Since this site also acts as my blog, I thought I’d right my tournament reflections here as well from now on. Overall, Riichi Nomi Open (RNO) was a very enjoyable experience other than a blazing heat that made me melt faster than an ice cream bar.
Tournament Gameplay
Day 1: 4-3-1-4-3
Day 2: 1-4-1-1-3
Honestly, Day 1 of the tournament went horribly for me. I failed to convert most of my riichis, and I often got chased and dealt in. I won 6 out of 19 riichis (31% riichi win rate). Most of my riichis were relatively textbook and I could not do much about them. Overall, I would not say I am satisfied with how I played, since my games went so badly, but after further thinking about my games, there really was not too much I could do except for a micro-decision here or there.
Day 2, however, was a different story. Perhaps I was complacent with the fact that I already have “ARA buxs”, but I have honestly never really encountered a situation where I was actually coming back from over -60 pts. I had an insane Hanchan 6 pop off where I ended up 74k first, and I was slightly in the running to obtain a top 32. Maybe due to the fact that I was playing in a ruleset with red 5s, but I was dealing into too many random open tanyao dora 3~4 then I would prefer. I honestly believe that I could have possible dodged around 75% of open mangan+ deal-ins, but the mindset that I needed to play faster to compensate for slow players really hurt my gameplay quite a lot. Also, I was just mentally still checked out from Day 1 even though I had a chance in Day 2, and learning to readjust this mindset for future tournaments will be crucial for my future improvement of the game.
A positive point was that I was pushing much more than I usually would. There are not many opportunities to test out a pushing-playstyle in a competitive tournament and it worked out better than I thought it would with red 5s, probably due to the fact that red 5s inflation hits hard.
Cool hands I got in the tournament but I never converted cause I was down bad day 1:
Sanshoku Junchan with tanki 9m
Honitsu Chiitoi with aka 5p
etc. (like 5 more haneman hands)
How to Improve
My next tournament will most likely be North American Open (NAO) where the only thing that’ll matter for me there is getting first. Since all I need is to make top 32 (which is currently top 30% as of writing), I should play much more controlled mahjong with paying much more attention to those sneaky open 3 han or mangan hands. Raw point gain will also be much more crucial with uma being small, so mangan and higher hands will probably result more deliberation whether to push/fold. The most important point for me will most likely be my mental state. Even if I take bad games in the beginning, I should try my best to just play every game as its own independent game and work my way slowly up.
Overall Results
I still placed 71st out of 203 people which places me in the top 35 percentile. Its still a pretty good score considering how badly and unlucky my Day 1 went, but I’m pretty sure a top 32 would have been achievable if I played in my top class condition. Nonetheless, I hope to put up a strong showing at NAO as it’ll probably be my last WRC qualifier tournament I’ll be attending before the January WRC Qualifier Tournament in NYC. Time for me to get into the aka-nashi brain again.