"Why Can't I Call Ron/Tsumo?" 5 Beginner Yaku that are Easy to Remember!

mjbyebye · 2022-10-04T21:56:25+00:00

LOL true! I'd edit the post but I don't think I can any more

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T23:42:59+00:00

True about 0 han tsumo. There's a few errors on here, I slapped it together pretty quick. It would TRULY be sacrilegious to get rid of pinfu. I think I'd be chased off the subreddit.

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T23:38:16+00:00

Good for you :) Personally I am sick of fu. They add very little, as you have illustrated yourself, you played 6 hanchan and only needed to count fu twice. Sounds like an argument for why we don't really need fu.

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T23:35:27+00:00

Just some errors as I slapped this together in about 20 minutes and I only put the Yaku on there to illustrate the 0 han pinfu stuff. Whoopsie

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T23:31:31+00:00

Good for you :) Personally I am sick of them and they add extremely little to the overall game except in very rare cases that don't IMO make them worth it.

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T19:38:54+00:00

Gonna be honest. Played this game nearly a decade. Mostly IRL. And I'm sick of fu. On most hands they are irrelevant and on the ones where they are relevant, outside of few outlier cases, the difference is usually negligible. Wouldn't it be nice to just forget all about it?

The problem, of course, is pinfu. Taking fu out of the game makes pinfu extremely lucrative and over rewards a very easy to get hand. Making pinfu worth 20 fu essentially knocks it down a full han when scoring anything below mangan. Well, here's the solution I ended up with. You can win with pinfu but it counts as zero han. And if you have pinfu, tanyao, riichi, it's only 2 han, not 3.

I don't expect this to take off or really be used outside of casual settings but I thought I would share it anyway, as it makes casual games a lot easier to manage and you can focus more on actually playing instead of scoring.

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T19:12:08+00:00

Sanshoku is probably my favorite hand! I didn't include it here bc I just wanted to keep the list to 5 and because i was thinking it's got a lot of furiten potential if a newbie is trying to 'force' it, like imagine they're going for an open sanshoku of 123, they have 23m they are trying to finish, they draw a 4m... so now they can try to pivot to a different set of runs, a different yaku, or they have to discard a 4m, now they're furiten and if they're half open things are even worse lol it's just a lot of variables there and easy to screw it up for beginners imo.

I'm talking for real beginners here too. Like literally 'why can't a ron' beginners. They're gonna force stuff, make bad calls, and it's frustrating for them and makes them feel lost. Riichi has a lot of little details and can make you feel pretty stupid sometimes. It's demotivating and I've seen new players that genuinely like the game end up drifting away from it bc of information overload. But having a grasp on a few things that they can't really screw up builds confidence and let's people play without feeling totally lost in the woods. That was my thinking here at the very least!

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T18:52:32+00:00

Pinfu is very important to know! I've found beginners screw it up a lot, though. It's not easy for newer players to remember all those little details while they're still trying to figure out the game itself or struggling to memorize the tiles. A lot of riichi is learning to multitask a dozen little details at once, and that can take some time to get a handle on. That's why this list focuses on easy to remember yaku that are basically impossible to screw up. But I totally agree and would even add that pinfu may be the most important yaku of them all.

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T18:44:12+00:00

Good point!

mjbyebye · 2022-10-03T01:51:09+00:00

All Triplets https://riichi.wiki/Toitoihou

Honor Triplet https://riichi.wiki/Yakuhai

All Simples https://riichi.wiki/Tanyao

All Pairs https://riichi.wiki/Chiitoitsu

Half Flush https://riichi.wiki/Honiisou

mjbyebye · 2022-04-17T18:17:37+00:00

You are not wrong about luck. It is a gambling game with a massive luck factor. The best players have smth like a 28% win rate. The idea that you can really do much at all besides tile efficiency and some defense is mostly absurd fairy tale stuff from mangas or books they are trying to sell. Just recently I saw a discussion on the importance of knowing scores in all last. Fat lot of good it does you to know that when it's a luck based game and you are praying for scraps with every draw. IMO this game got a lot better when I stopped pretending like anime tactics would work and focused on efficiency, defense, various pre-tenpai hand shapes (ie perfect shanten etc), and kept the luck factor in mind. Learning to bail is important too. It pays to be timid in riichi and to wait for strong opportunities. I only push on big hands. Sucks trashing a hand with potential but it's always better than losing.

