it just didn’t make sense there to suddenly go on the offensive. If that were my game plan, then indeed I should have reached with the Missed Win earlier instead of taking the cheap win.

As it happened, I was lucky despite my mistake. The hand ended in a draw. The next and final hand Hisato ponned and then Dora , prompting me to give up immediately and Kojima to preserve his third place position with a chow and cheap 1300 points from Hisato!

That actually put Hisato the necessary 100 points behind me giving me the win! True to form, in the end I won by playing tight, despite my effort to throw the game away with a reckless reach toward the end.

The first hand of the next game, I was still some distance from my own half flush when I threw an obviously dangerous to Nakata’s full flush. It wasn’t just a 12,000 point hit. It was a torpedo that left me a ship without a rudder for the whole rest of the night.

I’m not saying tight play is always best or that loose play is always bad. I’m also certainly not saying that because I’d gotten lucky playing tight so far, that I would continue to get lucky that way. Heaven knows my feelings on the whole “tsuki” (rush of luck/bad luck) issue. But if I want to win playing several different styles of play, not only am I l going to have to be good at all those different styles, my timing is going to have to be perfect every time too.

I’m probably better off sticking to what has worked so far. Surely we’ve all heard, “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Half Flushes, Part 2

admin — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 15:00:19 +0000

If you’re in a point situation where you don’t really need to win the hand, Discard the 9 of characters here (or even the 4 of characters) and force your way to a half flush.
Aiming for a concealed reach hand with this hand is complicated enough, and the final score isn’t big either. Since it’s difficult to score a win already, do not use up all of the tiles in your hand. Here, deliberately discarding middle tiles early, along with calling a tile of your half flush suit from another player, is not a bad trap.
If you can draw a few bamboo tiles afterward, you might be able to actually complete a real half flush. Even if you don’t, you can put some threat and pressure on the player to your left. This is the most common type of “bluff” in Japanese mahjong. However, be careful. If after a few discards the shape of the hand is still not good, you cannot continue calling tiles, and you must store a good amount of safe tiles for defense purposes.

We have spoken about most of the necessary conditions for a half flush, in the next section we’ll be talking about how to handle specific situations.

Note: This ends the “beginner” part of this series of articles, and thus we will now be continuing with articles from the “intermediate” section.
———————————————————————————————————————–

Commentary from Garthe Nelson.

A Half Flush is worth more points than other hands because it’s harder to win.

Try not to slide past that point: it’s HARDER to win.

For that reason, I think a lot of strong players choose not to aim for this hand even when it’s a viable option. Or at least they don’t go for it straight off. Look at this hand:

It’s a pretty good candidate for a Half Flush, but I have seen a lot of players throw the in this sort of situation. The reason is that it will make other players much less suspicious to see those middle tiles in other suits come out of their hands after something in the Half Flush suit. Thus it might not be as hard as usual to win the hand because of the increased possibility that other players will throw useful tiles or even the winner.

If they get something in the other suits creating an open-ended wait, well, that’s the direction the hand went, and to continue pushing for the Flush is not likely a winning strategy.

I doubt they even feel like it’s such a loss if after throwing , it would have paired or even tripled up. Having thrown those other middle tiles early and then finally letting go of something in the flush suit, other players will be immediately tipped off. They’ll be careful with that suit and the value tiles too.

Really, the more I think about it, the less I recall seeing many Half Flush hands (besides mine) in our study sessions. I think strong players (in contrast to me) must assume that given the obviousness of the danger zone to other players, it just tends not to be worth it.

Hmmmm, I hope you learn as much reading this stuff as I do writing it.

Half Flushes, Part 1

admin — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:29:40 +0000

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. We also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.
From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/520.htm

Right now in Japanese mahjong, Half Flushes and Full Flushes are called “somete” (dyed hand). Along with Reach, All Simples and Value Tiles, it’s one of the four most important yaku/hand in Japanese mahjong.

Sure, a Half Flush is a 2 han (HP) yaku, relatively easy to complete, and it can be combined with value tiles. However, since it’s a yaku/hand easy to build, beginners really love to aim for it, so much as to try to go for it every hand…

Let’s view a few hands where beginners mistakenly aim for a full flush.

1) Half Flush Disease

I saw this starting hand in a game room in tenhou. At this time, the player in his dealer turn, unexpectedly discarded 5 of bamboos!
Was only able to see a characters or dots Half Flush? He may as well be mahjong short-sighted, he needs treatment.

Just think, there are three types of number tiles: characters, dots and bamboos, this means it’s possible to draw a character tile about once every three draws. Right now, you only have five character tiles, you need at least five more to aim for a Half Flush, this means it will take you about 15 discards. A round only has about 17 discards, do you still have time to win the hand?

With this hand, we cannot consider making a Half Flush, it’s okay to discard any of your guest wind tiles.

Generally speaking, you can consider a Half Flush if you have at least 8 tiles of the same suit or more.

2) Possibility for other yaku/hands
Of course, just having a lot of tiles in the same suit doesn’t guarantee that aiming for a Flush or Half Flush is a good idea.

Even though there are 10 dot tiles in this hand, no matter what go-around this is, we should discard 1-3 of dots.

This hand’s final shape should be Reach, All Simples, Peace, Double Run and not Full Flush. With Reach, it’s a guaranteed mangan (8,000 or 12,000pt) hand, and with a little luck it can go up to haneman (12,000 or 18,000pt).

