Mahjong Life and Living

Once upon a time, I did dabble with chess a long while back in Yahoo! Games.  However, I did not go far; and the ranking play somewhat discouraged me.  Yet, for some reason, I bought a Judit Polgar book of chess puzzles but never went into it.  I still have it collecting dust. Fast forward to my A4 years and eventually Facebook, I played some more via Facebook chess.  Then here and there, I occassionally looked at Chessgames  to think about the puzzle of the day.  Most of the time, I failed to think them through but it was still amusing looking at them.  Just once in Facebook, I managed to pull the bishop sacrifice into the king side to set up an attack towards mate.  Doubtfully, I may not be able to pull that game out; but it was a good memory. Then to the present, I have been watching Agadmator's channel .  He has an approach of telling a chess game in somewhat of a story mode fashion, while explaining the different lines.  That got me to pick up the game again.  This time, I

In response to my own entry about Scoring Yakuman , here is the counter-article: Detecting Yakuman Attempts.  Naturally, this is how to defend against them. Under all cases, a yakuman attempt can be defeated by winning a cheaper hand.  However, this is the easy explanation.  The tell-tale signs of the yakuman attempt must be determined first. Kokushi musou .  The first six discards should be an indicator of an attempt, which consists of tiles meant for tanyao.  If discarded tiles form taatsu, then it is even more apparent.  Usually, tenpai occurs fair late for 9starters.  The fast ones may have fairly early honor/terminal discards. Suuankou .  This is difficult to detect, as tiles needed for suuankou is literally any tile.  In the event of riichi, then standard defense methods would suffice. Daisangen .  The dragon tiles should be tracked, where if there are none or few visible, then a player wants them.  The attempt is most apparent where two are called and the third type cannot

This is an extension to the mahjong homework entry. I have been stuck on the 4-5 dan loop for the past two years now.  My closest point and highest Tenhou.net ranking point has been just about three 1sts away from 6dan for the first time.  This year, I've pretty much spent my ranking time on the lower end of the 4dan scale, generally under threat of deranking to 3dan and falling out of tokujou.  I've been at this spot many times before, only to drop to 3dan just once.  When it comes to ranking in Tenhou.net, I really do not feel the "hype" anymore.  Hopefully, this subsides somehow; and I get back to climbing again. In the meantime, the opening of Majsoul EN has given me another platform to play on.  There, I was under speed run mode looking to rank up that ladder to reach certain ranks in the fewest games possible.  The rank of Master 1 was attained in 112 games.  However, a deranking here ended that speed run mentality and have since returned to Master 1 again t

 I've been stuck on the Tenhou.net 4-5 dan loop.  This is a list of things I need to work on in order to improve my game: Attention (due to ignoring info, even dora indicators) Speed slowdown (play on Majsoul) Too much mawashi attempts (prone to "muh tenpai") Fail situational reads (lacking awareness and ignoring threats) More defense Manage playtime (vary platform) Decrease distractions If necessary, I'll elaborate on these points.

To think, the following year of 2020 will be the next World Riichi Championship in Vienna .  Unfortunately, I am already making the personal call to not attend due to cost.  Besides, the cost of the trip will be better well spent on a trip to Japan instead, as I've yet to ever go.  So, I'll have to apologize about this decision here.  Regardless, I hope for others to take up the opportunity to play at the World Riichi Championship as it was a great experience. With that said, I look back that the memories of the past in the 2017 World Riichi Championship : Overview Visit to Los Angeles Pride of Mahjong (LAPOM) Road trip to Las Vegas The Las Vegas shooting Tournament goals and expectations My own tournament results Specific plays Chatting with the pros Signature girl Extra one week stay The flight home For now, I merely leave a list; and if necessary, I may add more.  However, I plan to go over some of these items in separate entries.

This is a healthy form of "gambling mahjong", where players perform some kind of exercise based on placement. For example, regarding push-ups: First does 0 push-ups. Second does 10 push-ups. Third does 20 push-ups. Fourth does 40 push-ups. Naturally, this concept can be applied to various exercises and different mahjong formats.  Just give it a try, and see how it goes. To give credit, the concept was brought to be by Uni ( ユニ)  from the different mahjong discords.