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WEEKLY MAHJONG

By Tom Sloper (湯姆·斯洛珀)

June 10, The Year Of The Pig
Column #322

Mahjong Competition Rules ("Chinese Official"). If I gave titles to my columns, the title of this one would be "Frustration."

The OEMC is less than 3 weeks away. Two months ago I was unable to go to a Taiwan tournament because of passport renewal delays. Now I find myself on jury duty. If the defense wraps up the case early this week, and if the jury can complete deliberations within the week, my travel plans are go. All I can say is this travel uncertainty due to governmental matters is getting old.

Practiced with US OEMC teammates on MahjongTime last night, and had an experience with a different kind of frustration.

I'd just gone waiting with a pure hand. Or rather, I mean Full Flush. I've always been leery of purity because of bad experiences in the past. Pure hands can be very confusing. Often, there are many different tiles that can complete the waiting pure hand. But in this case, there are just two: 1B 3B. So naturally, my next pick was 5B, then two more people threw 5Bs and 7B. Talk about frustration. But it turned out OK in the end; I picked 1B. I had 3 flowers. What was my score? See #1, below.

Here's a game I played on the computer game Four Winds the other day.

When I looked at these tiles, my first thought was wow, great start for a Reversible hand. I knew I could throw 1B, 6D, or any crak. Not long after, I had:

What would you throw now? #2, below.

Having punged 3D, I had a quandary. What would you throw? #3, below.

Remember, today's theme is frustration. Someone chowed my discard, then threw the tile I would've needed if I'd gone for the one-way wait. I picked and threw 7C and somebody won on it. Dang!

1. It scored 28. Full Flush, Pung Terminals, 3F. 36 from everyone. Sweet!

2. I threw Wh because without it, I could have a 2-way call on one set rather than two different 1-way waits. With a Wh, I have to pick it. With 445, I can chow or pung, getting me to the wait faster.

3. I chose 5B so I could wait two ways for an all pung reversible hand. 4B would've given me a one-way call.

麻雀

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© 2007 Tom Sloper. All rights reserved.