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Does anyone here have experience with the American Riichi League? I'm considering signing up but I'm not sure about the time commitments it's asking for. It sounds like it's 4 South games once every two weeks? Is that correct? Do you get any control over which days those games fall on?Eeepies posted:I made Expert on Mahjong Soul!
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Jan 4, 2022 19:17
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Got hooked on playing Riichi Mahjong a bit before new years, have managed to crawl up to adept level on Mahjong Soul. I want to believe this means I'm not a complete scrub anymore, but I suspect it really means I'm about to find people who actually know how to play the game and get completely wrecked.
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Jan 9, 2022 07:15
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Silver Room can have anyone from Adept 1 to Expert 3, so it has quite the spread of player skill. Get ready to go from matches full of people who have no idea what they're doing to matches full of people who will effortlessly wreck you with little in between.
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Jan 9, 2022 19:08
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SixteenShells posted:Do you get any control over which days those games fall on? As a matter of fact, yes. You’re assigned people to play with, and then it’s up to you and those 3 other people to figure out when to play.
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Jan 9, 2022 19:23
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When I got to adept (the first time, lol) the two skills I now recognize I didn't have were: 1) having a sense of how likely it was to build certain hands, how valuable those hands were likely to be. This also impacts when its best to just go for a tanyao vs something meatier, and when it's worth it to open your hand. 2) how best to fold a hand, and more importantly, when to realize you should. This ties into the above, since it needs a sense to how threatening opposing hands are. Building both skills is basically just a matter of playing regularly, and yeah, expect to get wrecked a lot.
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Jan 9, 2022 19:27
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zedar posted:Got hooked on playing Riichi Mahjong a bit before new years, have managed to crawl up to adept level on Mahjong Soul. I want to believe this means I'm not a complete scrub anymore, but I suspect it really means I'm about to find people who actually know how to play the game and get completely wrecked. (Also if it helps, it's the format that most people play in person, so it'd get you adjusted to that flow as well if you ever wanted to play in real life). Tempura Wizard fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 9, 2022 21:04
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After watching Minimattt for a while I decided to join up a month or so ago and have been having a blast. Made it up to Expert 1 so far. I basically climbed effortlessly until Adept 3, at which point I got stuck in a win/loss/win/loss pattern for ~60 games until I finally got a streak to get to Expert. I also played a round of sanma yesterday where it went: Hand 1: I ron a player for 3900 points. Hand 2: Player 3 ron's me for 36,000 points. Hand 3: Player 3 ron's the other player for another 36,000 points. Seeing a game end with the point totals being -5K, 2k, 107k* was insane. Bronze room Sanma everybody!   *: numbers not 100% accurate, I'd have to go back and look. Point being, goofy nonsense.
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Jan 9, 2022 21:14
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Schwarzwald posted:When I got to adept (the first time, lol) the two skills I now recognize I didn't have were: I think this second point is what I need to start working on, identifying the point where a given hand enters endgame and determining at that point if my hand is beyond redemption and I should just enter "don't get ronned" mode. I've been playing south games in adept and I'm at least maintaining a pretty steady rating, but I think that's just been a few lucky hands keeping me afloat. At least I'm reaching the point where identifying yaku in my hand is becoming a lot more automatic, early on I spent way too much time building hands only to be unable to ron/tsumo because I didn't have anything actually going on.
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Jan 10, 2022 00:10
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zedar posted:I'm at least maintaining a pretty steady rating, but I think that's just been a few lucky hands keeping me afloat. This is a more viable strategy than you may realize. That is, you don’t want to be depending on getting a lucky yakuman every once in a while. But! You can steadily increase your rank by going into each match with the mindset of “if I can win just one mangan hand and then never deal in to anyone ever, I’ll be happy” you’ll get 2nd place more often than you get 3rd, and rarely ever 4th.
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Jan 10, 2022 03:46
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I got to expert by dealing in once every 4-5 hands, and it's something I'm desperately trying to continue in the gold rooms. Winning once per round is not 100% guaranteed and is not something you have control over, but knowing when to fold is definitely controllable. I'm actually wondering whether it's good to overfold though, because you might be learning a bad habit?
