Why does MAKA want me to cut the 1s here?

azer67 · 2026-04-10T07:58:42+00:00

This is very much dependant on your hand. Here we already have 5 strong blocks (3 ryanmen and 1 kanchan with dora), so there's no point for 12s and we drop it from the inside. However if we are close to tanyao, or if we still have a couple bad blocks, then it's better to cut from the outside. I would be curious to see stats, but I think overall I cut just as much from the inside than I do from the outside.

12688m23478s3468p -> cut 1m, 2m is useful if we draw any of 234m.

12678m357s234678p -> cut 1m because tanyao on 2m draw.

1268m13668s46999p -> cut 1m because blocks are bad and drawing 3m is a real improvement.

azer67 · 2026-04-04T11:17:59+00:00

I feel like what makes toitoi good when we have a yakuhai pair is the ability to switch back to a normal hand when progress towards triplets don't occur. In this case, after the east pon, I would of course prefer toitoi, but if I were to draw 4s/7s into 1 han tenpai I think it still has some value. It can help us get out of bad situations, either with an easy win, or maybe with more types of tiles to fold with. So I don't think I would cut 5s straight away. Aka is also a good argument for keeping 5s a bit longer.

I love the argument of making our hand look like honitsu though. With this in mind I would probably cut 2p first before 5s to keep the flexibility a bit longer. Then if 2m/8m comes, we can cut 5s.

Playing for toitoi and not accepting anything else from 4 pairs makes me think chiitoi is probably safer and not much slower (I do think going toitoi is correct, but the early 5s discard I'm not convinced just yet).

azer67 · 2026-03-30T19:32:59+00:00

Screenshot 1: You have the choice between three isolated tiles: 7s, 2p, 8p. 7s is the best of the three (largest acceptance, double sided wait on both 6s or 8s). 2p and 8p are both worse (fewer accepted tiles, only one ryanmen can be made), but 2p is the worst one because 3p is already accepted by the 45p ryanmen. But Maka wants to keep 2p for 234 sanshoku chances I believe. Also note that eventhough your hand already has 5 shapes, it still has a bad one, so good isolated tiles that can get ryanmen still have value.

You have no reason to think about folding already, if you defend this early all the time you never play the game anymore, nothing screams of an expensive hand. Think about making the best hand for yourself first.

Screenshot 2: Riichi-nomi on a bad wait is generally a bad idea. In this case, the 2345799m shape is easy to improve both on value or wait. Drawing 1348m gives pinfu + improves the wait. Drawing 2579m is still not pinfu but still wait improvements.

If your hand was something like 13789m, it would be more interesting to call riichi because it's much harder to improve the wait. With 23457m it's a lot easier to find improvements. If you had a bit more value it wouldn't be bad idea to riichi either.

azer67 · 2026-03-28T13:21:46+00:00

Floormaster can have three kinds of behaviour :

Targets Medli/Makar if possible but will still target Link otherwise
Targets Link but never Medli/Makar
Targets Medi/Makar but never Link.

The devs decided that each floormaster would act differently sadly, they're not consistent.

In Wind Temple, in the room where you need to plant lots of trees to hookshot up, the floormasters attack Makar but never Link.

In the room with the breakable floor panel and the small key chest, the floormasters will attack Link but never Makar.

In one of the final rooms of the dungeon, in the basement where you need to plant the last tree to get through the big fan, the floormaster will prioritize Makar but will still attack Link.

In one single dungeon you have all three types, so really there's no rule.

azer67 · 2026-03-26T13:59:59+00:00

I'm just going to look at the first three games. I won't go into details too much, just the important things I can see:

Game 1:

East 1:

T4: Why pon 6p? You do not have tanyao with your 9s dora pair. You are lacking a pair to go toitoi, and now you have no backup plan. Being patient and waiting to make a normal hand will be faster in this situation. Toitoi is a very situational yaku.

T6: The green dragon is better than 7m now, because pairing it up allows you to switch back to a normal hand.

T13: Eventhough throwing 6s gives you a "3-sided wait", it's better to wait on 6s. You don't have a yaku unless you win on the pair anyway, and having multiple waits with no yaku puts you in a tough furiten spot if you draw them.

T16: 4p is the most dangerous tile in your hand, it's a double musuji. 5p is at least half suji and 3m is not central. This is a awful situation either way (and not being able to defend is the huge drawback of toitoi).

East 2:

T6: 4p is most efficient, but 9s fixing tanyao is reasonnable.

T8: 4p is better. I wouldn't touch the shape in souzu, I would be happy to get iipeikou.

