June 28, 2011

wonderland falling tomorrow

Hi guys! Long time no see, again. Been a good three and a half months since my last update, and I've played a solid 86 joukyuu games in the interim. Let's see what kind of progress I've made!


Oops! I've actually made quite a bit of un-progress, in just about every area. The last few months have not been kind to me. I continued playing anyways, because I figured that eventually things would average out and I'd start winning hands again. Unfortunately, that never happened. Recently I've realized that just about every time I play a ranked game on Tenhou, I end up feeling shitty afterwards. I spend about 30-50 minutes attempting to form any kind of hand; open or closed, wide or narrow waits, riichi or damaten, keeping as many paths open as I can, but I can't pull it together. After all the effort and brainpower I put into the game, I end up with nothing but a lot of frustration and no payoff. I'm good at seeing all the potential places my hand can go, but mostly I end up seeing another player win, or a drawn round while I'm still noten.

I don't want to make an endlessly long whiny post about how nothing ever goes my way, so I won't. Instead, I'm just going to say that I've played every game to the end, without giving in to despair, always keeping in mind that every hand I play can potentially raise my rank or bring me to the winner's seat. I've tried to play as efficiently and as cleanly as I can, but I simply can't win hands anymore. I'm not going to blame luck or Tenhou rigging or whatever for this. Nothing like that exists in this game. There's just something important that I'm lacking as a player, something that I can't seem to grasp no matter how many games I play or how much time I spend reviewing my matches.

I've spent the last few months failing to win and asking myself afterwards "what is it that I'm doing wrong? What could I have possibly done here that would have changed the outcome of this game? How can I see these seemingly unknowable results from my actions?" Unfortunately, I have no answer. The only thing I've come up with is that playing this game for keeps isn't fun anymore. It simply makes me unhappy, every time I play. I'm not going to spend my time doing things that make me unhappy. That's just silly!  Mahjong is still a fascinating game to me and I have fun playing with people I know on the internet, but I'm done attaching records and ranks to my moniker. I'm just VgameT from now on. Anything more than that isn't worth the stress.

This'll probably be the last entry I make for this blog. Sorry about suggesting that I'd actually make something of it. I really did have a few ideas for articles last time I posted (stuff like "stop making open kans on bonus tiles when your hand is closed you complete idiots" and "your hand is a fountain of endless possibility, unless you pon the fucking 9p on the first discard of the game") but I'm just not productive enough to do anything like that. I think I said something about videos when I first started the blog, though. Nothing fancy here, but I did do a couple livestreams when I was pushing hard to hit 3dan (in the first video, I actually hit 790/800 points for a little while! What a pity.) When I was streaming these I had dudes (or more often than not, a single dude) saying things to me on IRC, so I spend a fair amount of time responding to them. This probably makes the things I'm saying seem confusing, but them's the breaks! If you want to listen to me cuss a whole lot, get pretty tired, and lose a lot of games, feel free to watch these, I guess.

3dan Quest: Session 1
3dan Quest: Session 2
3dan Quest: Session 3

Unfortunately that's the end of 3dan quest. Of course, that's the end of 4dan R1800+ quest as well, not that I was ever within reach of that to begin with. In fact, this post marks the end of  辞世テンプレート altogether. I deleted the textfile with my Tenhou IDs and logged in as a guest, so that account will never see another game. Pretty disappointing end for this thing I started, but that's the way it goes. If you've read anything I've posted here, thank you, and I'm sorry! Maybe we can play a game sometime. I'll still be around, but I'll just be VgameT, some guy who ended up not being nearly as good as he thought he was. And honestly, I'm pretty okay with that.

March 13, 2011

Get Back In My House

  Whoops I guess I didn't play any mahjong for like 3 months. It happens to the best of us! School, work, shmups, IIDX, etc. The long and short of it is, I had other stuff to do and I didn't feel like playing for a while. Recently, though, I've been itching for a little tile action, so I played some ranked 3p matches. That game's still kinda dumb, but I also ran into a small community of english-speaking players that's pretty into mahjong (enough to have games running every day.) They're also kinda dumb, but playing with them was enough to get me re-motivated. Not sure how far I'm gonna take things this time, but I did play enough to hit R1815 in 4p and 3dan in 3p! 
  I'mma post my stats here again. They haven't changed much but I might as well update with something, and this way when I completely tank my rate in a month I'll be able to look back and say "well, things were looking all right for a while."


