Mahjong - Enter the Green Dragon - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Mahjong - Enter the Green Dragon

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

Can Of Worms posted:

Can't believe it took exactly one year but I'm now saint 2 I learned a ton during that time so hopefully the rest of the climb won't take so long, even though I still have to improve my discipline with push/fold more.

Goddamn, Saint 2? That's impressive.

# ? Oct 17, 2023 12:21

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# ? May 2, 2024 03:07

Can Of Worms: Sep 4, 2011; That's not how the Triangle Attack works...

Bilirubin posted:

Always happy to hear what you learned, as I am still pushing way too much and have a really high call rate

The thing that made the biggest impact on my performance is mid/late game tactics, i.e. after you've passed 6 discards. Mahjong stats show that there's a very high probability that someone is tenpai after 9 discards, so 6 discards is the point where you have to think about what to do with your hand. After 9 turns, if I decide it's not worth pushing (usually this is because I have a solid lead and I just want to avoid dealing in), I'll start folding the moment I draw any dangerous tile, like a red 5 or a 2-8 dora tile, and if I don't have any dora I'll be wary about dropping any 2-8 tile that isn't guaranteed to pass against players I don't want to deal into. I've managed to maintain 1sts and avoid 4ths using this type of situational awareness, and even in Jade room there are players that don't do this (i.e. they'll keep pushing a 1 or 2 away hand late in the game and end up dealing into someone holding two or three hidden doras.)

This does require a lot of discipline though, the trickiest situation is when you have a mangan tenpai yourself or are close to a mangan tenpai, but the correct play is to fold it to avoid a deal-in and I have been tempted and punished for not doing so. I'm reminded of this old post in the thread:

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.

Because in this situation, most of the time the player in question is not tenpai, the match is entering late game and they have reasons to avoid a deal-in (not holding any doras, need to protect a lead, etc.) It's tough for me to elaborate more on this because it's a nuanced strategy that depends a lot on the context of a specific match.

# ? Oct 17, 2023 12:31

Relyssa: Jul 29, 2012

Can Of Worms posted:

Can't believe it took exactly one year but I'm now saint 2 I learned a ton during that time so hopefully the rest of the climb won't take so long, even though I still have to improve my discipline with push/fold more.

Congratulations, you're nearly at the top! Saint is not easy to get to, so be proud of that achievement.

# ? Oct 17, 2023 12:35

Devonaut: Jul 10, 2001; Devoted Astronaut

Can Of Worms posted:

Can't believe it took exactly one year but I'm now saint 2 I learned a ton during that time so hopefully the rest of the climb won't take so long, even though I still have to improve my discipline with push/fold more.

That's impressive.

I'd be interested to see your statistics, and how they changed over time, or what areas you have focused on. And do you think your statistics are typical for players at your level or are you an outlier in some way?

# ? Oct 17, 2023 17:31

Can Of Worms: Sep 4, 2011; That's not how the Triangle Attack works...

My stats during my Saint 1-2 run are pretty similar to the type of stats you'd expect from someone capable of doing the climb, you can check it out on this site: https://amae-koromo.sapk.ch/player/124855667/12

If you check my stats from last year (which is when I was doing the Master to Saint climb) you'll see my deal in rate is about 11%, it used to be a bit higher around 12% before that:

The mid/late game tactics I outlined earlier helped drop that to sub-10% if you check my recent games:

More important than deal-in rate though, is having a strong net win efficiency (the average amount of points you gain per round when you include losses). For players who are good at offense but bad at defense that number usually isn't higher than 650 (Master 1s have about 550 average), the amount needed to climb as Saint is somewhere around 750-850; my last 200 games managed to get a fantastic 950ish rating there, having a strong defense was important to reaching because every 1% of deal-in rate translates to a difference of 55-60 points, although of course you still have to be able to win hands consistently.

In terms of placement, this is pretty typical of the performance from good players, about 30/20/30/20 spread between 1st to 4th:

If you look up the charts for any Celestial/Saint 3 player in Jade you'll see a very similar distribution. The most important part is the 4th rate though, it's really hard to climb the ladder if you can't get your 4th rate below 20% due to the amount of rank points you lose.

# ? Oct 18, 2023 05:38

MrBlarney: Nov 8, 2009

Can Of Worms posted:

Can't believe it took exactly one year but I'm now saint 2 I learned a ton during that time so hopefully the rest of the climb won't take so long, even though I still have to improve my discipline with push/fold more.

