Author: Flowingcloud
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Introduction
Omg, I had this draft ready for ages, but apparently, I never published this post even though I thought I did. Sorry, this is roughly 4 months late. I’ll try to do a one or two more episodes for Learning From Pros before the end of this year.
In this post, we’ll explore navigating a situation where you’re currently last and need points to catch up, and when situations where not taking tenpai is acceptable. From today’s pro, we’ll explore how learn breaking tenpai is a relatively common occurrence when there’s a lot of chance to improve either the wait or value of the hand if the drawing turn early enough.
Slight introduction for today’s featured pro: Yamada Doppo. Doppo-pro is the 7th Tenhou Meijin Tournament Champion, third Tenhoui, 3rd Shinki Champion, Hagiwara League 2nd Season Champion, and currently playing in the Saikouisen A2 League.
Doppo-pro is considered to be highly talented by Saikouisen and his peers. He became the 3rd Tenhoui in 2011, and remained an amateur until he joined Saikouisen in 2018 (at the age of 37). Thanks to his achievements up until then, he skipped ranks and immediately joined the Saikouisen B2 League. He currently runs his own business, “Mahjong Kingdom”, and has a mahjong bar called Mahjong Watch that I have personally visited and where I have met him in-person as well. Also, he has supported the mahjong community in Japan a lot by creating the “Mahjong Student Association” and is trying to spread mahjong among young students.
Gameplay
Match: https://www.youtube.com/live/IbytaECWupg [Channel membership required]
Ruleset: Saikouisen (aka-nashi; 10/30 uma)
Player: Yamada Doppo
South 1-0 (Non-Dealer; West Seat)
Doppo is currently in last by quite a huge margin on all the other players (15,000 points from third place). Although closing the gap in one hand is pretty unrealistic, Doppo gets a decent hand to attempt to bring the gap closer with hopefully a mangan-class hand.
Doppo draws 6m for iishanten. The hand looks like a pinfu-type hand with potential iipeikou. The shapes in the hand are relatively good and we have two decisions: go straightforward and cut 5s for a really wide iishanten, or cut 8m and leave the 5s floater to create a potential new block.
First, let’s take a look at Doppo’s hand. The main issue with his current hand is that he is lacking a pair. Although he might have a pair of 2p and 3p, those are tiles that are likely to not be pairs and tiles that you do not want to be pairs in this situation. Thus, Doppo is looking for pairs in his hand. When presented with the 34568m shape, the 3456m nobetan is an ideal pair looking shape, thus the 8m is not too particularly useful when searching for a pair candidate.
Meanwhile, let’s dissect the pros and cons of floating the solo 5s. The biggest thing would be the ability to create a new block and the hand’s ability to look at either 345 or 456 sanshoku. We have the 3456m to flex for either side of the sanshoku, so there’s no issue in drawing either 4s or 6s (Doppo doesn’t want 3s or 7s since that’ll put us with a bad wait which we want to avoid because he’ll lose pinfu).
Bad souzu shapes:
or 
Although 5s might be the easy path to quick victory, Doppo does not have the points that allow him to do so. In this situation, Doppo clearly needs to get as many points as possible, thus 8m should be the cut here even though 5s has the most acceptance for a quick riichi.
As much as we wanted sanshoku in the beginning, this is just too much to give up now that Doppo has a potential 3-sided final wait in both suits. The amount of pair acceptance in the manzu also increases by two unique tiles as well (2m, 3m, 5m, and 6m all form pairs) and almost many pinzu tiles will give Doppo the three-sided manzu wait. Although there might be some unfavorable tiles to draw, such as 1m, 7m and 4p, there are so many tiles to accept that give him a favorable tile to declare riichi with.
Example:
Draw: ; Discard: ; Wait: 
Draw: ; Discard: ; Wait: 
(1p takame iipeiko)
Note: Toimen (Tachibana) declared chii: 
Doppo is now tenpai, but not on a tile he wanted to draw. If Doppo were to riichi, he’d riichi on the 1p for 2p and 3p shanpon wait, however, with one 3p showing, there’s only three total tiles of his wait left in the wall. Although it is likely that both 2p are still in the wall with the one chance 3p that he sees, there is also a chance that they may be used as a pair in someone’s hand. On top of the fact that 2p and 3p are just safe at all to Doppo if he declares riichi, just riichi + tanyao with a bad wait is not a satisfactory riichi for him with his point situation.
