/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>15522603
E1 - Discarding 1p on turn 6 was a mistake. It put you at 1 shanten, but by discarding it you stay 2 shanten.

E2 - You discard 1p to keep 9p, doesn't make a lot of sense. You lose the 2p ukeire for nothing.

E3 - You tsumogiri 9m, losing the 7m ukeire. 5m is a flexible tile but it won't help you make a sequence by itself. Keeping 8m-9m over 5m is preferable, especially when you also have the possibility of a 7-8-9 sanshoku.

E4 - You discard 1m upon drawing 8s. 8s doesn't do much for you. Your 9s ankou is already a mentsu, and 8s is unlikely to contribute to one, and you lose the 2m ukeire as a result. You discard the 9s sometime afterwards for a reason I can't fathom. You somehow win this hand despite making a bunch of mistakes, proving once and for all that the mahjong demons have a sense of humor.

S1 - You discard 1s-2s and move back to 2 shanten. I think it was a good choice, because two 3s are dead and 1s is a safe tile against the dealer riichi. I just wanted to point it out as another instance you move back in shanten, in case you hadn't noticed.

S1 1H - You discard 1m on turn 2, losing the 2m ukeire.

S2 - You draw 7m and discard 9m. You shouldn't have done this. Instead, you should have dropped 1p-2p. 4m-6m can become an edge wait if you draw 3m or 7m. 1p-2p can only become an edge wait if you draw 4p and then 5p. You draw a second 1s later and discard it. You shouldn't have done that either. Instead, 8p, which is very unlikely to pair up, should have been dropped for a 1s-4s-7s ukeire. Even if you're furiten, it's fine, because it's so late in the match. A tenpai is more important than worrying about that possibility.

S2 1H - You draw 9m and discard 1s. Not an efficient choice. You're 2 shanten for chi toi. Dropping 4p is a better move here to maximum your ukeire. You can always fall back on pinfu and/or iipeikou if your draws are favorable. Then you go crazy and call a bunch, and then call 4s when you're in a 3s-6s wait. Two of your winning tiles in the 7p-5s shanpon are dora indicators, so there was no reason to make your wait worse.

S3 - Discarding 1m off the bat isn't what I would have done. It can turn into an ankou. It doesn't actually affect your shanten, but it does affect your ukeire and prevents you from going for san ankou.

S4 - 8p instead of 1m is slightly more efficient. Discarding 2p over 5p is not as efficient (by two tiles), and it gets rid of your iipeikou guarantee. I suppose it could be forgiven because the red 5p is live, though.

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In summary, don't be afraid of kanchan shapes. A lot of intermediate players focus too strongly on pinfu and edge waits exclusively, not realizing that they're actually moving backwards in hand progression while doing so. While moving back in shanten can be okay at times, for example if a wait is mostly dead, or you're pursuing a larger hand such as chinitsu, it's not something you want to do all the time because it will slow your hand down a lot. This will lead to you not winning many hands, which will lead to many 3rd and 4th place finishes.

My advice is, if you find yourself in a situation where you feel uncertain about your last discard, look at the replay afterwards and punch in your hand here:

http://tenhou.net/2/

It will help you better understand your tile efficiency's shortcomings by showing you mistakes.

>>15398251
Well, I was half right, at least. I am interested in what south's hand looks like.

>>15254107
Drawing a red five is not much different from drawing a regular five in that situation. Personally, I don't think that a wider range of outcomes that are solely dependent on luck, which is to say, whether or not you got lucky and drew the red five(s) makes the game more skill dependent. The only time it's likely to influences decision making is if the red fives are part of an open call.

People usually try to debate this point using the rhetoric of how dora and ura-dora are also luck based, but I don't think it applies in any similar fashion to red dora. First of all, the inherent advantage that red fives have are how flexible and reliable they are. Middle number tiles, such as 5, are the most flexible tiles in the entire game due to the variety of sequences they can complete, the number of yaku they are involved in (with the key one being open tanyao), and so on. The dora is not as reliable, because if the dora is an otokaze or terminal number tile, it severely restricts the types of hands it can be used with unless you go menzen, which means sacrificing speed. Red dora, on the other hand, can be used freely in fast hands. As for ura-dora, it requires menzen, a point deposit, and the risk of having to deal every non-winning tile you draw. The only risk associated with drawing a red dora tile is if your opponent wins off of it, assuming you discard it, but considering the previously mentioned flexibility, you rarely will if you aren't in riichi. They aren't comparable.

Red fives may make the game flashier by leading to bigger hands more often, but they do nothing for the skill factor. Which is probably why none of the prominent or televised mahjong leagues use them. Yes, I'm aware JPML also doesn't use ura-dora, but considering the match-fixing scandals that shadow its members, I'm more inclined to believe that they did it in order to make fixing matches easier.