Staring down the dragons
(alternative title: scaring away the new readers)
Like a moth to a flame, I keep being drawn to sanma, three-player Japanese mahjong.
I know that it's bad for me, but the temptation is that it's quick. A normal four-player game takes half an hour or longer; sanma can be over in five minutes, and sometimes much quicker than that.
The downside is that it's insane. I don't know how it's logically possible, but despite the fact that the rules are the same for everyone, it somehow always feels unfair in some way. Only very occasionally is it unfair in my favour.
To win in riichi, you must form a complete hand of fourteen tiles: four groups of three tiles plus one pair.1 This is necessary but not sufficient to win: you must also have one or more yaku.
A yaku is an extra property of your hand, or sometimes the way you get the winning tile. Examples include having all tiles from the same suit, having three of the correct winds, having three of the same sequence in three different suits, etc.
The harder a yaku is to achieve, the more it scores. An open tanyao for example -- using only number tiles without any 1's or 9's, some of which you can take from other players -- is often an easy option but it only scores a single han. Han are the main component of your score. Getting more han basically increases your score exponentially.2
Yaku may be combined, so stacking a few can make for a monster score, especially when you add dora tiles into the mix. Every round a dora tile is chosen. Having one of these in your hand adds a whole han to your score. Riichi also usually adds red fives into the mix: one of the four fives in each suit is painted red and counts as a dora.
In normal play, a normal hand may score anywhere between one and five han. A lot of games are played that never see anything higher than a four-han hand scoring 7,700 points.
In sanma, things tend to get a little crazier. Most of the tiles of one suit are removed, making combinations like honitsu (all tiles of one suit plus wind or dragon tiles) or even chinitsu (all tiles of one suit) much more common.
In addition to this, the North wind now counts as a dora tile, adding even more of those into the mix.
The game began fairly normally. I started out as dealer, and did nothing with it. The player to my right won the first hand by tsumo with a simple clean combination of riichi, pinfu, and tanyao plus two dora for 10,000 points, a common occurrence in sanma. This put him in the dealer's seat with a healthy lead.
The next hand, I quickly drew three North tiles in succession followed by a red five. I decided to pursue a strategy of going for an open honitsu, calling on every tile I could get my hands on. In normal play it would have been far too early for this, but in sanma things happen so quickly that it often pays to jump on any potentially high-scoring yaku as soon as you can.
I then discarded a white dragon, which was called by the dealer, which wasn't too worrying. A few turns later, he did the same with a red dragon from the South player. This raised the stakes quite a bit.
One triplet of dragons counts as a simple yaku scoring a lowly one han. Two triplets are simply double that. But getting all nine dragons summons the daisangen, one of the so-called yakuman.
These are rarely-seen yaku that score the maximum number of points. Riichi scoring is complicated, but getting one of these usually wins you the round. It also usually makes your day, unless you are unlucky enough to lose regardless, which, riichi being riichi, does happen.
With three white and three red dragons visible on the table, discarding a green dragon becomes a very risky thing to do.
The South player now declared riichi. This meant he was one tile away from winning. Whoever now discarded that tile would pay the full points to the winner. Riichi is a yaku in itself, which only scores one han, but it gives you access to the uradora: potential extra bonus tiles that can push your score much higher.
A few safe tiles were discarded. Then I had a choice to make. The dealer discarded the eight of pin. I had two of those in my hand, so I could either play it completely safe for two precious turns, or double down, complete my triplet and try to win the round.
Against all common sense, I took the risk.
I discarded a fairly safe-looking six of pin, and drew a one, which was a dora tile. It looked safe to discard, but without thinking, I threw all caution to the wind and called kan. This not only added another dora to my hand: doing this causes another dora tile to be added to the game, potentially increasing the score of whoever wins, but as mentioned above, most likely to benefit whoever called riichi.
Looking at the replay now, the 1-pin was actually one of the tiles that East was waiting on. By foolishly taking a huge risk, I happened by sheer luck to escape paying into a shousangen -- two sets of three dragons plus one pair -- plus honitsu and a dora, for 12,000 points or so. Not an instant death blow, but it would likely have been a mortal wound in the end.
I now drew a green dragon, and decided to discard it. South had discarded one of these a few turns ago, which made it safe from him -- you cannot win by calling on a tile that you have already discarded. This is why in Chinese mahjong the tiles are "thrown" onto a pile, whereas in Japan we "discard" them neatly in little rows of six.
This turned out to be a miscalculation. The East player had just drawn his second green dragon, after South had discarded his, and had held onto it. He now called mine to complete his daisangen.
There is a little oddity around the scoring of yakuman hands. Normally, if a player draws the winning tile himself, the loss is shared by the other players (with the dealer paying a larger share). But with yakuman, the full cost is borne by the unlucky player whose tile completed it.
There was nowhere to hide now. I could try to play it safe and avoid discarding dangerous tiles, but if the dealer drew his winning tile I would still be on the hook for it, and I had no influence on that at all.
With nine dragons breathing down my neck, I decided to double down. Another kan followed. I was now bound for either unlikely glory or a ruinous fall, with no option in between.
There was no time to think. Tiles kept coming that looked fairly safe, but in this situation, who can tell? It looked like East was now being cautious, but in the replay I can see that he was still waiting to strike with his dragons at the ready, skilfully changing to a shifting tanki wait while discarding safe tiles. There is no defending against that.
After I collected six dora, three North winds, and one red five, South discarded the nine of bamboo, one of the three tiles still in play that I needed.
I won the hand with an unbelievable ten dora plus a toitoi (all triplets) for 24,000 points, which caused South to go below 0 points, ending the game with me as the undeserving winner.
It was more luck than skill, but I managed to recklessly pelt nine dragons with tiles until they went away.