Osamuko's Japanese Mahjong Blog

Tsuno has implemented several new features to the Windows Tenhou Client.

Show wall

Various tile colours (In wall view mode. blue = dora indicator, green = tiles you will draw and         orange = dangerous tiles)

You can view only view the walls from games that were played after 8am on 03/02

I've played on a lot of mahjong clients and the only other client I've seen with the ability to look at the wall in replays was Marujan but that client just isn't worth the enormous price it costs to actually play there.

I just noticed Tsuno has added some shuugi test play games but they seem to be windows client only at the moment.

Just dropping by for a second to tell everyone who doesn't know it already that the first official Mudazumo DVD got released recently. Hopefully, we'll see (non-gg) subs for this soon.
Trailer for the DVD

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Minor update: Thanks to some recent fixing by Osamu you can now add comments on the guide pages themselves. Well, if the need to strikes you, of course, it-it's not like we did it so we can read your feedback!

Hello there! We have created a beginners guide to online mahjong, so please check it out! The links to it are in the sidebar. One thing we noticed a lot was beginners wanting information on how to start playing, and we had nowhere to point them. You could either give them huge collections of links like some kind of internet riddle game, or just tell them to play online until they figured it out for themselves. Fortunately now we have a simpler option, and you can start your journey right here.

In completely different news, a list of Yakuza 3 trophies has appeared on the internet. This list is lacking the mahjong trophy and some others (shogi, cabaret trophies etc). Hopefully this means they haven't cut out mahjong completely for whatever reason.

Also, in the Japanese blogosphere (笑) there has been talk about whether or not Tsunoda should allow people to watch dan games in real time, but I could reading this wrong.

Finally NISEMARU2009 has posted a trailer for mudazumo. You may watch it here

1. Always attack, unless you should be defending.

2. Always defend, unless you should be attacking.

3. If you are an expert like me, you can even try attacking and defending at the same time.

4. Only deal tiles that other players cannot use, or you will be helping them form their hands.

5. When other players are in tenpai, it is important that you do not deal into their hands.

6. Make other players deal into your hand by waiting on unexpected tiles.

7. Always score as many points as possible.

8. Win as many hands as you can.

9. It is silly to call tiles when you can always draw it yourself anyway.

10. Do not discard tiles nobody has discarded, or that anybody has discarded early, mid, or late game. If possible you can consider not discarding at all. But it's a double-edged sword. I can't recommend this to amateurs.

11. Always remember what your tiles look like, in case of sudden blindness.

If you are an expert player you are welcome to leave any of your own tips.

Osamu found these some time ago. Kind of distracting at first, but I'm used to them now. When I win a match I can look up and find approval in their eyes, and when I lose they are still there, tirelessly cheering me on.

Here's the link to the thingy. There's also a Nodoka one available but for some reason this one is more popular by far.

http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/gallery/All/search?p=saki&search.x=0&search.y=0

My attention was diverted to a mahjong thread the other day, and something among the posts caught my eye, a welcome change from the usual jaw-dropping, eye-bleeding, rage-inducing tenhou screenshots. There was a certain amount of conjecture regarding the quality of play as well as the amount of bots, or automatic mahjong-playing programs, infesting lobby 7447 and tenhou as a whole.

As someone in possession of the facts, I wouldn't mind clearing up this minor issue for you players out there who are concerned about the humanity of their opponents.

There are no bots on 7447.

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Tsuno is adding rules to this list rather frequently, new stuff  in bold.

-Uma 5-10, 5-15, 20-50
-Wareme
-No Tochuuryuukoku
-Houra renchan
-Add 1500 points to the hand value for each renchan counter (normally 300 points)
-Washizu
-Yakitori
-Can go below 0
-Atama hane
-Two aka dora in each suit.
-Noten renchan
-Oya doesn't change until someone wins a hand
-Open Riichi
-Start with 2 dora indicators
-Can ron on an ankan with kokushi musou
-Kanzen Sakizuke
-Flower tiles
-Other local rules
-Always 2 han Shibari
-Aka dora count as Yaku
-Shizumi Uma (???)
-Return riichi deposits if Ryuukyoku
-Noten payment adjustment
-Iichan
-Can not change your wait after riichi
-Okkurikan Ari (???)
-Aotenjou
-Chombo ari (something about changing the riichi button)
-No tsumo payment decrease in 3p

On January 24, I had attended the first USPML event that they held in Manhattan. I had first found out about this organization from this post on MahjongNews that was linked to me on IRC. Since I live in New York, I was supposed to be a liaison or whatever between #mahjong and the USPML. When they announced their open play event, I signed up.

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Tsuno has recently added a new, optional, rule for Tenhou CHAMPIONSHIPS, 'shuugi', which I'm sure a lot of 'PUROS' will jeer at. Shuugi rewards players for luck. Basically, for every ippatsu, aka dora and ura dora you get a bonus point. You get points for tsumo, ron and for getting yakuman hands too. As far as I understand, each of these bonus points can range from 2000-10000 depending on the Championship rules. I have a feeling I'm way off on that last sentence though.

In more recent news, Tsuno also posted a list of optional rules he's thinking of adding to championship mode, this includes open riichi, yakitori, flower tiles, option to start with 2 dora indicators, wareme and Washizu Mahjong.

Edit: Apparently Tsuno was thinking of adding Aotenjou too but due to 32bit, it's nearly impossible to have numbers that high. He said something about 'buu mahjong' too

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Since I haven't played on ron2 in months, I decided to cancel my subscription and I was amazed at how they handled it.

Most online games at least allow you to use whatever remaining time you have left after cancelling but Ron2 decides to be completely different and delete your account. They didn't even allow me to use whatever remaining time I had left.

To give them some credit, they at least warned me before I cancelled my account!

Oh and afterwards they decided to tell me `we look forward to seeing you again'

退会しました。
すべてのデータが削除されました。
ご利用ありがとうございました。
またのご利用をお待ちしております。

I doubt I will actually become a paying member of ron2 again.