Week 7 - Merry Christmas

Christmas is tomorrow, so I'll do the update a bit early this week. Speeding up the calls felt good, but there's one specific type of call I'm still torn on.

This Week

I ran into some bad luck at the start of this week, but it mostly turned around. Maka still rated me the highest in those games, so I can say it wasn't my fault. Making progress towards the Gold Room.

Here are my stats now. My call rate has gone up a bit:

On my last game today, Christmas Eve, I even got this highlight thingy:

Now, within this calling schema, there is one mystery to me:

Yakuhai pons with bad hands.

The books suggest not doing them. Yuumi Uotani's book, zeRo's book, and Nemata's book. They all say to not call them when your hand is slow and valueless. The criteria I wrote down was two of [Dealer, Good Shapes, Safety, 3 han]. However, Tenhoui do them with none of these being true.

I did some field research. Here's ないおトン calling a yakuhai from a bad 3-shanten hand:

In the past analysis about the Tenhoui, he had a 37% call rate. And here's gousi, who had a 30% call rate back then, calling a yakuhai from a slightly better 3-shanten hand:

（≧▽≦）had a 38% call rate and will call seemingly any yakuhai. I think I've only seen him skip a yakuhai pon once or twice. Here he calls from an extremely bad 3-shanten and cuts the south wind:

Maka also seems to enjoy doing lots of yakuhai pons. Anyway, the reasons for this seem to be:

• The hand gets hard to win if you don't pon
• You might get lucky and have your hand progress to a win
• You can just keep safe tiles later if the hand doesn't progress

That's all well and good, but in my current state, I can't really read the speed of the other players. That might come in month 4. Tenhoui also have much better push/pull and defense abilities than I do. They can thrive much better in risky situations, generally.

So, the question is, do I want to do these kinds of pons? Well, yeah, of course I want to. I love calling. The real question is, should I do these kinds of pons?

Maybe I'll split the difference. The books say to do it with two of those being true, Tenhoui do it with zero, so I'll appeal to both the books and my desires, and do it with one. If I'm dealer, have a fast hand, or have a valuable hand, I'll be allowed to pon.

Next Week

It's our final calling week. I have the calling system down fairly well now. It's time to add in a few extras on top to round it out.

First is increasing the honitsu rate a bit. zeRo's book says to think about honitsu immediately if you have a yakuhai pair. Maka also loves honitsu. With a yakuhai added, it's at least 3900, and progressing to it involves holding a lot of honors, so you have plenty of safety.

Second will be calls that mess with riichis. What might those be? How about ippatsu breaks, are those good?

This breaks ippatsu, 23p are safe tiles here, and this moves me towards a flush, but Maka still doesn't like it. From a bit of research, it seems for the most part, calling solely to break ippatsu is bad. Tenhoui also don't seem to do it, but they do always turn calls back on after someone calls a riichi.

So, what else? Haitei shifts. If we want to reduce the riichi player's potential value, we can call to move the last tile away from them. Or, if our rival is the dealer, we can call to move the last tile to the riichi player, to try to make them pay out a bigger dealer penalty. Tenhoui do do this. Here's ないおトン begging his shimocha to shift the haitei tile: https://www.youtube.com/live/nNvnLQFmKlE?si=H28ss6Uk4dAUxPnB&t=2584

This is relatively easy to read, as it shows you the exact number of tiles remaining in the middle of the screen. If, on your draw, it's a multiple of four, you have the last draw. Add one for each player around the table. 5, 9, 13 is shimocha, 6, 10, 14 is toimen, 7, 11, 15 is kamicha.

Another type of call is calling to skip your own turn. If you're tenpai, and can call to stay in tenpai, you can avoid the chance of drawing a risky tile. Here's an example from a yu_song video, where he could call the 7s and discard the 1s instead of drawing a tile:

Here, it has the added bonus of breaking ippatsu, which maybe toimen is relying on to get the points needed to escape fourth. 1s is pretty safe, but not entirely safe. It's likely safer than a random tile from the wall, and we can still fold with 2s afterwards if we draw something scary. I haven't seen how Maka feels about these kinds of calls.

There's also skipping the riichi player's draw with a pon. When the riichi is to your left, you can call a pon from across to skip their turn. This is probably in the same tier as ippatsu breaks, where you shouldn't do it for the sake of it. I've seen Tenhoui consider doing it, but never seen them do it.

So, for the final calling week, my task is:

• Think about honitsu more
• Calculate who has the last draw as we enter third row
• Consider whether calls while someone is in riichi have any use outside of advancing my hand

As for bluffs, those aren't even gonna do anything at this level. Though, there was a funny moment in a yu_song video where he got absolutely mentally destroyed by a dora pon bluff which showed me their value. As for assists, those don't even exist below Throne. Let's not think about those yet.