Look at you, part of the top 1%. Congratulations!

It's kind of funny to see this snippet of mine quoted:

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.

because a year and a half later, I'm only starting to build the discipline to understand this way of playing. I actually just hit 200 games in MJS's Jade Room, and am still in critical condition for demotion:

I had a nice recovery through the third row of games, but that month of 50% 4ths on the last row, which included a 30% bust rate, brought me back towards the demotion line. My stats are trending in the positive direction, but I'm still way behind on my ideal win rate, and I still have no idea what it means to call effectively. I've almost certainly got some defective bias in my decision-making with regards to efficiency vs value that needs to be corrected.

Still, I think I am improving slowly. I'm starting to build up some gut instinct / 'shivers' to start folding in mid-game when my hand isn't going anywhere and has no prospects for value, but I think I'm still trying to be fancy with mawashi uchi and not fully committing to full-on betaori folding too frequently. I don't respect shonpai (fully live) honors enough, and I think I rely too much on suji and sotogawa theories when deciding on discards, and I keep on getting burned. But looking over my posts in this thread, it's actually kind of neat to see how far I've come? It's just sometimes hard to see that improvement due to how variable the game is and the types of improvements to be gained might be starting to get more subtle and technical. (Really, though, I could also stand to play more than one game per day, both to get a faster rate of improvement and to translate my improvements in skill.)

# ? Oct 18, 2023 05:51

Devonaut: Jul 10, 2001; Devoted Astronaut

Can Of Worms posted:

Thanks, this is gold.

# ? Oct 18, 2023 16:54

EightFlyingCars: Jun 30, 2008

i just watched my partner call double riichi in sanma, and on his very next draw he drew a north and called kita; the replacement tile was a fourth 1man on which he called kan, which flipped over a green dragon indicator and turned his pair of red dragons into dora tiles; and the replacement tile after that was a third red dragon for tsumo.

he played this game like it was loving yugioh

# ? Oct 19, 2023 01:35

Heath: Apr 30, 2008; 🍂🎃🏞️💦

EightFlyingCars posted:

he played this game like it was loving yugioh

You mean, he played it correctly, i.e. not a coward

# ? Oct 19, 2023 01:51

Schwarzwald: Jul 27, 2004; Don't Blink

since he was playing sanma I'm assuming he still came in 3rd

# ? Oct 19, 2023 01:53

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Always push never fold

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Oct 19, 2023

# ? Oct 19, 2023 07:45

EightFlyingCars: Jun 30, 2008

Schwarzwald posted:

since he was playing sanma I'm assuming he still came in 3rd

wow! that's such a mean thing to say!!!!

he came in second thank you very much

# ? Oct 19, 2023 08:02

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Lol

# ? Oct 19, 2023 08:03

Son of Thunderbeast: Sep 21, 2002

When I play sanma I like to make sure I come in last :grin:

# ? Oct 19, 2023 08:22

Devonaut: Jul 10, 2001; Devoted Astronaut

Making progress!

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ? Oct 19, 2023 13:06

Relyssa: Jul 29, 2012

Devonaut posted:

Making progress!

Well done! Getting to Expert is certainly not easy, and I washed out of it pretty quick the first time. Keep climbing!

# ? Oct 19, 2023 13:53

Osci: Oct 11, 2016

So this week I somehow got the urge to play mahjong after more than a year's hiatus. I expected to be rusty enough to tumble out of the gold room, but I actually managed to climb to ex2 instead :toot:

I did peek at my stats at that fansite, and the numbers are basically what I expected from my play, even if they might be skewed a bit by a lowish amount of games. Pretty defensive, so most everything but riichi rate is low.

One pretty funny outlier is that my uradora rate is somehow just under 14%. You'd think a stat like that would be closer to the average and I do hope it'll even out eventually, especially with how eager I am to hit that riichi button!

# ? Oct 23, 2023 22:44

Indecisive: May 6, 2007

look at this poor idiot fucker who thought the 1 pin was safe

# ? Nov 5, 2023 05:58

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

nice

# ? Nov 5, 2023 17:18

Son of Thunderbeast: Sep 21, 2002

Bilirubin posted:

nice

# ? Nov 5, 2023 19:25

Tamba: Apr 5, 2010

That's a really mean one, because south could see all 1ps (so one one was waiting for a pair or a triplet) and all 3ps (so no one had 23p waiting for 14p) and another 1p just passed recently.