On the other hand if you go for a Full Flush, in most cases it ends up being a mangan, there are not many chances for it to become haneman or more. Moreover, we only have three sets in dots, we need a fourth set don’t we?

This example also comes from the hand of a beginner, at that time he discarded the bamboos, he is as well short-sighted. Afterward, he picked up a pair of the guest wind North, and called the 8 of dots from the player across from him.

(Pung )
What remains is a tenpai (ready-hand) of 2000 points with a bad shape, there is a huge difference with discarding 1-3 of dots.

Another example

dora:

Look at this hand, many people may think, “Isn’t this the time to go for a full flush?” and a lot of them will be convinced and discard the 3 of bamboos. But in my opinion, even here we should discard North first.

In this hand too Half Flush is not the only thing we can aim for, if we discard North first we can have the following options:
a. Draw 3 of bamboos. The goal is Red Dragon and 2 dora or a Double Run and 2 or 3 dora.
b. Draw 2 or 4 of bamboos. If this happens we can pursue a concealed hand, Reach, a Double Run and a dora. Not bad.

If we discard 3-bams, we may have:
c. Draw North and end up with Red Dragon and a Half Flush or only a Half Flush.

There are many chances for situations a and b occurring (theoretically, the chances for a and c occurring are the same), and the point difference is also high, therefore discarding three of bamboos first is, in comparison to discarding North, inferior.

In reach mahjong there are many other roads besides the Half Fush. For beginners who want to improve, the most important point is enlarging your field of vision.
————————————————————————————
A word or two from Garthe:

Oh how I wish I could rain down my wisdom upon you as if I was a player immune to Half Flush’s half baked charms. Alas it’s not just beginners who mistakenly aim for it when there are better options. I go for it far too much and it is a sign of weak and lazy Mahjong that needs to be fixed.

Remember my comment on the last column, “mentanpin” (Japanese abbreviation for “Reach, Simples, Peace). The second hand shown is a prime example of why you should repeat that mantra 100 times before you go to sleep and again when you see these tiles in your hand.

While closed it is a 3 Hand Point (HP) hand, the majority of Half Flushes will require at least one chow or pung, dropping it down to 2 HP and making reach impossible. Add to that the fact that I’m probably discarding valuable tiles in the other suits making other players reluctant to discard those tiles I need to chow and pung from them. It just becomes a more and more difficult hand to win.

And for what reward? If I could make Peace one of my HP, it means the hand is still closed so Reach is still a possibility and there are the Half Flush’s 2 hand points made up for right there. Add to that the possibility of Concealed Self Draw, (First Turn Win and Hidden Dora if using those rules) and the possibility of winning the hand and it becoming a monster are much better than with the Half Flush.

Same with Dora out of suit. With one in my hand that I couldn’t use in my Half Flush, I need only one more to get 2 hand points again, getting me right back to where I probably am if I discard Dora and go for the flush. Similarly, if I can use Dora in a run and Reach, there are the two hand points made up for again already. Not to mention the dangers of discarding Dora, which other players are likely to want.

When going for Half Flush, we should have a good start in at least 3-4 of our final groups and and at least one or two of them should be Value tiles or use Dora to really make it worthwhile.

So as I drift off to sleep, I’m going to say it again a few times now, men-tan-pin, men-tan-pin, mentanpin, mentan….

Jenn’s Corner: Women’s League

jenn — Mon, 30 May 2011 12:15:48 +0000

Wow, it’s been a while since I wrote a proper Jenn’s Corner. I know the updates have been slower than I’d like, but thank you everyone for sticking through this with us. We’ve got a few projects going on that we can announce in the summer and I promise (again) that we’ll be updating more regularly here as well.

To get right into it, I jumped back on the horse last week, playing in the Women’s League 2011 season. I couldn’t play in Pro League because of health issues, but the Women’s League is only 5 times per year and I didn’t want to miss out on it.
It felt good to be back on the table and I hadn’t touched any tiles for nearly 3 months, so to be honest I was nervous at first. It took a couple of hands, but everything came back and it was like I had never left. It was a rush.

One thing I can say is that no matter how long I play or don’t play mahjong, when I sit at the table the feeling never changes. I’m happy to be there. I hate when my opponents beat me. I love to win hands, even small ones. I love to win bigger hands even more. I love this game and it felt great to be back.

I have to say I enjoyed playing with the people at my table this round. There were 2 new players (whom I have to say were very sweet and also very generous) and one player, Makoto Tenne (past Rookie Cup winner) that has been around just a bit longer than Garthe and I.

With the 2 new players and a few long breaks in between games (I had to get away from the smoke at the table everytime), we ended up as the last table to finish by a long shot. I think we were out of there at least 30 minutes after the people before us. That made my last game really hard. My endurance is definitely lacking after the long break.

There were not any special hands that stood out. I ended up with a negative 2 or so, putting me in 22nd place out of 41, but there are a lot of people around the 0 mark, so there’s still lots of opportunity to move up. Only 5 move up to A-League this year and there’s a good chance a number of players will be moving down next year, so I’ll have to play well and make sure to make it to every session (I’ve missed at least one session every year until now).

This year I just want to work on my game. I’m not worried about results. I’ll improve my game this year and let those results show next year.