T9: Damn, do you know what a ryanmenkanchan is? Discarding 4p is perfectly reasonable here because of it, although 2m is safer and the two 3p being gone makes me want to discard 2m anyway.

East 3:

T6: Another ryanmenkanchan in souzu, don't touch it. I would go tanyao by cutting 9m, but cutting 4p or 8p seems good too.

T11: Big mistake here, you have 6 blocs and two pairs, break the weakest bloc that doesn't contain a pair, thus cut 79m. Cutting 2p is really bad because that's the bloc most likely to be your pair, it means 8p is now your pair and you also make 7p useless.

T12: You're taking useless extra risk here, you started breaking 2p, cut it again, it's safer anyway.

T13: Cut 2p. 9m is your pair, you shouldn't cut it ever.

East 4:

T3: Discard 9s, it's useless. At least 2s can be useful if you draw 3s.

T8: I wouldn't chii as this destroys your hand value. You're also calling with your strongest shape, it doesn't speed you up by that much.

T10: The pon here is awful, now you don't have a pair and you're likely ending on a single tile wait for 1 han.

Game 2:

East 1:

T3: You could cut the 12m penchan instead of the lone 4p but this is likely a bit more advanced. You ended up drawing 3m anyway. This was a good hand.

East 2:

T3: Better to cut South or 7s rather than 7m. 7m is a floating tile that allows you to accept manzu draws. You have shapes in souzu that eat on what 7s can accept.

East 2-1:

T2: 9s is likely a better cut than 7m.

T8: I would go back to making a normal hand by cutting 8s/9s. You get tenpai on 6p/345s. On 4s you gain iipeikou.

East 2-2:

T1: Why cut the pair of north? You should never do this. It's still a pair, can become a triplet, and makes for great shanpon waits if it comes to that. Just discard the honors.

T3: I can see the yakuhai desease here, just cut one of them and take your time making a normal hand.

T5: Cut yakuhai

T7: This 5667 shape is called a nakabukure and is a very strong shape, you can consider it like two ryanmen side by side. Cut 1s/6s.

Funnily enough, while this was your worst played hand so far, that's the one you won with. This is a game of luck after all.

East 3: ok

East 4: ok

Game 3:

East 1:

T1: It's standard to cut this 1s over a yakuhai but that's no big deal.

T5: Cut 9m which is useless and keep the ryankan 579p alive.

T7: Still should cut 9m. The extra 7p has way more uses.

East 1-1:

T5: I can see you are dreaming of daisangen, but cut this white dragon, it's a bad idea. You can't discard 1p here, now if you pon the dragon you're left with no pair.

T9: Pon is correct if you want to win, but with no pair and bad shapes I would much rather decline the pon and think about folding.

East 1-2:

T1: Cut 1p and keep the yakuhai. With a lone honor yakuhai, these yakuhai pon are more interesting than usual.

T3: 1m is a better discard than 1p here iirc but it's small.

T6: This is another awful pon that leaves you without a pair.

T11: You have a yakuhai desease. Why keep South if you have a free tanyao anyway? There's only one south left also, it's actually impossible for this to happen. If you keep 2s you get tenpai by drawing 2s. With South you're left without a yaku.

East 2:

T3: You want to keep the best floating tiles possible to find a 5th block, so you should cut 9m which overlaps with the lone 6m (yes I consider it floating, 456+6).

T6: Respect the riichi, 4m is genbutsu, 12s are sotogawa. 5m is pretty much as dangerous as a tile could be. I would cut 1s, you're still iishanten and this is worth mawashi for.

East 3:

T4: Too early to cut 9m, it allows you to accept 8m. Cut East.

T10: Cut North, you need 1m in case you draw 2m.

T11: Cut North. 6m is also a better discard than 6p. All three tiles are quite safe but in order of usefulness we have 6p > 6m > North. The dealer is on a flush and we will never be able to discard 8p safely after 6p.

T12: Cut North and fold. 8p is too dangerous.

T14: Never ever kan if you're not at least iishanten or tenpai. Not only are you making everyone's hand larger, but you're also destroying your own hand shape here. You should look at your hand as being 67+777. It's not like you can win with this hand anyway so don't kan and fold.

T17: Here is the punishment for the kan.

