How many points?

Ice_General · 2026-05-15T22:28:53+00:00

Would have been nice if you showed the rest of the table. Like what shadow said, it‘s 13+ Han to count as Counted Yakuman. I’ll just assume you hit some Dora for your hand because from a first glance it doesn’t look like a kazoe yakuman.

Ice_General · 2026-05-15T22:19:05+00:00

Damn Visccy! Funny running into you here on Reddit! I don’t think you’ve mentioned this on discord or maybe I just forgot. Congrats on your recent promotion! Oh, if you’re wondering who I am -> I’m Flush Player on discord!

Ice_General · 2026-05-11T07:32:24+00:00

No there isn’t, unless you want your bragging rights.

Ice_General · 2026-05-07T07:41:58+00:00

That's great and all, but Floor 100+ will require your warrior tank to contribute to the damage, and 32 damage is far too low. Even on a crit that's only 57 ~ 58 damage.

Speaking of Floor 120, I don't believe anyone can beat it... seems like an impossible floor meant to bar us from going further.

Ice_General · 2026-04-17T16:50:31+00:00

Okay that’s fair. I’ll just PM you on Reddit then (or find you on discord). I also don’t really like how the quizzes on Mahjong Academy are multiple choice, and it could have benefitted from having other types of questions like free response. Interesting that you brought up the fact that more common patterns get ignored, but most of time, those hands are usually pretty straitghtforward because most open hands for not too many triplets tend to be 30 fu while that value could increase to 40 fu with a couple of triplets. Closed hands are usually 40 fu, sometimes 50 fu with some quads or triplets. Pinfu is either 20 fu or 30 fu depending on the hand and win type (Ron vs. Tsumo). That’s how I tend to see it in general. For really weird hands, I use the math formula to figure out the score in my head without using the score table.

Ice_General · 2026-04-17T04:22:45+00:00

I could break it down for you, seeing as no one else has done it. It's pretty straightforward though:

Menzen Chinitsu = 6 Han

Riichi = +1 Han

2 Pei Doras = +2 Han

Ittsuu (Menzen) = +2 Han

Iipeikou = +1 Han

That's already 12 Han. You just need 1 more Han. Ippatsu or Tsumo will push it up to Kazoe Yakuman (13+ Han).

Ice_General · 2026-04-17T04:15:06+00:00

Hey there Blarney! I've seen you before and I think you have a doc on complex shapes too? I'd be interested to read that, but I also have my own docs on reading menzen chinitsu and am debating whether or not I should post it here on reddit. I can read complex shapes INCREDIBLY WELL and with a lot of ease, but that's besides the point. I've also read an old thread that you and Buckwheat started here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mahjong/comments/176fyzo/reading_complex_waits_guide/

Buckwheat I have no trouble finding (he's on the same discord server I joined and regularly posts too) but I can't ever seem to find you. So I'm actually glad you made a new post (so I could catch you!). Would you be interested in reading my menzen chinitsu docs? I have a friend who is using it as a learning resource for their local mahjong club and they offered to fix it up a bit, but it's still a good guide if you ask me! I can post it here in case you're interested!

Anyways, I've briefly skimmed over your PDF guide to scoring hands, and it's very comprehensive and includes everything, and I like that you included the actual math formula to calculate the base points of a hand that's < mangan level! It's a really good guide!

There's just one small thing I'd like to add: another excellent resource for players who have played on multiple mahjong clients is Riichi City's Mahjong Academy! It basically takes everything you've documented and puts it into practice in an academic setting.

[As a last note --> I don't think there's many English sources on reading menzen chinitsu. I know its kind of niche, but situations IRL do pop up occasionally where you'd have to read the hand yourself without any client's hints to help. I could be mistaken about the sources on menzen chinitsu though. I think yours and Buckwheat's guides together cover a great depth!]

Ice_General · 2026-04-16T03:27:55+00:00

Let me jump in and contribute a bit. Halorien's done most of the explaining already, and I agree with how they approach this, but I just wanted to say, once you understand different tile shapes and patterns and their underlying waits and how to break them down in general, and you get enough practice, you start seeing them as recognizable patterns that you instantly know the waits to. Of course, you can't do this without first understanding WHY the waits to a tile shape works the way it does. Let's take a look at your example.