Yaku (Hand Points)

admin — Sat, 21 May 2011 15:29:17 +0000

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. We also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.
“The Yaku (HP) of Reach Mahjong”

From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/518.htm

(Attention, reader: these series of articles are about Yaku (HP) and their characteristics, it is assumed that the reader already knows the Yaku (HP) of reach mahjong. If you don’t know them learn them first)

Reach mahjong has about 37 types of Yaku (HP) (not including dora), the frequence in which they occur and the tiles they require are not the same. Just like a “Heaven Blessing” hand, all you need is good luck and no skill. -laughs-

Beginners tend to think it’s too troublesome to remember all Yaku (HP), however just learning the basic most recurrent ones will already leave a good effect. Below, there is a list of Yaku (HP) in reach mahjong with an occurrence rate of above 2%

(Occurrence rate in parenthesis and you can find the original stats here http://www2.odn.ne.jp/~cbm15900/html/y99.html )

1 Reach (45.1%)
2 Value Tiles (40%)
3 All Simples (21.4%)
4 Peace (19.9%)
5 Concealed Self Draw (17.6%)
6 One Shot (ippatsu/First-turn Win) (10.2%)
7 Half Flush (6.31%)
8 Double-Run (4.75%)
9 All Pungs (3.92%)
10 Three Colored Runs (3.46%)
11 Seven Pairs (2.52%)
.
.
.
14 Full Flush(0.94%)
…
19 Self-Draw after a kong (quad) (0.28%)
…
27 Thirteen Orphans (0.043%)
…
37 Heaven Blessing (about 330 thousandths)

Among all Yaku (HP), only one third is above an occurrence rate of 2% just learning these, you’ll be able to endure a lot of games. You don’t need to invest time learning the other rarer ones.

The above Yaku (HP) can be further divided in categories.

A. Reach, Concealed Self Draw, Ippatsu (first turn win): All this hand needs is to get to a concealed a ready, the requirement is tile efficiency, we’ve talked about it in general terms already.

B. Peace, Double-Runs: They both need to be concealed, therefore tile efficiency is also required. However, since you can’t use your opponent’s tiles for these two Yaku (HP), it’s a little hard.

C. All Simples: The required element to attack calling tiles, we’ll spend a few pages introducing this one later on.

D. Half Flush: The Yaku (HP) most aimed for by beginners, however since many people are confused about it, we’ll have a detailed explanation about it next time.

E. All Pungs, Seven Pairs: Both Yaku (HP) are similar, beginners usually don’t know whether to go for seven pairs or all pungs. The data belows comes from 6 months of tenhou, statistics on the occurrence of all pungs:
General room: 4.43%
Dan room: 3.09%
Higher Dan room: 2.07%
Phoenix room: 1.48%
The better the players are, the less they rely on all pungs. What is the reason after all? We will also be explaining this one in detail.

F. Value Tiles: An extremely high occurrence rate, but compared to Half Flush, there is less space for confusion.

G. Three Colored Runs: A very frequent high scoring Yaku (HP).

From this article onwards, we will be focusing on these Yaku (HP).
———————————————————————————————-
Garthe’s Comments:
When I tell people here I’m a professional mahjong player, the inevitable guffaws of disbelief are often followed by whatever tidbits of mahjong jargon they’ve managed to acquire from somewhere. “Ron! Chi! Tsumo!” just to show that they know as much about mahjong as me.

Another favorite is “Mentanpin!” and there’s a reason that it’s half of what people who know 2 words of mahjong know.

Looking at the list again look at which of the hands are most frequent and still not mutually exclusive: Reach (men from menzenreach in Japanese), Simples (tan from tanyao), Peace (pin from pinfu).

That’s three hand points blam! And you’re well on way to getting an 8000 point hand!

While you’re still learning, making the base of your game mentanpin without worrying too much about the other hand points will still net you some pretty good results.

One difference between my stats and the ones listed there interested me. My rate of Concealed Self Draw is 21%, considerably higher than the rate from Tenhou. I don’t want to say I must be really good, but I’m afraid I have to. And it’s another hand point that fits nicely with the aforementioned mentanpin combo. Making it another reason to make the effort to keep your hand concealed.

So in the beginning while it’s a good idea not to focus too much attention in the hands with less than 2% frequency, you can narrow it down even further to those around 20% and above and still play a pretty successful game.

Playing with the Pro’s on Ron2

jenn — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:39:46 +0000

Last year Garthe and I finally got our Ron2 Pro IDs. When that happened, I realized there was a whole world of events that I never even noticed. There are top professional players playing on JPML’S official battle site, Ron2, everyday and any member has the chance to go head-to-head with these players.

Yesterday I joined the Special East room for a special Ladies Event. There was a special female guest every hour and a few others rounding out the tables with them throughout the night. This took place from 8pm-12am, Tokyo-time.

Tomorrow, and every Friday, is Pro Day on the Special East room and you can find everyone from the current Phoenix Cup winter, Naoki Setokuma, to A2’s Kazunori Takizawa, to your very own humble Jenn playing from 6pm to midnight.

This week on Saturday there’s even a Pro Festival with special guests every hour from noon to midnight. You can bet there will be a number of other surprise pro’s showing up throughout the day too. I’ll probably be there.

We haven’t posted a new Ron2 tutorial on RM.com yet, but it s possible to sign up. If you want to and need help, just email me at jenn@reachmahjong.com. Otherwise, I’ll let you know how I do in these events.

Important complex shapes (Part-2)

admin — Fri, 06 May 2011 15:43:29 +0000

French Open Report

WorTeX — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:36:33 +0000

Although I’ve posted it very late, a special thanks to Tom Mustonen for reporting on the event and Sylvain Malbec for his photo contribution.

The French Riichi Open was held on 18-20th of March on the venue Salle Rossini in Paris, only a kilometer from The Louvre. There were 64 players participating from six different countries. The tournament consisted of 8 han-chan sessions divided into two days, four sessions each.