If he declares riichi:
Thus, if we do not declare riichi, what should we do? There is a choice to just dama and shift when he draws a 7p for a 258p three-sided wait, or he can drop one of the manzu back and continue with the plan mentioned earlier. Declaring a three-sided furiten riichi in manzu wouldn’t be too bad for him as well since manzu looks good in the wall.
7p Draw Shift on Dama (Discarded 3p):
In this situation, Doppo decides to tsumogiri 7m based on the following reasons:
- If he pairs up one of the pinzu for a three-sided furiten riichi in the manzu, 147m looks better to tsumo than 258m even though that guarantees tanyao in the manzu shape.
- There’s pretty much also no situation now where he obtains tanyao since if he draws 2p or 3p, he’d just cut the other tile for pinfu instead of tanyao.
- The furiten 1m-4m-7m wait is slightly better since generally edge tiles like 1m are usually cut in the beginning. That means there’s likely a good amount of 1m left in the wall since they are hard to use.
- If he ends up on the nobetan manzu wait by drawing 1p, 4p or 7p, he’ll end up with a decent 2345m or 3456m nobetan shape. If Doppo decides to cut 2m, he’ll be limited to the 3456m nobetan shape with no flexibility (since 4567m is furiten) while cutting the 7m gives him the flexibility of 2345m or 3456m nobetan decision.
Note: Toimen (Tachibana) declared chii on 
, then discarded .
Thankfully for Doppo, his decision to break tenpai did not cost him too much time for him to reach tenpai once again, this time with a better tenpai as well. Doppo draws 1p for a confirmed iipeikou and now needs to decide between declaring a riichi with the 2345m (2-5m wait) vs 3456m (3-6m wait) nobetan shape. Now, Doppo can riichi with a good wait with value.
Possible Nobetan Shapes: vs
Final Wait: vs
Riichi + Iipeikou + Tsumo + Ippatsu/Ura would give Doppo a mangan tsumo that he desperately needs with his current point situation. He’d shorten the 15,000 point gap between him and 3rd place to just a mere 3,000 points if he wins a mangan tsumo.
The decision is relatively easy for Doppo since 2345m is just superior in every way in this situation:
- 2345m is more to the edge than 3456m and 2m-5m is more likely to come out from his opponents than 3m-6m.
- There are just simply more tiles for the 2m-5m wait than 3m-6m. Also, 3m was cut from his toimen after an noteworthy 789m chii. This type of call usually indicates that his toimen is tenpai, and oftentimes, a 3m cut is from a 233m or 334m. Either way, that would mean that there’s potentially three 3m gone from his 3456m nobetan wait, which is not what you want to see when 3m is generally the easier tile to ron on with this type of wait.
Example shapes 3m can be cut from perfect iishanten:
or
Doppo read the wall well this time and has FIVE remaining tiles of his nobetan wait buried in the wall in the second row which is amazing. This results in a huge ippatsu mangan tsumo for Doppo.
Riichi (1) + Ippatsu (1) + Tsumo (1) + Iipeikou (1) + Ura Dora (1) = 5 han (2,000/4,000)
Conclusion
If there is anything that you took away from this post, I would hope you understand that the quality of the wait is pretty important. Although Doppo had the same value in both tenpai situations (Riichi + Tanyao vs Riichi + Iipeikou), the quality of the wait plays a huge role on whether you would be able to tsumo or not.
By breaking tenpai that are achieved early and improving the quality of the wait (and/or value), you’ll most likely find yourself winning more hands, especially via tsumo. Doppo in our post today did a great job of balancing wait, speed, and value considering his last place point situation and even shocked the commentators and viewers watching him on stream. Even the commentator, Tomozoe Toshiyuki, thought that what he did was “cool” and I think so too.