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Jan 10, 2022 12:56
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there's 2 degrees of folding: - breaking apart completed sets in your hand and giving up on winning the hand (betaori) - trying to play safe while not abandoning victory (mawashi) there's a lot of push-fold theory that goes into which strategy to pursue, but a common gold room mistake is to hard fold when you either have low risk tiles to cut or the hand value is worth it.
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Jan 10, 2022 14:31
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FAT BATMAN posted:As a matter of fact, yes. You’re assigned people to play with, and then it’s up to you and those 3 other people to figure out when to play. Oh, awesome! That flexibility makes it a lot easier. Thanks for the info. Now I just need to figure out Tenhou.
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Jan 13, 2022 17:05
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Playing 3 player south and i play really badly so i end up with 2800 points in south 3 while others have 35800 and 66400 Then i ron with green dragon seat wind all triplets half flush 18000 points and next round tsumo with four concealed triplets. 3 player mahjong in silver room is madness.
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Jan 19, 2022 12:56
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Sanma is hilariously stupid fun. Just don't let it ruin your 4p instincts.
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Jan 19, 2022 13:01
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Anyone tried Riichi City yet? Feels like they just stole Majsoul's interface and put in slightly jankier animations. Keeping an eye on it for sure, but I don't think it'll dethrone MJS anytime soon.
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Jan 20, 2022 23:24
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It's a cheap knock-off MJS right now, but I'm always in favor of more competition. In other mahjong server news, Japanese professional organization JPML recently announced during a livestream that they have struck a deal with the creator of Tenhou to completely redesign the old Ron2 server.
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Jan 21, 2022 06:57
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It's been a long time coming, but I finally ranked up to Expert I on Mahjong Soul a couple days ago. For those keeping track, I ranked into Adept I about seven months ago, took 122 games to go from Adept II to III, and 107 games from Adept III to Expert I. Of course, after ranking up, I decide to try and bring my neglected Novice III sanma rating into Adept, and end up going 0-3-4 and bleeding back down to 0/200 ranking points. And in my first Gold Room suuma game, I end up dealing in three times, but at least manage to hold on to third place to avoid losing too many ranking points. But that's Mahjong sometimes. Despite that unfortunate string of outcomes, I still feel pretty good about my progress and current skill level. I've been reading through a few Japanese Mahjong books to help me in my tile efficiency and yaku decision-making. And I've gotten better at protecting against common discard pile and tile call tells like honitsu, chinitsu, or chanta. However, my general efficiency and yaku aiming are still kinda shaky overall. The amount of attention I still have to pay to my own hand means I'm not paying attention to other players' tedashi vs. tsumogiri discard patterns. I don't know how necessary that skill will be in Gold Room, but it still feels bad to basically not pay attention to the other players for the first six turns or so while I'm getting my own hand in order. And I'm probably still a bit too careful on the folding, calling, and riichi judgment fronts. At least I can feel confident in saying I'm 'okay' at Mahjong, but I'm still nowhere near 'good'. But the only way to really know where my current skill level lies is to just keep on playing. Hopefully it's good enough to keep on floating.
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Feb 2, 2022 06:49
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MrBlarney posted:The amount of attention I still have to pay to my own hand means I'm not paying attention to other players' tedashi vs. tsumogiri discard patterns. I don't know how necessary that skill will be in Gold Room, but it still feels bad to basically not pay attention to the other players for the first six turns or so while I'm getting my own hand in order. You should be paying very little to no attention to tedashi/tsumogiri considerations. It should only be reserved to special situations like if another player discards a 4th honor tile late in the game (if tedashi, they might have been holding it as an anpai and are now in tenpai), or if another player seems to be going for manzu honitsu, but discards a souzu tile late in the game after already discarding some honor tiles (if tedashi, they might not have honitsu after all). Honestly, I suspect there are many celestial players who don't even bother paying attention to things like these and for those who do, it's more like a reflex than a conscious decision.