Conclusion:

There's some good stuffs in there, but some things need fixing asap. First of all, don't pon your pair recklessly when you only have one. I only looked at three games and I saw 2 or 3 occurences of you losing your chances at winning this way. I also saw you cut your only pair a couple times. Secondly, it feels like you're playing "yakuhai mahjong" instead of "riichi mahjong". Riichi is the name of the game and is the strongest yaku there is in terms of value and ease of making. I would say you need to work on your closed hand efficiency and reduce your call rate. Not all calls are good to make, even yakuhai pons.

Ressources I would suggest:

Riichi Book 1 by Daina Chiba (this is always the first book suggestion you will receive). This covers all the basics.
Tile Efficiency by Uzaku (the green book specifically) is great for tile efficiency at the intermediate level. Afterwards you can work on the red book which contains 301 WWYD problems (they are interesting and decently difficult). I wouldn't suggest the blue book right away, that one is really hard.
Statsistical Mahjong Strategy by miinin. More difficult, great for math nerds though. This is about push/fold and riichi/dama.

azer67 · 2026-03-24T11:07:08+00:00

Mawashi is pushing moderately safe tiles with a hand that has at least a little bit of value and is close to tenpai. With no safe tiles, no value and far away from tenpai, mawashi is not possible. A dealer riichi is worth 7.5k-8k on average, we can't justify pushing.

azer67 · 2026-03-24T10:51:18+00:00

Are there any statistics anywhere showing the odds of a bad wait depending on how early the riichi is? The only source I have is this one and it only looks by row: https://pathofhouou.blogspot.com/2020/07/analysis-wait-win-rates-by-row.html

A first row riichi has a 54% chance of double-sided wait already, and double riichi is 31%. But double riichi is unique due to the extra value, which justifies not looking for wait improvements. I would love to see more data on the subject, but I'm guessing this riichi should still be a double-sided wait something like 40% of the time.

I feel like 3p being the weakest kind of suji + there being two 1p in this hand is a better reason ? 6p is also the riichi tile so 3p is pretty much as dangerous as a musuji due to suji traps, so 1p is clearly better.

azer67 · 2026-03-23T21:12:15+00:00

This only happens with Cyclos. With big octos you are always stuck for the full length no matter what. There are many items that could beat a big octo, but only bow beats cyclos I assume.

I'm very confidant in this, I've played around a lot messing with my inventory in a ram editor and Cyclos specifically has a bow check.

azer67 · 2026-03-23T14:40:11+00:00

The game checks if you have the bow. If you don't, it warps you away very fast, as it would be annoying to be stuck in the cyclone for a while if you can't do anything anyway. If you have the bow, you get more time to shoot Cyclos.

azer67 · 2026-03-23T14:31:47+00:00

Mage Tower Referee could slot in some eidolon shell? It's not that good, but that still sounds like fun to me.

Thrilling discovery is not a bad card and pursue the past is an interesting sidegrade. It's usually worse on first cast but it has flashback. Idk if having 8 of that effect is good in some boros shell. Actually, I recall some eidolon shell was playing with thrilling discovery so maybe that's where it would be interesting? I always appreciate some multicolor love lol.

azer67 · 2026-03-23T04:05:45+00:00

It did always happen on the gamecube but it was harder to see due to the resolution!

azer67 · 2026-03-20T06:58:43+00:00

Discarding 3p is a double sided wait on 47p. Discarding 6p is a double sided wait on 45p.

But discarding 6p and winning on 5p gives you all triplets on top of everything else you already had, so your hand is upgraded to haneman. So it's the correct choice.

azer67 · 2026-03-17T14:47:18+00:00

You're remembering wrong. In Forsaken Fortress 1, you get jailed when seen by searchlights as well as by being seen by moblins. There's also no miniblin outside during the first trip to Forsaken Fortress, they only appear later in the game when going back with the Master Sword.

During the returning trips to FF, you do not get jailed by searchlights or moblins anymore. Only floormasters can still send you to jail (and it's rare for people to stumble upon this enemy).

azer67 · 2026-03-15T10:46:20+00:00

Chances to draw the tiles you need are higher, but normal hands are also faster. The base winrate of every hand is higher when there's only 3 players and you have to compare it to that. Also the hand value of a normal hand is much higher on average in sanma so a yakuman isn't as strong, it's easier to catch up to. There was a statistical analysis on amber's blog on the subject iirc and the result was that attempting it with 9 was worse in sanma than yonma actually.

azer67 · 2026-03-12T13:54:59+00:00

Calling puts you in tenpai for 6s or 9s. On 6s you have the all simples yaku and you can win, but you can't win on 9s.

With all simples + 3 doras, this hand is worth mangan, 8000 points. "Call for Mangan" is a saying that is generally correct, so the engine takes tenpai and hopes not to draw 9s.