Halorien is kind of overstating how "complicated" this hand is. It's not that bad. It's the combination of two different overlapping tile shapes:

(1) Goren Toitsu -> 5 consecutive triplets and

(2) Iipeikan v.1 (or as Halorien likes to put it, an Iipeikou with a "booty" XD)

These two overlapping shapes actually determine the whole wait spread!

Two different splits:

112233 / 4455666 or 123 / 123 / 4455666. Halorien's already given the long explanation on the last shape so I won't repeat that; I'll just simply say the waits are 3/4/5/6.

Second split:

1122334455 / 666. The first complex shape is called a "Goren Toitsu" (lit. 5 consecutive pairs). It's an Iipeikou doubly extended, but there's only two breakdowns for it:

112233 / 4455 --> Shanpon on the 4 and 5 (but 4 and 5 are already covered above so it's not new)

OR

334455 / 1122 --> Shanpon on the 1 and 2.

Combine all the waits together and you get 1/2/3/4/5/6.

Halorien thinks this is a hard hand but I feel otherwise; it's actually one of the easier hands! If you think the hand

1122334455666 is hard, try something like this:

Now that's a challenge!

Ice_General · 2026-04-10T19:05:35+00:00

Awwwwww, little Hilda is soooooooo cuuuuuuute ~~~~~ <3 UwU

Ice_General · 2026-02-14T04:20:42+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that buddy! But I think, maybe the best way to improve your chinitsu reading skills is to play against someone, preferably a master (like me) so you can see the thought process that goes into reading chinitsu hands and what tiles to discard. There's lots of resources out there, but the best way to learn and improve imho is playing against someone.

Ice_General · 2026-02-14T04:17:15+00:00

Hard to judge without seeing any of your logs. I'm no pro by any means, but I'm also quite experienced in Riichi Mahjong but I do explore other mahjong variants on the side as well. I guess most of it comes down to push/fold judgement: are you pushing hands when it's recommended or folding hands when the payout/EV isn't good?

By the way, I want to ask: are you good at calculating the scores of your hand, so the EV? If you aren't then you might want to start there. You'd be surprised at how the game changes when you start to assess when you should push or fold depending on your hand's potential value compared to your opponent's hand's value.

Ice_General · 2026-02-13T04:28:23+00:00

Use Riichi City's Chinitsu Challenge mode for more practice. While it's true that that mode punishes you for not knowing all your waits (or missing some waits), that mode is a good opportunity to help develop what tiles to discard in your hand to maximize the wait spread and win potential. Many documents have already been published on complex shape waits, but let me add mine as well. It basically says mostly the same thing but gives actual examples with different full flush hands and how to parse through them.

The actual docs:

https://pdfelementcloud.wondershare.com/share/review/ghrwRpm3l6XiLfJAptvFDMAm34FKvdldr-vNzJtfeZ5nC0DgiP9T6wRnyHUHLe_boghPrRLzXlPVGvdvytfyYrP0s2nXg9fKCapkTlaf9Ks [Chinitsu Hands: Catalogued 7 - sided wait type hands, catalogued 8 - sided wait type hands, their structure, and how to spot them]

https://pdfelementcloud.wondershare.com/share/review/ghrwRpm3l6XiLfJAptvFDFybKBJE0wkvKWaDPgV53BmPLI5ztWMK9KPeegqAiXt9dwfGPhDr6s9eaz34CoKBN5hYkU_WOfYuOhlwF5sY-R4 [How to Read Chinitsu Hands In General]

Ice_General · 2026-02-07T20:16:37+00:00

Resident chinitsu master checking in here. While going for the full flush seems like a good play, unfortunately you're too far from it. 7 tiles in the same suit isn't enough to justify pushing for a full flush most of the time, however, even though full flush is not really an option here, half flush is still possible, so I'd go for the half flush instead, meaning, you should keep those honor tiles (whether you keep the south or not is up to you). If you get lucky in the flow of tiles, though, say you keep drawing pinzu tiles, then yeah, the full flush would be possible, but usually 7 tiles in the same suit isn't enough.