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Feb 2, 2022 12:14
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Yeah, it's exactly those kinds of special situations that I feel like I'm missing out on. One issue with tracking is that where a discarded tile comes from occurs before seeing what the tile is. If a suspicious or distinctive tile gets discarded, you'd need to have noticed beforehand whether it was from the player's hand or just drawn to get a better bead on its importance. It just feels like it'd be nice to recognize more hints or indicators that another player has hit tenpai than them overtly calling riichi or making an especially suspicious call. I also expect that the damaten rate will go up as players start to understand scoring a lot better, and recognize when they're not getting value from already being at 3 or 4 han (depending on their fu and uradora potential). It also feels like tracking tedashi vs. tsumogiri might also be useful for seeing if other players are pushing or folding, when you're holding a hand that is on the push/fold border yourself. But I suppose it's also good to recognize patience and steady improvement like I've been having so far. I'm sure that as my fundamentals get solidified, I'll have more brain space to practice more intermediate skills. And that practice will eventually, in the much longer term, turn into more reflex over conscious processing. I'm also very likely overthinking things, as I'm sure a lot of players in the Expert tier are also going through the same levels of skill acquisition as I am. It's probably true that advanced reading considerations only really matter at those advanced and expert levels. At that high-skill level, efficiency and yaku selection strategies can be taken as given, and you have to look out more towards the other players to eke out advantages in the game. It feels somewhat magical to see a high-level player avoid discarding a deal-in tile for seemingly no obvious reason, and it's likely still too soon for me to really understand how that happens. Game's just fun to play, though. That's what really matters in the end.
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Feb 3, 2022 02:35
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MrBlarney posted:It feels somewhat magical to see a high-level player avoid discarding a deal-in tile for seemingly no obvious reason, and it's likely still too soon for me to really understand how that happens.  Several times I’ll watch someone whose better than me play and they throw away tenpai to keep the obvious discard in hand. Sometimes I think “oh, maybe they’re just suspicious that it’s mid-late game and the tile isn’t in the discard pool at all” but sometimes it is in the pool, and I’m baffled. I know one of the things better players (not me!) look for before discarding something potentially dangerous in mid-late game is “how many dora are visible? If they’re not in my hand, and they’re not in open melds, and there’s none in the discard pool, and I smell tenpai from the discards of others, it may be dumb to push this hand that won’t even be Mangan with a Riichi.”
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Feb 3, 2022 18:13
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My experience in Gold/Expert is that occasionally I get a very spooky table with players who opt for nasty waits or go dama when there's not an obvious reason to, but most of the tables I get, people are playing more like Silver players and not paying TOO much attention to what other people are doing. I'm starting to get a gut sense for when a tile feels dangerous but I have no chance of putting into words what criteria that's based on, and if someone calls I assume they're ready or have a quick route to ready. I should probably pay attention to where someone discards from but I never remember to. And then some games it feels like I made the exact wrong decision at every point in the game. Such is mahjong.
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Feb 3, 2022 23:11
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FAT BATMAN posted:
It might seem counterintuitive but the tiles that are one or two out are sometime more dangerous than shonpais. For example if you see two 3s in the pond and have one in yor hand it is harder for your opponents to finish up 12 24 and 45 forms so if they are in tenpai that wait becomes more likely. Even if they are in iishanten more often than not you do not want to advance them to tenpai. It all depends on your own hand state and value. Push fold decisions are crux of gameplay and sometimes you have to think about it as early as turn three
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Feb 4, 2022 19:25
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I’m about to get blown out of the Jade Room after some thirty games. Given that I never expected to get INTO Jade, I should consider that a win. I think I still need to learn the nuances of defending and folding, like the other comment about watching out for visible dora. And also not get tsumoed to death.
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Feb 25, 2022 20:25
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I had a interesting hand develop during a game recently, so I'm curious to hear other people's opinions on how you would proceed from this point: The strategy I went with was discarding 5s to try for a sanbaiman/yakuman hand so I could end this round in 1st. Somehow I managed to get the 11sGGRRR 999sWWW tenpai and a win!