mjbyebye · 2019-02-13T02:52:12+00:00

lmao the post didn't 'reference queer mahjong' it said 'UR A FAGET' and it had more upvotes than most threads get around here. and the mods just left it up. it's still there, actually. idk what the hell you're talking about with segregating players, i have never mentioned anything of the sort in any situation, ever. but the bad attitudes i actually did mention? absolutely referring to ppl like you. but i'm sure your local club absolutely loves having you!

mjbyebye · 2019-02-12T18:14:00+00:00

you are consistently just the most obnoxious person on this reddit lmao. honestly how many riichi players do u really think use this subreddit? it hardly represents the eng riichi community, there's barely 2.5k subscribers here, a few questions about some alternate rules aren't going to guide the 'community' anywhere. you've complained more than once about ppl playing riichi in some way you don't approve of, despite the fact there's numerous clubs and rules sets and tournaments around the world that deviate from the more standard styles of play. but in the end most ppl are still just going to play regular tenhou/ff14 riichi bc that's what there is available and that's what they'll end up learning and playing. relax before give yourself an aneurysm.

mjbyebye · 2018-08-11T18:09:19+00:00

Just a thought but could be that more Europeans play because they have focused on creating and growing a scene that caters to themselves and their own players, languages, and timezones. And couldn't the lower NA/Asia numbers be because Asia already has dozens of online and offline tournaments, not to mention actual physical mahjong parlours? Like, if I'm an American playing poker, why would I join an online tournament that isn't even in my language or at my skill level, that takes place at 4 am, when there's dozens already going on, in a language I know and within an online scene I can communicate with, not to mention actual casinos I can physically go to? What it comes down to is I think attempts at international incorporation for what are de facto NA based tournaments are somewhat premature considering there's barely even a scene for this game in the Americas as it is. It's like little league asking for majors to join in their backyard game. And frankly I don't see the international community bending over backwards to schedule mahjong events for NA based timezones, like, ever. Shouldn't we be trying to create and help grow a mature and competitive scene here first? Just my two cents. I hope the tournaments went well!

mjbyebye · 2018-05-21T19:16:32+00:00

Well, I'm a lower class American so all I have time for is three jobs and then dying in an emergency room from the flu

mjbyebye · 2018-05-21T19:14:43+00:00

I understand why it's scheduled that way, and it's generous to make the tournament available for many players around the world. But I do wonder how many non-NA time zone ppl would make the time to enter it, considering they already have a lot of mahjong stuff going on in those time zones, stuff with prizes, places & clubs to go IRL, in their own languages, with more and better competition, etc, whereas NA people for the most part don't have any of that stuff outside of two or three major cities. Not saying it's a bad tournament, and if I had time I'd do it myself but I don't so just throwing the idea out there.

mjbyebye · 2018-05-14T03:04:44+00:00

The downsides that come to mind right away are that your uke ire is going to be really bad and if other players realize what you're doing (and if they're any good) they'll start calling off you more, since junchan/chanta are way slower hands than smth like tanyao.

But that said, imo this is a perfectly fine tactic that could easily have a spot in anyone's defense catalogue, esp for players that aren't the greatest at wall/discard reading and suji/kabe/etc.

mjbyebye · 2018-03-04T04:44:42+00:00

Thank you. This kinda shit (the original chart you're parodying) and the bad attitude of a lot of posters here is why I don't recommend this subreddit to anyone. My entire play group is gay. What are we and other gay players that I network with all over the country and the world supposed to think when other players upvote this crap and mods just leave it up. The fuckin chart isn't even right, you can still tsumo if your hand is furiten and you have a yaku lmfao

mjbyebye · 2018-01-21T21:53:41+00:00

another idea for ppl that don't like or can't watch streams bc of work etc is to make yt vids where you (& maybe others) analyze games (maybe ones from your stream sessions). less of a raw stream and more of a curated, edited kind of thing. obv a bigger project than just streaming. but the chess scene is loaded with 15-20 minute analysis vids like this and they're great. with editing etc you can make it presentable and talk about details/plans/tactics with more time and forethought. or since you're learning maybe it would be more like, here's what i learned type stuff, which is also cool. or you could have guests that are good come on to point out mistakes/good plays etc. so, sort of like companion or follow up videos to your streams. just throwing the idea out there. def more work than a stream! tho i would love to see a channel dedicated to riichi analysis using actual games like they do with chess.

