Tag Archives: yakuman

Tsumo Times and a Ron Wait

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I was back in New York recently for a short while, a period that just so happened to coincide with the latest instance of my favorite mahjong gathering, the USPML‘s monthly open play events. Bringing with me exotic cuisine from beyond the oceans, I played my first offline mahjong game in many months.

It was good to see many familiar faces and even some new ones, as well as to learn that the USPML has only gained in popularity since I last saw them. Where once we barely were able to get sixteen players to fill four tables, we now had somewhere like 6-8 tables. I even saw an enterprising older woman there, learning the game amongst us young Turks. I wondered if she had experience playing an American form of mahjong and decided to expand her horizons. If that’s the case, she is a better person than me, who has no experience with mahjong outside of Japanese-style and one bad game of Taiwanese mahjong on X-Box Live.

I can’t say whether or not I’ve made significant improvements in my mahjong, but I did end up winning both games I played that day. The first was a rough-and-tumble game where I managed to win here and there and gain a small lead going into the final round. The difference was about 4000 points, so a mangan tsumo or a direct hit with about a 3 yaku hand could’ve knocked me off my perch, but I went for a quick, cheap, and most importantly closed hand. I purposely decided not to call reach as it would have made everyone overly defensive. In the end, I won with a simple pinfu.

The second game, I won a haneman and a mangan early on and held my lead by winning a large amount of cheap hands, many times with no yaku to speak of other than when I decided to reach. In a way it’s a dirty, yet effective way of playing. However, my victory is not the biggest story to come out of Game 2. That honor instead goes to my mahjong comrade, Dave aka Sub.

In an early round (it may have been the first), one of the players had called a closed kan. This was already dangerous, as it was a kan of the dora, but when this new dora indicator flipped over to reveal that it was a twin of a previous dora indicator, things got to a Washizu-level of bad. There, staring us all in the face was an 8-dora hand, an automatic Baiman, and who knew what else lurked within the the unrevealed tiles? Later on, we found out that this was a hand of much destructive power in more ways than one, as it not only turned out to be an 11-dora hand thanks to another kan that had been called, but that it was in position for a possible Yakuman, the Suu An Kou. But whether he got that standard Yakuman or not, the hand would’ve easily surpassed 13 dora, which would have given it equivalent power to a Yakuman. In other words, no matter how he would have won, he would have gained 32,000 points and potentially ended the game right there.

But Dave was a hero. Abandoning any notions of grandeur, he quickly called for some tiles. A few turns later, he won, and off the player with that amazing hand no less. Crisis averted. It was only after Dave’s smooth counter-offense that we realized how much danger we were really in. I may have won the game overall, but did I really?

See you guys around again. Playing has made me want to scope out the Dutch mahjong associations that I know exist.

Four Concealed Triples Contain Ten Times As Many Perils

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Almost a year ago, I wrote about how glad I finally was to achieve a San An Kou, or Three Concealed Triples, in mahjong. It is a hand where you manage to draw three sets of 3-of-a-kinds all on your own. When I first got the San An Kou, it felt like an eternity before I was able to achieve one. What I didn’t know was that getting its beefier older sibling would take a lot longer.

This is Suu An Kou, or Four Concealed Triples, and is highlighted in Saki episode 10, where perennial newbie Senoo Kaori mistakenly refers to it as a “Riichi Tsumo Toi Toi (All Pungs as the subs put it),”a hand which would be worth significantly less if you took her words literally. Like the Kokushi Musou and the Sho Suushi, it is a Yakuman and therefore one of the strongest hands in mahjong, possessing enough killing power to end the game in one shot. It is also significantly more powerful than the San An Kou, and to give you a basic idea of the sheer disparity, you could get six San An Kou in a single game and it still might not be worth as much as a single Suu An Kou.


Oh Kaori, this is why Sub and I made you our mascot for our mahjong panel.

Like all Yakuman, it is an exceedingly rare hand, and what I’ve begun to find interesting about Yakuman in general is that they can often be rare for entirely different reasons. While the Kokushi Musou is difficult to obtain because it is a hand that cannot be anything but a Kokushi, and the Sho Suushi similarly rare because the tiles in it are always valuable to someone at the table (and thus there is a very good chance that someone will hold onto them), the prospective Suu An Kou seeker faces yet another issue, one that I would simply call “temptation.”

Imagine that there was a 0.1% chance for you to win $1,000,000, no questions asked. So of course you take the opportunity, but as you move closer and closer to that cold million, another sign pops up:  “Go for $100,000 instead and your chances of gaining a cash prize go up to 50%!” Then another flashes in giant neon letters, “$200,000, 25% chance to win!” Similar deals continue to pop up over and over again and try as you might, you can’t seem to block them out of your mind. What should you do?

In a situation like that, I wouldn’t look down on anyone who settles for less. Hell, I would probably abandon the million myself, but that’s essentially the obstacle that stands in the path of those who seek the Four Concealed Triples. Along the way to getting that Yakuman, you are continuously enticed by hands that, while not nearly as majestic as the Suu An Kou, can still be quite good, and to ignore those hands is almost as insane as ignoring a 50% chance to get 100 grand for a 0.1% chance at a million. Here, the biggest obstacle is that you are constantly being steered away by appeals to your rationality and common sense, and when your aim is to take huge risks, that is perhaps the most dire threat of all.

Of course, the probabilities I’ve given are in no way accurate to actual mahjong, but I think they give you a fair picture of it. Call it embellishment for dramatic effect.

Konya wa Hurricane

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Yesterday, soon after I made my post announcing my return to Ogiue Maniax, I decided to get in a game of online mahjong. I figured, it would be a good way to settle in, to get comfortable with my new surroundings in a way walking around taking in the environment doesn’t (though I did that as well so no hikikomori antics here).

While I did not do so well for the first game I played, the second game brought a very pleasant surprise.

What you see here is my second ever Yakuman against human opponents. Unlike my previous one however, it fortunately doesn’t require a whole lot of explaining.

For those of you who haven’t read my previpus mahjong posts, “Yakuman” are the highest-scoring hands in mahjong, and by extension also the most difficult to achieve. The one I achieved here is called “Sousuushi,” or the “Lesser Four Joys.” It’s also known as the “Lesser Four Winds,” as all of the tiles necessary to achieve this Yakuman are designated as the “Wind” tiles.

Now I have only been in the Netherlands for a few days now, but one thing I’ve noticed is that it is always windy. At first I figured it was just the time of the year, but according to the locals this is the norm. There’s a reason the Nether Gundam is a windmill, after all. Having scored a wind-based Yakuman while I’m in a country that’s known for being windy, I can’t help but feel that’s a sign of good things to come. Call me silly or perhaps even “occult,” but it gave me some joy after all. Not an overwhelming amount mind you, but it’s still there.

So what I’m saying is, if you’re in Ireland and you manage to get an “All Green,” you’re good to go.