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Mar 12, 2022 11:48
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Can Of Worms posted:I had a interesting hand develop during a game recently, so I'm curious to hear other people's opinions on how you would proceed from this point: I would have discarded the 2s first, because the 5799s seems more useful, but the end result probably would have been the same.
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Mar 12, 2022 13:01
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Playing Mahjong Soul, starting off I breezed my way to Adept 2, dipped down to nearly being demoted, clawed my way into Adept 3, got demoted, and almost got demoted again. After an up-hill climb I made it to Expert; the lesson I learned at the time was "Fold More". I learned from looking back on logs that there was always one prevailing reason that someone would deal in: getting greedy or desperate, and that lesson paid dividends. My earliest experiences in the Gold room mirror some of those above - cutting tiles early into the game only to discover someone was in dama, crazy fast hands, and seeing a lot more risky waits. After some getting used to, I found my footing quite nicely - I have become very good when it comes to efficiency and defense, and I can tell that I have a knack for building around dora. I can usually find a path towards yaku that will allow me to adjust if I need to, but otherwise the foundation of my strategy has been "get into tenpai, call riichi, and rejoice if I can get Ippatsu, Menzen Tsumo, and/or Ura Dora", which has worked very well, and let me breeze my way through Expert 1 and 2. This leads me, finally, to the type of game where I consistently struggle: when I couldn't complete Tanyao Nomi if my life depended on it. It's getting very frustrating when I'm in a position where even if I can call, somebody else moves faster, or otherwise being barred from calling since I'll have no yaku (I'm always looking out for potential Junchan Sanshoku Dojun I might make it into tenpai early enough and call Riichi, but someone else will just steal the win. Then I watch my score sink farther and farther, landing myself in last without ever dealing in; all due to constant tsumos - with the biggest hands of course happening when I'm the dealer. I've found some success when deciding to turn garbage starting hands into Yakuhai Nomi or Chiitoitsu, but what are some ways I can avoid being bled out like this? Should I start calling faster and take whatever I can get when I think someone close to my own score is approaching tenpai? It feels wasteful to take a cheap hand that can just be undone by someone winning by tsumo. I feel like I'm maybe too fixated on value, but feel like I'm so often a point where half-decent hands or limit hands are what I need to catch up. Obviously, there's not a good catch-all answer since the round number and points values all make a huge difference, but I would love to hear some advice from anyone that has overcome this barrier!
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Mar 25, 2022 21:16
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Lori posted:This leads me, finally, to the type of game where I consistently struggle: when I couldn't complete Tanyao Nomi if my life depended on it. It's getting very frustrating when I'm in a position where even if I can call, somebody else moves faster, or otherwise being barred from calling since I'll have no yaku (I'm always looking out for potential Junchan Sanshoku Dojun I might make it into tenpai early enough and call Riichi, but someone else will just steal the win. Outside of those types of situations, the rule of thumb I've heard and that I stick to is that you should open your hand either if you can get into tenpai within 1-2 calls, or you have value (at least 3 han) and those calls fill up non-ryanmen waits.
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Mar 25, 2022 22:05
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I can't actually offer specific advice without seeing stats (win/loss/call/riichi) or replays, so I can only attempt to divine your playcalling by what you do or don't mention: You mention learning to fold, are you aware of and applying the 3 basic types of tile safety (genbutsu, suji, kabe)? Are you mentally keeping track of live "intervals" as a game progresses? I don't find much enlightening about your "knack". That's just kind of what anybody does to build a hand. Likewise it's a little weird to think of an inability to confirm yaku as a consequence of calling. Remember the pros/cons of calling. You're trading value and some defense for raw speed. If you're trying to call to try to race another player, are you actually advancing your hand ahead of theirs? I think focusing on value alone is a silver room strat, what gets you out of gold room is also having good efficiency and basic defense. dragon enthusiast fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Mar 26, 2022 |
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Mar 26, 2022 00:37
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dragon enthusiast posted:You mention learning to fold, are you aware of and applying the 3 basic types of tile safety (genbutsu, suji, kabe)? Are you mentally keeping track of live "intervals" as a game progresses? I am applying these, and I'm also keeping an eye out for suji traps, but I'm not sure what you mean by live intervals. Tiles that are still out there and likely contributing to someone's hand, such as ruling out a kanchan on a certain tile because someone has called pon on it?