# ? Nov 6, 2023 08:11

Xom: Sep 2, 2008; 文化英雄; Fan of Britches

😎

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ? Nov 7, 2023 23:20

Nighthand: Nov 4, 2009; what horror the gas

I've been on a road trip with lovely internet and not much to do, so I tried to play some jong... unfortunately, it had some problems.

# ? Nov 7, 2023 23:50

Indecisive: May 6, 2007

challenge mode

# ? Nov 8, 2023 00:01

Nighthand: Nov 4, 2009; what horror the gas

I almost survived the hand clicking randomly.

I say almost because I dropped a tile and got double-ronned for damage=health and died, but it was close! I only had the one danger tile.

# ? Nov 8, 2023 00:22

Relyssa: Jul 29, 2012

Nighthand posted:

I've been on a road trip with lovely internet and not much to do, so I tried to play some jong... unfortunately, it had some problems.

too many haku, chombo!

# ? Nov 8, 2023 00:26

Heath: Apr 30, 2008; 🍂🎃🏞️💦

Played majsoul for the first time in months on a whim, played a 3 player game, got owned down to 2600 points and then sanbaiman'd and haneman'd myself into a win in the last two rounds

The itching

# ? Nov 8, 2023 00:44

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Xom posted:

😎

very nice!

Also, you are missing from my friends list. Is it time to have folks repost their codes ?

91323877 here

# ? Nov 8, 2023 05:41

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

Trying out Mahjong Soul for the first time (also my first time playing Riichi Mahjong at all, although I've played OHK before), and after playing a few 3- and 4-player tables in the bronze room (and even winning a couple times!) I decided to poke at this "Holy Mahjong War" event they have going on.

And it looks like either only the hardcore are playing it or their matchmaking system for it is broken, because it put me at a table with one Master and two Adepts and I got loving destroyed. Apparently the game ends instantly if your score goes negative?

# ? Nov 17, 2023 00:13

silvergoose: Mar 18, 2006; IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS

ToxicFrog posted:

Trying out Mahjong Soul for the first time (also my first time playing Riichi Mahjong at all, although I've played OHK before), and after playing a few 3- and 4-player tables in the bronze room (and even winning a couple times!) I decided to poke at this "Holy Mahjong War" event they have going on.

And it looks like either only the hardcore are playing it or their matchmaking system for it is broken, because it put me at a table with one Master and two Adepts and I got loving destroyed. Apparently the game ends instantly if your score goes negative?

Riichi ends instantly when anyone goes negative, yes.

# ? Nov 17, 2023 00:29

Schwarzwald: Jul 27, 2004; Don't Blink

The special rule sets in majsoul events are occasionally fun but they are almost always very fake.

Loses don't count against your rank, though, so if you play into someone's all simples hand that's inexplicably worth 11 han it's not too devastating.

# ? Nov 17, 2023 01:15

Can Of Worms: Sep 4, 2011; That's not how the Triangle Attack works...

ToxicFrog posted:

Trying out Mahjong Soul for the first time (also my first time playing Riichi Mahjong at all, although I've played OHK before), and after playing a few 3- and 4-player tables in the bronze room (and even winning a couple times!) I decided to poke at this "Holy Mahjong War" event they have going on.

And it looks like either only the hardcore are playing it or their matchmaking system for it is broken, because it put me at a table with one Master and two Adepts and I got loving destroyed. Apparently the game ends instantly if your score goes negative?

Yeah, outside of ranked all the modes are accessible by anyone and they just randomly pair players up. Most high level players don't take it that seriously tough.

# ? Nov 17, 2023 02:22

Nighthand: Nov 4, 2009; what horror the gas

Yeah I usually adopt the "folding is for cowards" ethos in the events. This one incentivizes dragging out a hand to make it worth more though so it's an interesting balance.

# ? Nov 17, 2023 07:02

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

Folding?

silvergoose posted:

Riichi ends instantly when anyone goes negative, yes.

It makes sense, I'd just never been in a game before when it happened, and then in that one I went from like 15k to -7k in a single hand.

# ? Nov 17, 2023 17:45

Tamba: Apr 5, 2010

ToxicFrog posted:

Folding?

Riichi has the furiten rule that stops you from calling Ron if you have a tile in your discards that would allow you to win with your current hand.

That makes it possible to play defensively and only discard safe tiles if pushing for a win with your current hand is too dangerous to be worth it.

# ? Nov 17, 2023 17:57