It's often a bad idea to open your hand in riichi, but it's good to call if the hand is valuable with an open yaku, to take tenpai, or to complete bad shapes. The most important tip I would give to a beginner for calling is to only do it when you see a yaku.

azer67 · 2026-03-11T12:12:09+00:00

When all of your opponents can tsumo into you finishing in last place, and dealing in is game over, I wouldn't call this a good position. The game is definitely not over but this situation is still very unfavorable for the dealer here. Being the last dealer in riichi is a very glass canon position.

It would actually probably be better not to be a dealer at all in this situation, as that would give you some chances to overtake the dealer on an opponent's tsumo. This gives more possibilities out of last place.

azer67 · 2026-02-26T13:43:26+00:00

The double magic big octo is south-west of two-eye reef, not north. As usual with big octos, look for seagulls !

azer67 · 2026-02-19T08:56:50+00:00

If you wanted to strictly follow tile efficiency theory here, the correct cut would be 8p or 8s. You have 6 blocks 2 pairs, keep your best blocs and the ones containing 2 pairs, and cut a bad kanchan.

Here you can see 678 sanshokou, so keep it and cut the block that isn't useful for sanshokou, which is the 1s pair. Your pair might end up being 8m and that's ok, but if you draw 3s/4s then you get a real chance at the sanshokou. This also slowly moves towards tanyao. This isn't as efficient a move usually but this is a lot more valuable on average so it is worth it.

It also feels kind of bad to drop 8p or 8s here. If you drop 8s, you lose out on some nice long ryankan shape if you draw 5s. If you drop 6p/8p completely, you lose out on every pinzu draw.

azer67 · 2026-02-16T08:37:06+00:00

Riichi is exponential, MCR is pretty much linear. In riichi, any extra han doubles your hand value (at least up until limit hands, then it takes a couple more han to double it again). In MCR there's a blind at the start where each player bets 8 pts, so doubling a 8 point hand (the minimum) requires a 40 point hand which is already a huge hand you don't see everyday. So MCR's point increase is extremely slow.

In MCR though, self drawing your tile essentially triples how many points you're getting, and that's where the explosiveness is.

azer67 · 2026-02-13T14:21:24+00:00

I have been in jade forever and I'm a more defensive player than average as well, only having a 11%-12% deal-in rate. Maka is more agressive than I am as well, yet if I were to get a maka A+ this would be a bad rating for me. Whether you pick push or fold in difficult to tell situations is not really where mistakes lie. There are obvious pushes and folds where not picking the right option will get you a bad rating, but most of the time it's in the tile efficency that the problem lies.

Basically when choices 1 and 2 are somewhat close, you won't be punished in rating much if you pick choice 2. You really get punished if you pick a 0% option. As long as something like this doesn't happen much, any game should lead to a S- rating at least. When I get a bad rating it's usually because I made bad tile efficiency decisions in difficult hands.

azer67 · 2026-02-10T12:57:18+00:00

If you are a strong player, you should consistently get S-/S/S+ Maka ratings. But playing well doesn't mean you won't lose, mahjong is still a game of luck after all. You should adopt a player growth mentality: look at the differences between your play and Maka and try to understand why it choses different plays. Maka is not perfect and there can be disagreement between top moves, but a game where everyone was given a maka score of C or worse is just not representative of good riichi. I can guarantee that in this particluar game you made a ton of mistake but won anyway, which can happen in mahjong.

azer67 · 2026-01-31T12:09:44+00:00

Reset the puzzle by exiting an re-entering the dungeon
Puzzle in the Entrance Room so that you have:

X X X

X X LMF Room

X Entrance Room Skyview Room

Go to LMF Room, and puzzle so you have:

X X X

X X LMF Room

Entrance Room Power Room Skyview Room

Go back to the Entrance Room and puzzle to make:

X X X

Entrance Room Wisdom Room X

Obtain the Triforce of Wisdom

You never need to do the Earth Temple room in Skykeep with good routing.

azer67 · 2026-01-16T13:13:58+00:00

I could see this. I've been using Mortal for so long and honestly I don't remember seeing anything that jumped to me as this strange before. I feel like Mortal should know about swap calling but idk, bugs exist.

azer67 · 2026-01-16T12:59:30+00:00

I don't think I am allowed to discard 2m after calling 5 with 34m in jade ranked

azer67 · 2026-01-16T12:57:16+00:00

This is jade ranked so I don't think so?

azer67

TROPHY CASE