First thing first:
DO NOT CALL TILES AS IF YOU’RE RYU*
From playing in Tenhou’s unofficial English lobby (L7447) I have noticed that many new players decide to try and get a fast win by calling every tile.
I doubt that people who are reading this and do that will change instantly after reading this sentence, but, I hope that by the end of this blog post you WILL stop doing it.
Currently in the game I’m playing, west has pon’d 5p and pei as well as chi’d 789s. This limits his hand a lot, and makes his hand predictable. He has used 9 tiles, none of these give him any han and, unless he has a pair or 3 of an honour tile that will give him han, he’s dead.
Another thing that irks me is that most, if not all, of these new players play nashi which is No Open Tan Yao. This leads on to another example.
Of course, please, call to your heart’s content once you learn the yaku (And, I do not mean learn every single one, just learn the basic ones- Pinfu, tanyao, toitoi, chitoitsu, etc.) Then decide carefully yaku you are going for before calling. If you choose the wrong one, you will most likely be stuck with that decision.
LEARN THE RULES OF THE RULESET YOU’RE PLAYING!
If you/they have found L7447 they probably know of the Tenhou Documentation which states that Nashi = No open tanyao. Yet I still see people going for an open tanyao in nashi. Let us take Randomguy123 as an example. We’re playing Nashi Renchan, 1st round, I’m east and he’s south.
He has pon’d 2p and 4s while has chi’d 234s. This kills most of the yaku available for Nashi. Sure, he still have yakuhai within the 4 tiles he has left, but at a quick glance of the discard piles, east and south are dead, he has discarded an hatsu, I have 3 chun and another guy has pon’d the haku.
From this quick glance, I can tell that he’s dead. The only way for him to even win this round is for to get lucky with haitei or something.
Tl;dr: Learn the rules and basic yaku before even playing,
Don’t call every tile you can; you’re not Ryu*
This concludes this shitty blog post.
*Ryu from Naki No Ryu of course.
I totally agree. If you don’t know those basic hands you shouldn’t play. But thats probably not going to change. Another thing that bugs me is that when people play online mahjong they tend to be less patient and aim to end the game as quickly as possible. So they go for cheap hands, or usually at least one player in a game does which pressures other players to do so as well since they need to be quick to catch up. I’m living in Turkey so playing online is the only way there is for me, but I totally hate it for the reasons above. Also whats special about mahjong is its atmosphere and the tension that only surfaces when playing with real players.
lol i happen to be Turkish too… what are the chances!