Week 5 - Calling Month Starts Now!

I have the beginnings of a calling system now. Considering my previous playstyle, maybe it's more of a "restriction" than a "system." Next step, drilling it into habit.

This Week

My goal for this week was to develop a system to guide my calling through the help of some of the strategy books I have. Kawamura's book ended up being quite specific. It didn't really give overarching advice, and focused more on specific situations. The first 60 pages are all for All Last, for example.

"All Last. Win = 1st. Very early, as non-dealer. What tiles will you call?"

So, instead, I read through the calling sections of 現代麻雀技術論 (roughly, "Theory of Modern Mahjong Technique"). That has much more general recommendations, though goes into all sorts of cases. In my notes, I boiled them roughly down into this:

Click to enlarge.

Obviously, this is only for normal positions. If you're a distant fourth, calling for 2000 won't help you, and if it's All Last, calling for anything can be good. But, for the most part, this will be my criteria for whether a tile is good to call or not. Of course, you need at least the possibility of a yaku to do these.

This basically turns the previous "Is my hand fast?" "Does my hand have value?" etc guidelines into actual numbers, so I like it. "Is my hand safe?" mostly comes into play with calling for yakuhai hands, calling the other shapes before the yakuhai itself when the hand is bad. Then, you can use the pair to fold if things get dangerous.

Some people would consider these quite fast. An 8-dan player I know said they would add 2 to basically all the numbers. But, in the book by triple tenhoui Futoshi Watanabe (ないおトン), there's a page titled "How to study Mahjong to become strong," and in it he wrote, "To start, just try accepting the advice." He even referenced 現代麻雀技術論 specifically in that page (though the website version rather than the book) as something that influenced him.

There are also warnings against taking in too much at once, or your playstyle destabilizing if you don't have your fundamentals down beforehand, etc. Don't get carried away.

But, in any case, even if it's a bit fast, there's decent wiggle room for correct play in Mahjong. Both the Kagashi version of Naga, with 40.6% call rate, and the Hibakari version, with 23.2% callrate, outperform the original version that reached 10-dan. They only agree with each other like 80% of the time. I'm fine with being more on the Kagashi side.

Stats of the five Naga versions

... I wonder if the traits of those snakes match up with being high/low call rate Mahjong players...

Anyway, back to me. Here are my stats from some South games in the Silver room. They're quite normal. Extremely normal, even.

This week, I had an amusing replay where Maka repeatedly complained about me calling riichi. My rules for dama are pretty simple:

• If it's a bad wait riichi only hand, you probably shouldn't even take the tenpai (unless dealer).
• If there's no yaku, riichi.
• If it's a mangan, but riichi can up it to haneman, call riichi in the East rounds. (ie, don't riichi 3 han 60 fu mangans)
• If you're waiting on a safe tile from a riichi player, and you're not obviously pushing, dama.
• If the round's about to end anyway, dama.
• If you're first in South 4 with a yaku, dama.

現代麻雀技術論 also suggests staying dama with a mangan waiting on a kanchan for 456 tiles. Maybe I'll adopt that at some point, it's not a big change.

Anyway, here's Maka getting mad at me.

Tanyao, pinfu, dora dora. Four han. Maybe iipeikou. Riichi makes the 7s tsumo or 4s ron haneman. It's still East, so riichi roar.

Honitsu, dora, chun. Five han. This is a 3-6-9 wait. Not safe against the riichi, and I'm obviously pushing with the 5s. Riichi makes the ron haneman.

Junchan, sanshoku, dora. Six han. The 4m out is no yaku. With riichi, 1m is 12000 and 4m is 2000 on ron, but I'll accept the 2000 point win in this point situation.

Next Week

With the information gathered from 現代麻雀技術論, I can now develop the calling training plan. For easy reference, I'll post my notes again.

The next three weeks will go like this:

1. Foundational Calling. That's the stuff that isn't highlighted. Turn 8 for random 1-shantens, turn 6 for 2-shantens, etc. This is a big restriction for me, you know?
2. Adjustments. That's the stuff in the green and red boxes. Times you can call sooner, and times you must call later.
3. Bonus Calls. Atoatozuke, bluffs, and so on. Stuff that'll come from reading the other books. I wonder if Maka likes bluffs. These don't come up a lot, so this week will probably be mainly some extra time to drill in the calling criteria.

Now, all of these are defining the earliest time you can call. There's nothing about when it's too late to call. But, to me, that falls into the realm of push/pull. That'll be in the next month.

Anyone who knew me in the past knows I love calling. This tempering will probably be quite beneficial to me.