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Mar 26, 2022 05:30
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won by rinshan, feels good
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Mar 26, 2022 19:48
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I got triple ronned. 
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Mar 27, 2022 19:52
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did that on tenhou once, where triple ron is an abort 
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Mar 27, 2022 21:43
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20ish games in, and the Jade Room had been very fun - I like the overall meta in here a lot better than in the Gold Room - I see a lot more aggression over Yakuhai, but I still feel like I have a lot more time to build my hand. You also don't seem to have That One Guy dealing into the Obvious Honitsu™ after a riichi declaration and ruining your hand. What I don't like is how hard 4th place punishes you, so there seems to be a lot of encouragement for 3rd and 4th place to play super fast. I've definitely already seen more 2,000 point hands than I did the entire time I was in the Gold Room, and it's kind of disappointing that it's built to encourage people to do anything in their power confirm 3rd in all last; I feel like it takes away from the excitement of fighting your way into 1st all the way to the bitter end. 
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Apr 4, 2022 04:38
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Hey thread. Played in person only like...well, a long time ago. Asked my buddy who ran the games and it was a self developed (by him) combination of Japanese and HK rule sets, which I would never remember but its kind of given me the itch to play a little again. Way back in the 90s-early 00s there was like only one server into HK to play on, was mostly in Chinese, and so that attempt to play again aborted quickly. From just reading here though the game appears more accessible now than ever. So how up to date is the OP still or where else should I go to attempt to relearn how to play this game again?
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Apr 20, 2022 06:29
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If you're not allergic to anime characters, Mahjong Soul is very active and has a good tutorial (browser-based). If you are, stick to tenhou, I guess (browser-based as well). Other alternatives are Riichi City (very new Mahjong Soul clone by a japanese company, with a Tenhou-style rating system instead of the rank tiers Mahjong Soul uses. PC client + smartphone apps) and the Mahjong in Final Fantasy XIV (nice, because you can chat during games. The Mahjong is available during the infinite free trial, so no need to subscribe just for that) Tamba fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Apr 20, 2022 |
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Apr 20, 2022 07:50
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And to get my feet under me vs the computer is the app suggested in the OP still legit? I assume I will need to install the English translation utility into chrome to play on Tenhou?
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Apr 20, 2022 15:50
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No, Tenhou has an official english translation now. That Flash game probably won't work because Flash is kind of dead nowadays. The Android app should be fine.
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Apr 20, 2022 17:07
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Tenhou isn't entirely translated though enough of it (i.e. ron/pon/chii) buttons are that you can get around it. There's still a translation plugin if you want things like, you know, the menus.
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Apr 21, 2022 00:04
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Thanks all, its amazing how quickly its coming back. My buddy sent his custom bonus hand scoresheet that he wrote out in hand that I'll have to print out at full size to check out. Was fun to try to build those max point hands. He also sent a game's score card and it was one I won which was nice, although none of us were any good, all learning it as we went for the first time. Reading Riiichi Book 1 now, good stuff. Hope to see you all for a game at some point
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Apr 21, 2022 01:46
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two or three weekends ago i was introduced to riichi mahjong; last friday i managed to crawl my way out of novice 3 into adept 1 in MJS then i lost (sometimes badly) all of my first 10 games in silver room, fell to ~20/300 and risking demotion, and I haven't touched the game since out of sheer discouragement anyway that's my story thanks for coming to my tedx talk (edit) also a rousing "gently caress you" to the dude in the last game I played who ended my 1-away-from-a-baiman hand with a 1-han piece of poo poo Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Apr 22, 2022 |
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Apr 22, 2022 19:51
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