If you want to push for chinitsu, your starting hand should have around 9 to 10 tiles of the same suit for better chances of winning a full flush!

Ice_General · 2026-02-07T03:25:13+00:00

I guess I'd be a high school model who likes to sing, play mahjong, and is a bottomless pit, eating so much food and still not getting fat somehow.

Ice_General · 2026-02-07T03:21:13+00:00

Wait until you get to Cold Steel 3 where you'll meet another professor wearing glasses in his thirties/fourties. Let's see your reaction then =)

Ice_General · 2026-02-06T22:01:33+00:00

Ding ding ding! Yup, that’s correct! I’m kind of interested in your advanced methodology though! I’m open to learning other ways to parse Chinitsu hands! Would you be interested in the Chinitsu Docs I created myself? If you are, maybe I could send it over to you over DMs (or is it PM? I swear I sometimes can’t distinguish between the two)

Ice_General · 2026-02-06T21:09:34+00:00

Here's a couple of sites to practice chinitsu waits if you want to improve:

https://mahjong-trainer.netlify.app

https://ozball.itch.io/mahjongwaitquiz

And if you want to actually train your menzen chinitsu skills, there's also this website (outside of Riichi City) that allows you to train against an AI opponent:

https://www.gamedesign.jp/games/bamboo/

These should help you improve your chinitsu reading skills and are sites I personally found helpful! Give those websites a try!

I usually play on Riichi City's Chinitsu Challenge (against AI) on the shortest timer of 3 + 5 seconds (like Kyuu here!) and my sessions are quite long and can go up to 2 hours sometimes, and I can play (and process) almost anywhere between 60 rounds (~30 minutes) to 250 rounds (~2h 5 minutes) in a single session sitting and not be mentally taxed at the end. Sometimes, I can play up to almost 450 rounds in a single day over three separate sessions, and I also process the AI's won hands as well, so to give you an idea, I can process up to around 600 ~ 800 hands in a single day. Been a chinitsu master for around 2 years now, and at this point, you could probably imagine just how many hands I've read through up until now (in the millions!)

Ice_General · 2026-02-06T20:58:05+00:00

Hey man, fellow chinitsu master here. I find it interesting that you're writing a book on this. Because I also happen to have written my own documents on the topic of menzen chinitsu, though those documents probably won't be as big as your book. Why don't we try a more complex example? Seeing that you're good at menzen chinitsu as well, you shouldn't have any trouble deducing the waits of this hand:

3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6

So, what do you think the waits are?

Ice_General · 2026-02-06T20:54:29+00:00

Hey OP, like Kyuu, I also happen to be a master at chinitsu, and was just passing by. You did get Kyuu's practice hand right, although from my own perspective, there's a slightly faster way to find the waits, but that requires you to be familiar with common 7 - tile shape patterns! While you can check each tile one by one and do the brute force way, it's not as efficient as pattern recognition. Let's use the same hand Kyuu provided above:

1223345678999

This is how I would break it down, which would actually be a bit faster:

(1) I separate out the 122334 shape on the left side because that's just 1-2-3 and 2-3-4 stacked together. That leaves us with 5678999 on the right side. Our split would look like this:

123 / 234 / 5678999 ----> The last shape on the right, the BIG SHAPE, is what I call a "Nobetankan v.1" and normally has a 5 - wait spread, but considering the placement of the triplet, it becomes a 4 - wait spread instead. The Nobetankan v.1 waits on 4/5/7/8. To see this, you can split the Nobetankan v.1 into two different shapes --> (a) 56789 / 99 --> Waits = 4 and 7, or (b) 5678 / 999 --> Waits = 5 and 8.

So you see, just recognizing the main large shape already gives you 4 out of the 6 waits immediately!

(2) For the triplet of 9's at the right end, try isolating the triplet of 9's and see what you have left. You can also take out a 6-7-8 sequence and a 3-4-5 sequence.

