Guide - Floating Tile Order

Initial discard order is something that comes up in nearly every hand. So, there's good value in improving it. I won't personally be putting a strong focus on it until month 4, but I've been reading about it in books and taking notes, so I'll post this now in case other people want to use it.

Analysis - Wait Reading against Open Hands

There are some popular theories about what waits are dangerous against certain calls. Let's take a look.

Guide - Replay Analysis

In this post, I'll go over the scripts I use to analyze replays, for anyone who also wants to try to do some analysis. Naturally, you'll need to know some amount of programming. We'll also look at a silly analysis I did which looks at the average composition of discards based on the hand's yaku.

Guide - Starting Mahjong

This guide is meant to get a new player to rough Mahjong competency. When learning a new skill, progress isn't a straight line. There's a sharp spike at the start that later levels out. In this article, we'll climb the spike, and then Riichi Book 1 and other resources will cover the rest.

Guide/Analysis - Defense Techniques: Kabe and One-Chance

Another common defense technique is kabe, or in English, wall or blockade. When you can see four of a tile, the player can't have that ryanmen, and sometimes it also removes the chance of kanchan. There's also one-chance, when you can see three of a tile. Let's check out how safe they are.

Guide - Defense Techniques: Aida Yon Ken

In this post, we'll talk about an uncommon defense technique called Aida Yon Ken, which refers to four-tile gaps in an opponent's discards, and check the Houou replays to see how much weight it holds.

Guide - Defense Techniques: Kuinobashi

Kuinobashi is a method for identifying a dangerous wait in an open opponent's hand. We'll go over the technique, as well as look at some data from the Houou replays to see if it has statistical merit.

Guide - Defense Techiques: Sotogawa and Matagi Suji

In this post, we'll look at sotogawa tiles and matagi suji, including checking Houou replays for some related statistics to back up the theory.

Guide - Extremely Minor Advantages: Lone Honours

When deciding between which lone guest wind or which lone dragon to discard, the choice may seem arbitrary, but there are tiny advantages you can gain based on your decisions. Let's take a look.

Guide - Counting Suji

Counting suji is a simple way to estimate the danger of any given discard, especially when you have reason to think the opponent has a ryanmen wait. This post will go over how to do it.

All Last Comebacks

It's important to know how big of a hand you need in order to make a comeback (gyakuten) in All Last. I've prepared tables of the common hand scores with what point difference they can overcome when you tsumo them. And of course, I have a tool for practicing them!

Tips for Learning the Score Table

The big hurdle when it comes to learning how to score hands in Riichi is, of course, memorizing the score table. It seems like a lot to learn, but there are several useful tricks that cut down the amount you need to learn drastically.

Calculating Shanten and Ukeire

After my last post, which included an exercise that requires you to calculate a hand's shanten number and ukeire count, some people asked me how you do that. It's not too complicated.