Week 3 - Graduation

Another week down, the last week of pure preparation. I decided to do a daily journal thing this time.

As a reminder, these were the activities for each time slot:

• Morning: Read WWYD301
• Evening: Try to turn the checkpoints from the last post into habits
• Night: Try to remember the last tedashi of each player

This Week

Day 1

• Morning: I've now read the first 150 problems at least twice each.
• Evening: The bots play very fast. It's hard to check what tiles I have that are safe vs each of them, without relying on Mahjong Soul's hint system. I also struggle to quickly count the suji.
• Night: This takes my entire, complete concentration. I cannot look at the hand, I must stare at the discard pool. I've taken to a strategy where I visualize a triangle connecting the last three tedashis of each player, then move the vertices as new ones are discarded. This works reasonably well and I can notice the otoshis, but does struggle when tiles are called. Tracking using numbers took too long, I couldn't keep up, and noting the previous one was also hard.

Day 2

• Morning: Did all 301 once, and up to 180 twice. The last 60 were relatively easy for me.
• Evening: Since suji counting tripped me up, I drilled that by clicking new hand repeatedly in the defense section of the efficiency trainer.
• Night: I've developed a few shortcuts. I can treat the first discarded tiles as always being tedashi, so I don't need to rush to pay attention at the start of the game. And I don't really need to put in effort if every tile was tedashi, only once they tsumogiri do I need to start trying.

Day 3

• Morning: Was planning on reviewing 180~240 of WWYD301, but I could still remember the problems, so I did up to 60 in WWYD300 instead. They went quite smoothly.
• Evening: "Are others folding?" is always a no against these bots. I added "Sanshokus?" to the round start check. In Row 2, "How many han is this hand worth?" to remind me if I should be keeping safe tiles. In Row 3, "Visible doras?" There's a lot to think about, huh?
• Night: Experimented with moving my gaze to the hand when drawing a tile, but this frequently leads to me forgetting the last tedashi for the players. Maybe I should start with just remembering one player, then I can focus on the dealer or people with scary calls as needed.

Day 4

• Morning: Did up to 120 in WWYD300. I'm not sure if this book is easier, or if I'm just better. 301 is titled "joseki" and 300 is titled "masterwork"...
• Evening: Row 2 continues to be the hardest checkpoint. Checking the safe tiles is getting a bit easier.
• Night: Focusing on one player while also watching the hand is starting to work, but it's still easy to get distracted and lose track.

Day 5

• Morning: Reviewed 180~240 in WWYD301.
• Evening: I've got the easiest bits locked down now I feel. My biggest issue so far has been not consciously recognizing that we've reached the second row.
• Night: Trying to drill in a minimum of, when a tedashi is noticed, also looking at the previously discarded tile. As it doesn't matter whether the previous was tsumogiri or tedashi for otoshi purposes, this will at least catch the easily visible ones, even if I lose track.

Day 6

• Morning: Very sneezy this morning. Did up to 150 in WWYD300, tending to my nose after each page. In the afternoon, had some more free time, and did up to 180.
• Evening: Switched the tedashi practice to this block for today. I think referencing the previous tile after a tedashi will be sufficient for me to be happy. I also feel like it'll usually be fine to consider honors that seem to be between an otoshi as tsumogiri.
• Night: This was to be my last day playing against bots, and what an ending. The employee at YoStar that hand picks my tiles went above and beyond for that one.

Being up 50k in S4 isn't when you want to see this.

I think doing both the checkpoints and tedashi training this week was ambitious. They were both very hard, high effort things. Focusing on one fully this week and the other fully next week probably would have been better.

Still, I did make progress. I can now notice the more obvious otoshis, and I've got a few bits of the checkpoints ingrained.

Next Week

The last week of the "Fundamentals" month. I have WWYD300 to finish, and then I'll review starting from 120. The first batch of problems were pretty easy to me, so they have relatively less review value.

The tedashi awareness, I'll leave as is for now. Doing it as I do now is probably 80% of the way there.

The checkpoints still need more work, so I'll dedicate both sessions to training them for this final week.

It's also time to graduate from playing against bots. They were good for having a low-pressure environment to develop habits in, but they really are quite weak. They do furiten riichi all the time, they never fold, they take forever to make hands. I think I've even seen them pass up a ron now and then. Having more pressure and logical play is important now, especially for the more defensive checkpoints.

Mahjong Soul keeps track of your stats when playing against bots. I assume the high average turns is because so many of my hands win, even the slow ones.

The second place was from busting someone with auto-ron on.

I also wasn't entirely sure how Maka worked. It said 10 analysis attempts remaining, but I never looked deeper into it. Apparently, it's 10 analyses per day. I was thinking about how to ration it out over a week of play but it seems I can just analyze everything.

Each of my sessions is an hour long, so for the evening and night ones, it'll probably be one game and one analysis to check my efficiency decisions, unless there's some early bust. Of course, doing my best to follow the checkpoints and maintain my current habits throughout, such as watching the tedashis.

Last time I played on Mahjong Soul, years ago, I got out of Bronze in like, 8-10 games. People should be better now, right...?