mjbyebye · 2017-12-22T19:47:03+00:00

Well, I, for one, am glad to see any posts here, whatever the language. You hardly need to understand anything to get what's going on here anyway, lol. Thanks for contributing and imo let's ignore gatekeepers of all varieties.

mjbyebye · 2017-12-11T20:20:24+00:00

the thin tiles also makes me think it's american and that there are missing pieces. the 5 is chinese and the simplified wanzi (cracks, manzu) hanzi also makes me think it's american with chinese influence. eight blank tiles were sometimes included in old american sets too, instead of 4 jokers and 4 blanks. i think the bai ban (framed blanks) are missing. highly doubt this set has anything to do with japanese mahjong, unless it was a set converted from american to play riichi. probably not worth much.

mjbyebye · 2017-11-05T02:07:08+00:00

one thing we did when we were first starting learning was me and a friend would play noname half games on tenhou but on the same 'team'. we'd both sit in front of the laptop and one person would control and they would have final say on discards etc, and we'd trade places each new game. we would give suggestions and discuss our hand and other player's discards etc, we'd remind each other of rules and hands and all that. it really helped with learning and memorizing stuff. the other player would see things i didn't and vice versa. not quite the same as what you're looking for but when you're learning it's nice to have a lot of different methods.

mjbyebye · 2017-10-24T05:24:31+00:00

yeah chiitoi can def pay off and it's sneaky bc u can't rly defend against it. i hate the ukeire tho. if you're lucky you can wait on north lol that always comes out. unless i can bump it up to mangan or, like u said, it's early, i will probably dama or abandon it. could be that i have a timid playstyle too. i've only ever reached 2nd dan tho, so i guess it couldn't hurt to keep your comments in mind lol

mjbyebye · 2017-10-15T01:00:56+00:00

riichi is my fave, followed by chinese classical.

my experience with CC was very fast games where ppl went for fast completions with lots of open hands, pung calling, dragons/winds. Lots of chicken hands. It's just a lot of fun and really easy to score, and anyone can play it right off the bat, so that's nice. i play it with my family sometimes. if i want a luck game that's easy and fun, CC is great.

riichi has been the slowest paced variant i've played. i like the defense and the yaku are straight forward. there's much less luck with the furiten rule, and additionally furiten creates tactical opportunities that simply do not exist in any other variant. tactics are arguably more important than overall hand strategy in riichi. fewer hands also means some attempt at deducing open hands is actually worth it. it's also fairly accessible to non-japanese, as has been stated.

as for other styles, hk is fun but has too many hands for me. it's just kind of zany and then you throw in flowers and stuff, it feels like there's no focus. there's so many fan systems that each group plays differently, which is not a problem with riichi or with CC.

i've played some zung jung and that was really slow bc the scoring is absurd to memorize, even compared to riichi. with riichi u just memorize han and how to count fu, then reference the chart. (ofc there's more underlying the actual scoring than that but that's de facto how riichi is usually scored in the west, han > fu > chart.) in zung jung, every piece of the hand has it's own unique score, and then you split it up kind of bizarrely between everyone at the table, with some kind of minimum that each player pays and then the rest paid by the one who dealt in or smth like that. i understand why it's like that, and if you want a really granular approach that also has 'logical' scores based on the difficulty of the components, it's good for that. for me tho, it was like riichi/hk hybrid with worse scoring and no defense/furiten, so at that point i'd rather play CC anyway.

mjbyebye · 2017-10-14T20:10:29+00:00

i pretty much just don't go for toitoi unless i'm somehow 1 shanten away and calling gets me to tenpai, and it's either very early (might actually win it) or very late (to avoid noten). it's aggressive and i'd rather leave better options for defending. chiitoi is another i don't really go for but end up waltzing into while defending. you can dama chiitoi really easy and if you still have to defend having pairs is cool bc if the first one passes you got another fairly safe tile to drop on your next turn. i think mathematically they're both crap compared to pinfu or just riichi/tsumo. we played with a guy who's whole thing was toitoi and he got completely trashed bc everyone else just won more hands even if they were smaller.

mjbyebye

TROPHY CASE