How to lose at mahjong
There are many infuriating and embarrassing ways of losing a game of riichi mahjong.
I learned very early on to disable "right-click to cancel" on tenhou, for instance. There is nothing like accidentally passing on a tsumo because you were idly tapping your fingers on the mouse buttons while waiting for your turn, and tapping juuust hard enough to register a click at the wrong moment, putting you in permanent furiten for the rest of the round.
That 自動和了 button is there for a reason, and I now use it religiously.
A far more common problem for me is the imp of the perverse that seems to have taken up permanent residence on my shoulder. It has urged me to throw caution to the wind many a time, usually with disastrous results. The problem is that once in a while its reckless schemes pay off by sheer luck, and there is no force so strong as selective reinforcement.
Tonight I was laid low by the least exciting way to lose: the humble brain fart.
I had 777889 of bamboo in my hand. I meant to discard one of the 8's, which would have left me with a pair of 7's and a 789, resulting in a nice workmanlike pinfu.
Instead, I clicked on a 7. This left me with 77889, which was almost completely useless: all of the remaining 7's, 8's and 9's were already visible so there was nowhere to go from there.
Ironically, if I had given in to the beginner's instinct of clicking the riichi button as soon as it appeared, I couldn't have made this mistake, because the interface wouldn't have let me.
Oh well.