Russian players really surprised the field and their three players placed 1st, 4th and 8th. As commonly occurs in a European tournament, the Dutch found themselves on the top 10 and around the score range. The Finnish team scored nice 3rd place but other members didn’t do that well. We can find two Danish players from the places 12th and 34th. Since there was no Gemma Collinge around to boost the British morale, the first British player on the list was 29th. Of course most of the players were French and the best french player was Nicolas Poilleux who finished second in the tournament.

My overall thoughts of the tournament is that the French still have long way to go as players, but this was an excellent start and a great first French Riichi tournament, and I hope they decide to organize such an event next year also.

The French contingent seems to like riichi so much, 14 players have registered to the Cherry Blossom tournament held in Nijmegen in the Netherlands!

There were prizes for the best three players, and also for the best three local French players.

Top Three Players
1st: Sergey Dedikov – 134500
2nd: Nicolas Poilleux – 113700
3rd: Tom Mustonen – 109900

Top Finishing French Players
1st: Nicolas Poilleux
2nd: Pierre-Cyril Kutukdjian
3rd: Jean-Marc Dedieu

JoyJan Beta Testing Begins

admin — Tue, 03 May 2011 10:16:34 +0000

For a time now a ne mahjong site has been preparing to enter the market. The interface is easy to use, the play is quick and the best part… It’s ALL Reach! ReachMahjong.com is excited to announce the opening of JoyJan for beta testing. You’ll notice the new banners at the top and sides of our site. Click on it and get started. You can play Reach Mahjong in English with players all over the world, including your friends at ReachMahjong.com.

We will be opening up a thread in the forums for you to post your thoughts and suggestions. Be sure to play and let us know what you think and we’ll pass it on to the developers. You can also message them yourself directly from the website. This is your chance to help make an online game that you want to play. What are you waiting for? Go sign up!

JPML Update – April, 2011

admin — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:18:48 +0000

Every year April marks the new season for the Japan Professional Mahjong League and every year more and more tournaments and events are added. April is the month to start the Pro League, Champions League and for the prestigious Masters Tournament.

Since Pro League can be long and tedious, let’s start with Masters. The winner was Keijun Nara, who joined with Garthe and Jenn and is the same Grade 3 as both of them as well, although this title will shoot him up to higher status in everything. The final table was surprisingly filled with young pro’s. Shin Higuchi also joined the league at the same time as Garthe and I (although in the Central-Japan branch) and he won Masters last year. Ryouta Izumi joined just last year and already made a major final! The other player was Jun Nishikawa, who has been in the league for about 10 years.
The final match happened just 3 days ago and the official report is not up yet, so I can’t tell you how it played out, but one thing is for sure: the young pro’s of JPML are starting to show the older crowd what is up and you can expect the mahjong industry to change in the coming years. It’s going to be an interesting ride.

Last year Naoki Setokuma, friend of RM.com reigned as the Phoenix Cup champion. This year he came back and defended his title, currently reigning for his 2nd year in a row. The big names competing to challenge him this year are Yuko Ito (friend of RM.com), Masayoshi Ara and Makoto Sawazaki (friend of RM.com). Yuko Ito recently reclaimed his position in the A1 league after being in A2 for a few years. A2 is stocked with pretty much the same crowd as previous years with Kazunori Takizawa starting out strong with a +34.7. Masatoshi Sarukawa looks promising as well with 19.2. There are 10 sessions in the A leagues so it’s still a long road to go.
Kana Nakata is at the top of B1 with +83. It would be great to see a girl in A2 next year. Following in suit Saki Kurosawa is at the top of B2 with +77.9, looking like a first step to pack the higher leagues with females.
Keeping with the female theme, Kozue Miyauchi also posted a big positive in C1, getting herself very close to the moving up border.
Down in D1, Garthe was saved from moving down to D2 (for the 4th time?!), but he posted a negative 14.2 in the first session. He’ll have to step it up for any hopes of moving up to C3 this season. Jenn will be taking off this season’s Pro League and concentrate on the Women’s League which starts in May.

On a separate note, the JPML is also raising money for the devastating earthquake that hit Northern Japan in March. As of April 25th, they raised 438,233 yen (about $5,400). JPML’s official battle site, Ron2, is also donating money based on the number of games played during events.

Apologies

jenn — Sun, 01 May 2011 13:46:04 +0000

Apologies to all readers of ReachMahjong.com. We were gone for most of March and all of April.

March was, of course, the earthquake, Jenn had some health issues (everything is OK now, but they even kept her out of tournaments for a few weeks), Garthe had a full tournament schedule with the JPML season restarting in April and Gemma had other commitments, including filling in for Jenn on a regular column for World Gaming Magazine (have you checked out their site? it’s here).

I promise this time that we are back in May with a full schedule and will also be on the forums. The podcast will not be back for a few weeks but once everything on the site gets sorted out we can’t wait to start recording again!

For now look forward to our other normally scheduled ‘programs’ starting tomorrow with an update on the new JPML season.

Thank you for sticking with us through these times.

And We’re Back

admin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:00:41 +0000

Hello to everyone from ever-shaking Japan. The ReachMahjong.com team was able to make it out of the disaster unharmed, but there were a few weeks there with shaky power, shaky internet and of course shaky grounds. There have literally been hundreds of aftershocks since the big quake on March 11th and we’re playing mahjong through them. Thank you to everyone who sent us messages and hopefully we didn’t have you too worried. The situation is still bad all over the North but we’ll be here for you straight from Tokyo moving forward1

The 2010 JPML Season Comes to an End

admin — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:45:12 +0000

January marks the home-stretch of the Japan Professional Mahjong League’s season. Each year begins in April and ends in February, so the last 2 months of the season is when all the participants are working towards winning their spot in the Grand Prix finals, which take place in March. Here’s a summary of the final event results and the line-up for the JPML Grand Prix for the 2010 season.

The 5th annual womens’ league finals were held in January and the winner was Kaori Shimizu. You can read ReachMahjong.com’s report here (http://reachmahjong.com/en/2011/01/kaori-shimizu-wins-womens-league/).

The 19th semi-annual Champions League ended less than a month later in February. Hiroyuki Yamada won this event and the runners up were a plethora of RM.com friends! The runner-up was Ryuichi Masuda (part of the ReachMahjong/World Gaming Magazine team at the 2010 World Series of Mahjong), 3rd place was Kaori Aisawa (regular at RM.com cups) and 4th place was Yoshifumi Matsuzaki.

The biggest result of the year is definitely the Phoenix Cup. The JPML A-Leaguers battle it out for 1 year to challenge last year’s winner. Last year Naoki Setokuma, friend of RM.com won, and this year he defended his title! Not only did he win, he defeated the respected Yudai Maehara (runner-up) and one of the hottest players of the year, Makoto Sawazaki (6th at 2010 WSOM). 3rd place was Kazutoshi Itagawa.

Which leads us to the Grand Prix. Only the top finishers in JPML’s tournaments over the years are invited to play. This years final 16 are:
Naoki Setokuma
Asataro Nada
Masatoshi Sarukawa
Koji Furukawa
Masato Horiuchi
Takeo Kojima
Satoshi Fujisaki
Kenji Katsumata
Kazunori Ide
Yudai Maehara
Yoshifumi Matsuzaki
Kaori Shimizu
Shin Toiguchi
Kazutoshi Itagawa
Kana Nakata
Masashi Ishiwata

Jong Cast #47 – Mar.5.11

troy — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 16:04:27 +0000

Search for the Reach Mahjong-cast on iTunes to subscribe or download the latest podcast here:

http://www.reachmahjong.com/home/podcasts/jong-cast-47.mp3

Important complex shapes (part-1)

admin — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:00:44 +0000

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. This time we also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.
From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/506.htm

In the last article we mentioned incomplete sets (taatsu), that were easily distinguishable simple shapes. This time we will explain complex shapes.

1. 4556 shape
A very common mistake seen in beginners is that they treat this shape as “a 456 run + a lone 5″,and they discard this 5 prematurely.
In reality, this should be treated as two 45+56 open ended waits, it can accept a 3, 4, 6 and 7, and there is also a chance for a double-run (iipeikou). This is a very valuable shape in reach mahjong. Whenever I get this shape in my hand, it is hard for even me to discard it.

2. 4567 shape
For the same reason, you must look at the shape like 45+67 open waits. This shape has a lot of evolution: you can draw 5 or 6 and form 1 meld+open wait, draw 3 or 8 and make a three sided wait, or draw 4 or 7 to have 1 pair+1 meld. Its value isn’t any lower than that of the 4556 shape.

3. 4456 shape
This is 1 pair+ a 56 open ended wait, so it can use quite a few tiles, however since it doesn’t have that many opportunities to be completed, it isn’t exactly the best open ended wait, its value falls a little short to the shapes mentioned before, however, it is still considered a good shape.

4. 3567 shape
This is a shape that even intermediate players forget sometimes. In the same way, we can think of this shape as two 35+67 shapes. It can connect with 1,2,3,4,5,8: six types, among them, drawing 1,5,8 leaves us with a gut-shot wait, so its value is lower than that of 4456.

5. 4445 shape
If you have played mahjong you are probably familiar with this shape, this is the most common three sided wait ready shape. But when the hand is at a point where it’s not yet ready, the value of this shape is trivial.
This shape can’t give you two melds, at most you can get 1 pair+ 1 meld. What you must remember is, what you need to go out is 4 melds, and you only require 1 pair (head), therefore your need for melds is far higher than your need for pairs. In reality, when your hand has too many pairs, the 5 in this shape is in many cases a useless tile.

From Garthe: Both 4556 and 4567 are shapes whose value it may take some time to fully appreciate. It is counter intuitive for most players to look at these as more valuable than end wait or closed wait incomplete set (taatsu) because after all, that 89 shape only needs one more tile to become a finished run whereas these 4 tile groups are going to need 2 more tiles. The key is indeed to think of them as two open ended waits rather than a completed group plus a loner. Thus in many situations, even most perhaps, I will discard especially end waits first and keep these later, even when it actually takes my hand further from ready.

For example, let’s say I have 124556 in my hand. I often discard the 2 and 1, keeping the 5. Why? Well, if I keep the 12 I’m only ecstatic if I later draw the 3 (4 possible tiles) and I’m disappointed if I draw the 46 or 7(10 possible tiles). Of course, I’m much happier with the open ended waits I get from drawing any of 467. And I’m not even really disappointed if I do draw the 3 later as there’s a good chance I’ve increased the value of my hand by adding Peace and Simples as hand points. I may have slowed the hand down a bit but not without benefit.

Finally, the open ended waits make the hand much more reachable than it would be if the final taatsu wait is on something like a 12 side-wait. And never forget, we play REACH mahjong. We want to Reach!!!

Heroic Mahjong!!!

garthe — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 05:33:54 +0000

You travel the world, meet some peeps here and there and after a while you find out, there’s more to life than just Ronron and MFC. Now there’s HERO MAHJONG!!

A buddy in Macau recommended checking out the new online Mahjong site so I spent some time on it this evening and I have one word.

Dope dope DOPE!

Three times but it’s still the same word. At the moment Hong Kong rules are the rules of the day, and I must admit I have yet to fully understand all the intricacies. Still, I managed to double my money in half an hour so an understanding of Reach rules seems at least useful.

Not sure if Reach rules in addition to Classic and International will be added to the other rooms later or not, but for the moment, who needs ‘em. The Hong Kong rules provide a place to play and a wide range of stakes at which to join.

And another thing, stakes. Don’t have any? Well, if you want to get some, there will be a free roll on March 6th at 21:00 Hong Kong time, 22:00 JST (that’s 1pm in London). In addition to the freeroll prize pool, the first 50 users signing up through reachmahjong.com will get an additional $20 when they play the freeroll on the 6th!!! Use the banner on the right of the page or click on this link to be one of the lucky 50. The banner is way too big for the site, so there’s no way you can miss it.

Can you say bling blam blau?!

I had a little problem seeing the whole screen as I’m playing from a little tiny notebook, but if you have a normal screen there shouldn’t be any problem. And one thing’s for certain, despite my little tiny screen, I definitely have a date with Hero Mahjong this Sunday at 10 PM (Japan-time).

If you have any questions, we’ll be responding via the forums here.

Hope to see you there!

Bling!!!

For a quick summary of the old-style HK rules check out Tom Sloper’s site or Mahjong Wiki. Make sure to check out Hero Mahjong’s website too!

Beginner Tile Efficiency: Incomplete Set (Taatsu) Theory

admin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:00:24 +0000

We continue this week with xKime’s translation of Puyo’s blogs. This time we also have professional input from JPML’s Garthe Nelson, adding to the depth of the conversation. Hopefully some of these issues will bring some good conversation to the forums as well.

After we deal with the starting hand, we can assume all useless tiles have been taken care of. If the remaining tiles are not melds, we can divide them in the next three types:

1. Incomplete Sets (Taatsu): pre-shapes consisting of linked tiles, such as 2-3 or 2-4 which will eventually form a meld
2. Isolated tiles: Letter and number tiles that are alone
3. Pairs: Two of the same tiles paired up

The following text may explain the issues with Incomplete Sets/taatsu.

Types of Incomplete Sets/Taatsu
Taatsu may be open-ended (2-3), center-closed (2-4) or edge-closed (1-2), making it three types (namely open-ended (ryanmen), gut-shot (kanchan) and side waits (penchan)). Edge-closed shapes have the lowest value, then comes center-closed shapes, and open-ended shapes are the best. Therefore when you must abandon an incomplete set/taatsu, you should start by discarding the set with the lowest value.

In this hand what we should naturally discard is .

Now, when you must choose between two shapes of the same type, you must think about which one has the most chances of becoming good shape (i.e. open-ended).

Under these circumstances, we have two candidates: and . In appearance both the and 35 of dots are closed waits, but in reality there is a difference: can become open-ended with either the or , but , on the other hand, will become an edge-wait if you draw . Therefore the functionality of 2-4 is relatively lower to that of 3-5. To anticipate the opportunity of drawing , discard the first.

Therefore beginners should incorporate this sequence of values:
Listed as least valuable to most valuable
4. Edge waits (12, 89)
3. Closed Waits (13, 79)
2. Closed Waits (24, 68)
1. Open-ended Waits

From Garthe: The article concludes by saying beginning level players should use these guidelines as a way to decide which Incomplete Sets/taatsu to discard first when there are too many potential groups in the hand. In fact, a lot of advanced players would benefit from reviewing and reincorporating these guidelines back into their games as well.

Of course there will be times when we will want to choose an edge wait or closed wait over what might be a better closed or even open wait, e.g., we’re going for an Outside Hand or 3 Colored Runs, the bad wait uses Dora, etc. The reason the above is a good strategy “for the new guys” is that as a new player it’s hard to have a good feel for when the benefit of going for that more difficult Incomplete Sets/taatsu truly outweighs the benefits of going for the most likely one. These guidelines help you choose the most winnable sets and thus, by extension, the most-likely-to-get-you-to-ready-first. And even in Reach mahjong, the benefit of being the first to ready cannot be overstated, especially when hidden Dora and First Turn wins are allowed. Many a winning hand has been missed because some “advanced” player tried to get tricky and go for a big hand instead of a fast one. This is often a double edged sword as he not only missed the win, but may have allowed time for a bigger hand to catch up and win instead.

So caveat even for us know-it-alls, we ignore these guidelines at our peril. Choose wisely!

Riichi Mahjong Open, Baden 2011

jenn — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:00:20 +0000

We used to be a trio here at ReachMahjong.com. Garthe, Gemma and myself (in alphabetical order) work on the site and play in the mahjong field. However we did not hear that Gemma won the Baden Open over the weekend until today, and this we found out on our own. My first instinct was to completely disown Gem. Then I realized that while Garthe and I are stinking up our leagues in Japan, Gem is the only one actually winning things… So I put my head down and got the info of our 2-time champion, Gemma Collinge. We love you Gem! Congratulations! Read on for the report from the tournament organizer, Alexander Doppelhofer.

By Alexander Doppelhofer
On February 12th, 2011 Alexander Doppelhofer organized the first-ever major Riichi tournament in Baden, Austria. There were 24 participants from 8 countries (Germany-2, France-2, Denmark-1, Great Britain-1, Hungary-1, Japan-1, Slovakia-6, Austria-10). The event was held at the restaurant Schwanke.

After 4 rounds turned out that the Austrians had been defeated by the strong competition from abroad. The best female player from Austria, Birgitt Rupp, finished in 10th place and the best male player from Austria, the organizer Alexander Doppelhofer, finished in 12th place.

Despite the many men from abroad Gemma Collinge prevailed and won her second tournament (her first being in HANNOVER in 2009). Michal Marko of Slovakia finished behind Gemma in second place and Andreas Pistek, playing from Munich, finished in third place.

The trophies were donated by the Mayor of Baden and presented. In the first place, there was a dragon made of wood. The second and third place got a sun. Each participant received a certificate, so he has a memory of the tournament and maybe come back next year.

The Baden Open was worth 1 MERS Point for the EMA RCR Ranking.

Jong Cast #46 (Jan.20.11)

troy — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Search for the Reach Mahjong-cast on iTunes to subscribe or download the latest podcast here:

Jong-Cast Episode #45

This podcast is almost a month late, but we had to put it up! Look for more regular podcast updates in the next few weeks. Now that the JPML season is finished we should be able to get on some sort of schedule!

French Riichi Open – 19-20 March 2011

admin — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 08:00:40 +0000

The following was taken from Shirluban’s post on the RM.com forums. Anyone in Europe should take a look. Registration is still open!

Paris 6th International Tournament – French Riichi Open

The Magic Mahjong Social Pung together with its partnership clubs Fleur d’Orchidée & Mahjong Anime are undertaking a major yet worthy challenge to organize the 1st Riichi International Tournament in France in the course of 2011. This event would also mean the 1st French Riichi Tournament.

To face the growing inquiries here is more information:
Rules: Riichi (Modern Japanese Rules)
Date: March 19-20, 2011
Place: Paris, Town hall of the 9th district (“arrondissement”), Rossini hall
Drouot str.,6 (“6 Rue Drouot”) 75009 Paris
Entry Fee: 40 Euros

Schedule: 8 sessions total, 1h30m each
Friday, March 18: 6.00 p.m. Welcome Reception, Opening Ceremony
Saturday, March 19: 4 sessions between 10.30 a.m. & 7.30 p.m.
Sunday, March 20: 4 sessions between 9.30 a.m. & 6 p.m.
Award Ceremony at 6.30 p.m.

Registration started on January 1st 2011. You can register on the Mahjong Paris website.

For more information contact the French Federation of Mahjong (FFMJ)/.

ReachMahjong.com will be supporting the players as well and you might see some regulars from the forums and our site!

Introducing Puyo!

admin — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 12:00:01 +0000

For the last year I have had the privilege of writing a regular column with Kelvin “Puyo” Ng, from Hong Kong, about mahjong in a Macau-based magazine called World Gaming Magazine. Puyo and I are both Reach-based mahjong players, but we’ve collaborated to broaden our coverage, emphasizing on Chinese-based rules as well. Puyo is a regular Mahjong Fight Club player and keeps a blog in Chinese about Japanese mahjong. Puyo has worked as a senior official at the World Series of Mahjong and was a member of the RM.com/WGM team at the 2010 event.
One of our avid readers, xKime, has volunteered to translate Puyo’s blog so that our English audience can enjoy this expert’s insight. Twice a month we will introduce one of Puyo’s blogs. This first one is an introduction in tile efficiency. So enjoy and if there’s a subject you’d like more info on e-mail us and maybe Puyo will oblige!

Introduction to Tile Efficiency

This is the first one of the series on articles for beginner-intermediate players. If you already have an idea of what tile efficiency is, feel free to skip right to the theory part.

[It's possible] that anyone reading this has played Hong Kong mahjong or Taiwanese mahjong before, but the need for tile efficiency in reach mahjong is relatively a lot higher than in those two. Therefore after learning the rules, you need to work on your tile efficiency skills so that you can progress. I will explain why tile efficiency is so important in reach mahjong, and explain reach mahjong’s characteristics at the same time.

Reach mahjong is about placing, not about points
Beginning players must remember, mahjong is about placing, not about points. In reach mahjong, your placing is calculated at the end of every East-Only game or East-South game. Your level of achievement is measured by the average position that you seize at the end of every game. An East-Only game only has four rounds, although your winning tile may not show up in the first place, regardless of that, if you don’t win a single hand it is assured you can’t win. In Hong Kong mahjong you can make big hands most of the rounds, winning one big hand will grant you an income just about as good as winning 10 smaller hands, but this isn’t possible in Reach mahjong: If you can’t complete one single hand in many East-Only games, you are unavoidably going to lose painfully.

The importance of a concealed hand
Look at the tiles in Reach mahjong, and you may discover the importance of a concealed hand. Just getting to a concealed Ready (tempai) already allows you to Reach: it satisfies the requirement of one han from yaku (one Hand Point minimum) and also gives you access to the power of the hidden lucky dragons (dora). Also, Reach mahjong has a few yaku (Hands) that only apply to a concealed hand, or others that are worth more when concealed.

For a concealed hand, you are depending fully on the tiles you draw. You are depending on very few tiles, so a good tile efficiency will increase the number of opportunities for you to incorporate tiles to your hand as much as possible, its importance is far higher than in Taiwanese mahjong where you can just pung to your heart’s content.

Reach mahjong’s scoring system
Reach mahjong’s scoring system is very unique: Between 1~4 han (Hand Point) hands, the points are pretty much doubled each step, but when it comes to 5 han (HP) and more it’s a complete different deal. For example, 5 han (HP) is a mangan hand (8000 for non-dealer, 12,000 for dealer), one han (HP) more and it’s a haneman (12,000 for non-dealer, 18,000 for dealer) and it becomes a 50% point increase. When you have a 6 han (HP) hand, adding one more han (HP) doesn’t change anything.

In Hong Kong mahjong, the value of 8 han (HP) is eight times as much as that of 5 han (HP). In Reach mahjong it’s only worth double. Therefore in reach mahjong, it is only on very few occasions you should ever aim for really big hands, because the tile efficiency of such hands is really low. Playing with three red 5’s, everyone has in average about 2 dora. Even just when you win with 3-4 han (HP), this phenomenon becomes evident.

Because there are so many dora, 3-4 han (HP) hands aren’t too hard, there are a lot of chances to win hands, and big hands may just come on their own. What you want to promote is your Win Percentage. For that you need good tile efficiency.

Well, enough chit-chat, we’ll enter the subject in the next part.

Beginner Tile Efficiency
(From: http://blog.jpmahjong.net/read.php/504.htm)

Tile efficiency allows you to win a hand in the shortest time possible. In Japanese Mahjong, to be the first one to go out means to be the first one to complete “four groups/melds and a pair of tiles (head).” Therefore, since tile efficiency is a consideration of this, first you discard tiles that have the lowest chances of becoming melds, and you promote your opportunities to complete melds as much as possible.

Tile efficiency is actually already useful from the time you receive your starting hand.

With this ordinary starting hand, how would you proceed?

Order of Priority for Discards
This tile efficiency is pretty simple; just discard the most useless tiles. What are the most useless tiles? Of course, eliminate lone guest wind tiles first (wind tiles without value), as you can’t use them to complete runs, all you can do is draw another one to get a pair (and later on a set), hence their value is very low. What you must pay attention to is that Yaku-Tiles/Value Tiles (Round/Seat wind, Dragon tiles) are a whole different deal. That’s because you can pung them and easily clear the 1 han yaku (hand point) requirement. After that, you can freely call other people’s tiles. That’s why their value is far higher than guest wind tiles.

After lone guest wind tiles, next is the lone 1 and 9 terminal tiles. That’s because they unavoidably become a closed central wait or edge wait. However, in the above hand, the value of the 1 of dots is lower than that of the 9 of dots, and the reason is we already have a 4 of dots too. Because even if you discard 1 of dots and then draw a 2 or a 3, you can still use them with the 4 of dots already existing in the hand and it won’t constitute a loss. On the other hand, if you discard 9 of dots, the 7 and 8 become a complete backfire. In this example, because we have a 4 of dots, the value of the 1 of dots falls to the same as guest wind tiles.

To put it simply, the order of unneeded tiles in the early stage of the game is as follows:
1. Lone guest wind tiles. 1s and 9s when you have a 4 or 6 respectively.
2. Lone 1s and 9s.
3. Lone yaku-tiles/Value Tiles.
4. Lone 2s and 8s.
5. Lone tiles from 3 to 7 and edge waits.
(Note: The order of points 3 to 5 may vary according to the situation and hand)

Let’s bring up another example.

1 of dots is the least useful of tiles, discard it first. This hand cannot be said to have a good shape so we may need to pung the red dragon. Discarding the red dragon is a bad move.

Discarding is correct. Because already constitute a meld, even though we do have a , this can be considered a lone 1-9.

Playing on Ron2

jenn — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 12:00:06 +0000

I had the day off and chose to play on Ron2 (ron2.jp) from home. Ever since Garthe and I got our pro IDs last year I haven’t had much time to play online, but this year I’m planning to make that time, so I logged in for a few games.

My favorite mode on Ron2 is the East-only Reach Battle (you can see the logo on the top-right of the image). The East-only battle is a great way to get a quick mahjong fix with a gambling flavor to it. Only you won’t lose any money. Which, if you’re anything like me, is good for people that are easily distracted while playing at home.

The Reach Battle mode has red 5’s, but I wouldn’t have known it for my first 3 hands. When I finally got one I couldn’t get to Ready (tempai). My style of play doesn’t call for a lot of called tiles and my hands weren’t very good for calling on discards either, so I spent the first 6 hands pretty much folding. Then I discarded another player’s winner for 3200 points. I tried to reach my turn at dealer, but I couldn’t get any traction.

Going into the final hand I had 18,100pts, 1st place had 38,900 points.

I ended up with this choice:

)

2nd place still had over 30,000. A safe route would probably be the 7,700 point Half-flush with 2 dora and a chance at one more. I chose to go for gold though, with a number of tiles still able to help me. I didn’t have a lot of draws left and so I didn’t have my hopes up, but a 12000 or 16000 point hand seemed like the only thing that could really change the score, so I went for it.

It only took 2 draws for the 1st place winner to win from the 2nd place player and in the end nothing changed. I’m happy with this decision in this situation. If I still had a turn at dealer or it wasn’t the last hand then I certainly would have taken the Ready hand.

I didn’t have time for another game right away because I had to run some errands, but you can find me playing online under the name ジェン. You can also watch my games on the Ron2 client if you have a full ID. Make sure to say hi if you catch me in the chat room or watching other pro’s too!