Week 3 - Push, Pull, Up, Down...

For the third week, I've been a bit careless and pushing when I shouldn't. So, this week has a focus on push/pull judgement.

Of course, a big part of knowing whether to push or pull requires you to know your hand's value. If you still can't score your hands, drill the warm-up from week one until you can! For the efficiency and HMS warm-ups, you can also start trying to guess what the end score of the hand will be when you see the haipai, and then see how close you were at the end of the hand.

For push/pull decision making in particular, Dasuke put together an Anki deck with the class A problems from chapter 1 of Fukuchi's push and pull book. Class A problems matter ten times as much as Class B, which matter ten times as much as Class C, so the A ones are the most fundamental.

I don't think I can legally share the deck due to copyright laws, but if you have the book yourself, you can make the same one. The problems are 1, 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 16, 18, 21, 23, 24, 25, 31, and 37. Fourteen cards. Just go through them at the rate Anki tells you to. I kind of wish there were more problems that involved an opponent's riichi in the set, but, one step at a time.

Another thing I've noticed that I'm bad at is recognizing which tile to decline tenpai with. For example, I had this hand:

Bad wait riichi with one dora isn't awful, but it's still very early in the hand, and this hand has a lot of potential. 123456p47s all improve the wait or value or both, if I cut the 7p. To work on this, I've decided to count the number of improvements I could get with the hand once I reach tenpai in the efficiency and HMS warm-ups. Feel free to do so as well, if you'd like.

So, the good news is I hit the highest R I've ever had, after a big win streak! The bad news is I then had a big loss streak, with games where I was hardly focused. There's the question of, if I feel like I'm not in a good mindset for Mahjong, should I still play? Dasuke's opinion on the matter:

The question of life. Regarding your tenhou account, you should stop playing. Regarding your skill, you should play through it.

Playing poorly is a great time to get games that show a lot of your weaknesses, including things you thought you had down to a key but are still lacking. Mahjong is habitual, if you have good habits, then they work for themselves. Days where you’re playing poorly or on tilt help find those areas where you're not firm enough and give you very specific hints on what to work on.

It’s not like you don’t make those mistakes at all even on regular days, just less of them (and less noticeable).

There’s an additional benefit of mental training as well. If you play in a tournament or something, you won’t have the choice to choose ‘good day’ or ‘bad day’, but regardless, you gotta play.

Jump in, and regardless of your results, focus on your practice and exercise, every game work on and find hints to become a better player than the you before that game.

So, I'll keep playing, even on the bad days where I can barely see the discards. I've been taking on a lot of mental strain with all of these warm-ups and requirements, but once they click, I'm sure I'll evolve!

Let's look at some of my push/pull judgments from my most recent game. Here's the link to the replay: https://tenhou.net/0/?log=2019052906gm-0089-0000-04932820&tw=1

Here, this hand is iishanten. If it reaches tenpai, it will be either riichi nomi, or riichi dora 1, both with a good wait. That's not really enough to fight against a riichi, even if it were already tenpai, so I should fold here. Especially with the dealer also pushing. The west is fairly safe to discard, since it's not their winds, but it's live, and not the safest tile in the hand. Cut 3m for now and see where it goes.

How about this one? Toimen just riichi'd, so it's the ippatsu turn. Shimocha is probably tenpai, but his hand also probably doesn't matter. It can't even be sandokou. Kamicha could have a honitsu hand. However, I'm dealer, with pinfu dora 2. With riichi, that's a 11600 ron, or mangan tsumo. With such value, pushing is fine. The 6p is nakasuji against both toimen and shimocha, too.

Shimocha's riichi was a few turns ago before this screenshot. After the riichi, I cut 9p, 1s, haku, 8p, and then this 6m. The 9p and 1s were not safe, however, they're relatively low-risk tiles, so pushing them in the hopes of tenpai isn't awful, and shory (7-dan) tells me I played fine in this hand. The 6m cut is pretty scary, and I've been told I should have cut it instead of the 1s. Though, that seems even scarier to me, hm. Rosti (6-dan) suggests 3s.

Okay, one more. Tanyao, dora 2, iishanten. One safe tile, discarding which breaks the hand. It's a mangan if I get to it, with a good wait. Critically, however, I'm last in South 3, so I effectively am forced to push. It'd be a more interesting question if it were an early round, and you could argue either way, so it likely comes down to playstyle. Another question is whether you discard the 3m, as I did, or the 6m, which is more dangerous but can give a 456 sanshoku chance. Dealing in is certain death, so even though we have to push, I think we should do so with more safety, with the 3m.

That's it from me for this week! Back to drilling!