Tournaments

何をuld you 切る？+ ERC

ron5

Aug 25, 2010 — 14 min read

UPDATE:

Due to being ~~busy~~lazy, we haven't published the answers to the quiz until now. We apologize for the inconvenience to our dear readers. orz
You can find the answers to the quiz now at the end of this article.
Thanks to Ben for providing us with the answers!

As some of you probably know, the ECR (European Riichi Championship) Tournament, which my humble self attended to, was held for the second time after 2 years during the last weekend in Hannover, Germany.
~~Expect a more detailed write-up of my experiences and antics during those 3 days once I un-lazy a bit more.~~

On Friday evening, prior to the actual games on Saturday and Sunday, a 3 hour strategy workshop was being held, which is the actual focus of this post.

The workshop was planned and executed by none other than Takunori Kajimoto himself, member of the Mahjong Museum Committee, Pro-Mahjong TV-commentator and practically a Mahjong-Legend in general. Besides him, as the main speaker and voice (translator) of Kaji was -the among gaijins no less legendary- Mahjong Researcher Benjamin Boas. Both of them also served as head-referees for the tournament. Another Japanese Pro and actual player in the tournament, Mr. Y.T. also helped out here.

The venue was the upper floor of the jazz club, in a large, kind of theater-stage like room, while the actual games were played in the basement of mentioned club. About ~50 poeple in total attended the workshop.

1--1-

The workshop consisted of a general discussion of several topics you can see written down on the easel below, a discard quiz, a showmatch with Kajimoto (and explanations/Q&A after each hand), as well as a closing Q&A session for general strategy-related questions.

2-3

The other 3 players of the show match were poeple that had the highest number of correct answers in the quiz.

3-1
As you can see, it turned out to be quite the Ponpalace.

4-1

5-1

While I have to say that I didn't exactly learn anything mind-blowing new from thr whole thing, some discussions that came up and some points were certainly interesting and got me to consider some stuff in a different light. Unfortunately, there was no summary handout or something about the topics that were being discussed.

If you're looking for expert advice, why don't you check out TRA's Tips or mou's advanced strategies?

Kaji also signed strategy books that were being sold (I also got myself one) and mahjong set cases if you asked him, here's a case of a Mahjong-mate of mine.

Lorizean, another denizen of #mahjong got himself a small Akagi Washizu-Mahjong set too.

So without further ado, let me come to the main point of this post: The Quiz. Everyone got a sheet of paper with the hands below and was to mark what to discard and if you riichi in the last 3 hands. It took many, including me, quite some time to think about it before finishing. Ben and Kaji also said the quiz was supposed to be quite difficult, as these questions were directed at Pros.

Now what do you think? Drop your answers and reasoning in a comment below. I will reveal the answers in about a week. I will also try to get in touch with Ben about actual explanations of the answers.

Note:
They didn't specify whether the quiz was meant to be considered with kuitan ari or nashi (EMA) rules. I actually suppose it's with kuitan ari, since they said these questions were aimed at actual Pros in Japan, where open tanyao is the norm. Also, note that the Dora: tile is the actual dora and not the indicator.

Hand 1

East 1st round, being south seat - Turn 5

Dora:

Hand 2

East 1st round, being south seat - Turn 5

Dora:

Hand 3

East 1st round, being south seat - Turn 5

Dora:

Hand 4

East 1st round, being south seat - Turn 5

Dora: