On November 03 2013 21:53 shadymmj wrote: Can someone explain to me this "japanese mahjong"? I am a very experienced old style Cantonese player. Generally I am a greedy player, I look at my hand and see the best possible outcome and tailor it on the fly.
So far it has given me plenty of bullshit such as the dreaded "furiten" error. Now I know you cannot win off a tile you discarded before, and in this case I wasn't - I passed up on winning on a discarded paipan so I could go out on a reachy triple dora (5 sticks) which I have never discarded before, and I knew it was going to have to come out, and so it did - but lo and behold, furiten error. What is this dumb shit.
Also the AI uses nonsense cheap hands to win, ok so gaiwu is allowed, I got the point, but none of my chin yat sik (pure suit) hands I usually pull off in canto actually work. If I'm close to actually winning, the AI never actually gives me the tile I need to win, or some other AI feeds the winning player on purpose.
I really don't understand anymore.
I don't understand the Chinese/Cantonese(?) terms you use, but I'll try anyway.
1. Even real players win with bullshit cheap hands all the time. Mostly to prevent anyone else from winning when they're either leading themselves or when they want to bump a player off of their dealer position.
2. Furiten is the basis of defense in Riichi mahjong. To be able to play defensively, you need to know which tiles are safe to discard. So if you have discarded tile X, it should be safe to assume that you don't need tile X to win. As an extension to this, if any of the tiles you need to win are in your discard pile, you can only win by tsumo (self draw). So if you have 23456 and are waiting for 147, and you have discarded any of those 3 tiles before, you can not ron/can only tsumo. If you pass on the chance to ron, you are furiten until your next turn. If you are in riichi and you pass on your chance to ron, you are in furiten forever. Related: A defense guide about furiten (suji): http://osamuko.com/umaikeiki-defense-guide-betaori-and-suji/
3. hon'itsu/chin'itsu are usually both hard to make and pretty obvious, so if the AI is any good, it won't deal into your hand. And not getting the tile you need... well that happens all the time.
If you have enough time, here's a set of videos that explain Riichi mahjong. They're 4 hours long, but since you've played other variants of mahjong, you can skip large parts of the videos that explain how to set up the game/the tiles/etc and only watch the interesting parts.
Furiten probably is the most important aspect of Japanese Mahjong. Furiten allows for defensive play. For example, if an opponent discarded a 4, the 1 of the same suit is safer than usual because your opponent can't be waiting to complete a row with 23 in hand, or rather if he does you don't care.
If you ever discarded any of the tiles that you could theoretically use to win a hand, you are furiten. If you pass a ron, you are furiten until your next draw. If you had called riichi, you are permanently furiten. If you are furiten, you can only win by self draw.
It doesn't have to be actually possible for an opponent to discard any of the tiles that you discarded which now make you furiten. For example if you are waiting to complete a row and have 34p in hand, discarded 2p, and your opponents called/discarded the other three 2p, you are still furiten.
Furiten also forces you to plan your hand ahead and stick with the plan, which adds strategic depth.
The scoring system in Japanese Mahjong makes it inefficient to go for big hands unless you got dealt a very good one. After 4 han, the payout doesn't increase exponentially anymore, and the hands take considerably longer to finish.
Also that AI is certainly challenging at first, it was for me as well, but ultimately it isn't all that great.
It certainly is a valid hand. It's also highly unlikely that you weren't actually able to win this hand as these hands come up rather frequently so I doubt tenhou would be bugged there.
Maybe, though I highly doubt it, a few packets were lost on the way from the server to you and the game didn't realize it. With the result that your client was never informed by the server that this hand can win. The protocol used by tenhou is about the same mess as the replay format, so that's the place where I would expect bugs to be if there are any.
What would you do in this situation? Take the 2nd, or hope to get 1st?
I ended up passing, in hopes that 1st place would deal in or something My rationale was I am so ahead from 3rd and 4th, why not try to get 1st, even if other people win, I am in no danger of getting 3rd/4th
As played, I would take 2nd simply because any competent player that is this ahead this many points in the last round would defend against you since you have already shown that your hand is at least a mangan. If in a different situation where you have your set of 2m hidden, I would play for the win based on the same reasons that you gave. Another situation is if you were positioned between the 1st and 3rd place players. This way if you pass on the 2p, if first placed also had a 2p, he would play it straight after thinking its safe, and you would not be in furiten.
If you did want to shoot for first, you would have been better off discarding the 34p instead of the 3m and hope for a half flush. With the help of bonus points and position, you can snag first with a selfdraw or a haneman win off anyone. Or even think about forming the half flush at the beginning of the hand if you had the two 2m at the start of the round (not too sure what your hand looked like at the start!).
Anyway, shit like this happens and someone gets a godly run. But as long as you don't come last, there shouldn't be anything to worry about!
Hesmyrr, its probably gonna be hard for me to play with you guys since I live on the other side of the earth!
I agree. I never had much luck with ignoring winning discards. Usually I'm not lucky enough to even get one so I grab whatever points I can whenever I can.
That's too bad Rhaegar. So hard to find TL players to play against, yet Caller just has to so say GOGOGO out of nowhere to get a match
Yeah, I agree with that statement ;_; It's not greed if you think of it as a percentage play though
Actually which button does what on the bottom? the bottom right is auto-sort, but unsure of the others, so I didn't mess with them I know one is auto discard too