The dirtiest way to win
The constant reader of these blog posts1 will know by now that I advise against playing sanma -- three-player Japanese mahjong -- despite being unable to heed my own advice.
Let us answer the siren's call and dash ourselves on the brutal rocks of sanma one more time.
In normal riichi mahjong, every player is assigned one of the cardinal wind directions, East being the dealer. As dealer, you don't really need to deal anything, but the position is significant because if you win, you win more points, but if you don't, you lose more points than anyone else at the table.
In sanma, there is no North player. The North wind tile instead acts as a bonus, or dora tile. Collecting these is part of why extremely high scores in sanma are not uncommon.
What players do not always realise is that this mechanism is optional; the North winds can still be used as normal. This is usually not a good idea. The only thing you can do with them is complete a triplet as part of your complete hand. Using them as extra dora is by far the preferred option, to such an extent that most players will do so without thinking.
This opens up the possibility of an extremely sneaky tactic.
If you can manage to construct a hand that can be completed using a North tile and you are eligible to win by ron, then you can win against any player casually calling on a North wind.
I recently won a hand in this way. My starting hand had only South winds, dragons, and a five of pin in it. The rest were bamboo tiles and two North winds.
I immediately spotted the opportunity for a dirty trick.
I resisted the temptation to cash in the North winds for extra points, and a few turns later I had a hand which consisted of a bamboo ippeikou -- 334455 in this case -- four South winds, and two pairs: green dragons and North winds.
We were only seven turns in, and as expected the player opposite me called kita on a North wind, never suspecting a thing, netting me 12,000 points.
He was in the East seat for the final hand, but the fight seemed to have gone out of him, and I romped home to an easy victory.
At times like this, I'm extremely grateful that tenhou.net is so anonymous -- no real names, no way to contact other players. All you get is the board and the tiles.
It's dirty, dirty play, but that's sanma.
I like to imagine that there is one, and it's the same person every time. Hello there!↩