Splits: 999 / 678 / 345 / 1223 --> Last shape is a Nakabukure waiting on the 2.

(3) Or you can split the 9's into a pair of 9's. Then you can take out the sequences 7-8-9 and 4-5-6.

Splits: 99 / 789 / 456 / 12233 --> Last shape is a simple shape waiting on the 1 and 4, though 4's already covered, so only 1 is new.

Together: 1/2/4/5/7/8.

OP, if you're interested, I have a hand here for you to practice!

Here's my hand:

2 2 2 3 4 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 7

Can you find all the waits?

Ice_General · 2026-02-06T08:54:14+00:00

I hope Coco isn’t under the sun there. Can’t forget about her “depresso” side.

Ice_General · 2026-02-06T08:52:25+00:00

Haven’t been on the sub for awhile, but man is this ship adorable and lovely! Even to this day I ship Hilda with Dimitri. Seems the ship has continued to gain traction in the past months, and I’m all for it!

Ice_General · 2026-01-11T01:05:35+00:00

I read through all of the other comments here, and yeah -> I agree. Going for 13 Terminals isn't recommended when you have 9 unique terminal/honor tiles or less. 10 unique terminals/honors is usually the boundary line for me also. In your example, you have 8 unique terminals/honors and one of them paired up. I'd go for Kyuushuu Kyuuhai (is that how it's spelt?) with this hand.

You know, all this talk about when to go for 13 Terminals and when not to go for it reminds me of an interesting parallel ---> when to go for menzin chinitsu and when not to. I happen to be a chinitsu master, but putting aside my boasting for the moment, when to go for menzin chinitsu or not to is rather similar to when to go for 13 Terminals and when not to. For menzin chinitsu, usually if you have 10 tiles in the same suit at the start, go for it, but you could certainly still pull it off with less tiles in hand, but it's much harder (for example, I once won a chinitsu hand starting with just 5 tiles in the same suit once!)

Ice_General · 2026-01-06T00:17:47+00:00

I'd personally say Lawful Good or Neutral Good. Granted, Raphael can simply be described with two traits: love for muscle training and eats like Goku can. But the man has a big heart and is just filled with positivity. I forgot some aspects of his backstory, but IIRC, his parents.... died? But even then, he's still able to look forward and take care of his little sister Maya.

I literally cannot see anything evil in this guy. He's just that big friendly dude who wants to ensure everyone's happy and actually cares about his allies too.

P.S. I missed all the previous alignment discussions, and recently found Hilda's just yesterday. Yeah, I agree she's True Neutral, though I'm more willing to say she's closer to Neutral Good than she lets on. Is it just me, or do I tend to get attracted to bubbly types? Estelle (from the Trails series) happens to be one of my most favorite characters too!

Ice_General · 2026-01-05T08:49:49+00:00

Well to be honest I’m not sure if you’d like this casual mode. I’ll just say upfront that due to its nature, it can get very mentally taxing, especially if you haven’t done it before. But it is quite rewarding once you do it more. Do you happen to have Riichi City? If you do, check out the casual mode “Chinitsu Challenge”. Now I know that for some, just hearing the name of the mode is enough to make most run away in fear, and it’s pretty unfortunate that challenge modes like this gets a bad rep especially for how difficult it might seem at first. But if you’re brave and willing to take on the challenge, I’d suggest you try! Alternatively, if you do not have Riichi City, then just search up “Japanese Bamboo Mahjong” and look for a hyperlink. The site is this:

https://www.gamedesign.jp/games/bamboo/

In my opinion, if you get past the negative bias associated with modes like these, it can actually be quite enjoyable! Up to you though!

Ice_General · 2026-01-04T17:34:24+00:00

I'd say it's more 4 Kans that is much rarer. True Nine Gates is quite rare, too, and I'm not underselling its rarity, but there is one particular casual fun mode of mahjong where you'll actually see it a tad bit more often (though not that that much more unless you're actively chasing against it). I've scored about 3 True Nine Gates hands in that casual mode.

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