 

  No logs this time since I only played 5 matches and at least one of the replays is lost from my history now. Nothing exciting happened, I promise! I'll try to make a real update for next time, assuming I any more matches this year. No guarantees. It's good to be playing and thinking about mahjong again, though. I'm sure I'll at least be playing a couple unranked games every week; worst case scenario, maybe I can write a thing about new player mistakes or something. I have a lot of free time lately and it'd be nice to spend it on something productive for a change. Stay alive until then, everyone!

December 23, 2010

Cold Summer

For whatever reason I just haven't felt like jumping into any ranked 4p games lately, so I've only had 4 matches since my last post.  I've been playing some games with English-speakers in 7447 and other lobbies, so I haven't been completely out of practice, but there hasn't been any action worth posting about here.  Sorry about that!  Mahjong's still fun, I just haven't had anything really cool happen this month.


Oh, except for that time 4 more matches was enough to bring me to 2dan ◕ ◡ ◕

Game 1: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-21.0) 五十音順(+45.0) ROCK2(-37.0) よしひろ(+13.0)
Not much happened here.  I was 1shanten for a monster hand East-4 but someone dealt in before I could get it ready.  Not sure what I was doing in South-2-1.  Pretty weird play there.  Otherwise, I just didn't get any hands together.
Game 2: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+10.0) D.reidi(+44.0) でし(-38.0) tana8823(-16.0)
I don't think anyone would blame me for dealing in during South-1.  Dodged dealing in during South-3 but then he immediately drew the tile anyways.  What a jerk.  What was a 6dan player doing in that lobby anyways?
Game 3: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-34.0) HIYUKI(+4.0) apoloni(+47.0) 888ぽん(-17.0)
My greed apparently got the best of me in East-4-0.  A double ron was just rubbing it in, though.  The other deal-in was my fault, too.  For some reason I wanted to get into tenpai, but I didn't declare riichi and didn't have any yaku, so who knows what I was thinking.  If I was going to go for it I should have cut the 1s and waited for something to give me a 2-sided wait for pinfu instead.
Game 4: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-21.0) ミニトレ大好き(-55.0) hakubish(+6.0) R-グレイ(+70.0)
Avoided dealing in during East-2.  No deal-ins this game, and I won a couple hands, but it was a tsumo palace so I ended up third anyways.
Game 5: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+57.0) 5割引(+10.0) hamos(-26.0) あずきミルク(-41.0)
Hooray, a baiman tsumo!  Thanks, dude who made a kan.  Kans are rad sometimes.  This is the last game I played before I made my last blog post.
Game 6: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+49.0) アフロサムライ(-43.0) 天才ギコ(+10.0) aclge(-16.0)
This time I took a chance and went for an oya-haneman, which paid off.  Also there was another jerk-ass 6dan player in this game, but this time he got last, which pleased me.
Game 7: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+57.0) jyuudai0(+22.0) ikepaki2(-56.0) itishinn(-23.0)
An upset in oorasu was similarily pleasing. 
Game 8: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+6.0) kuroshi(-41.0) 宮本モン次郎(-15.0) ちょろぼん(+50.0)
This one was close, thanks to some jerk tsumoing for a haneman when I was dealer, but I pulled myself out of last in oorasu to take 2nd.  Fate smiled upon me this time.
Game 9: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+52.0) del8550(-53.0) やる気無し(+12.0) こつおー(-11.0)
This time I ate a couple hits, but an oya-mangan tsumo in East-1 and a few more wins later were enough to secure the win.

9 games from 1dan to 2dan!  Pretty rad!   Deal-in rate's down a bit, and riichi rate is also down 'cause I've been playing with damaten a bit.  So close to 1800R, too!  Even a second-place finish would be enough to get me there, if only temporarily.  It's pretty much guaranteed that I'll be there by the time I hit 3dan, though.  I'm excited!  Unfortunately I just had a good streak, and if my past records are any indication, I'm about to lose a bunch of games in a row.  After that I should be good to go, though.  Maybe by the end of January I'll be ready to aim at hitting 4dan!  Yeah!!

December 7, 2010

Shoot Myself

Anyone who's played on Tenhou for more than, say, 2 minutes consecutively has probably noticed the weird Japanese text buttons at the bottom-right of the playing field.  Man, I love those buttons!  I wish everybody else would use them!  Specifically I wish everybody would use the third one (don't prompt me to call on tiles) because it would make games take way less time.  I leave it on pretty much by default because, seriously, if I already know I'm never going to call on anything I might as well avoid letting everyone know what I've got via conspicuous draw delay.  The first (automatically declare win) is also pretty handy, especially for morons like me who tab out of the game after they declare riichi.  Now I can spend 30 seconds scrolling listlessly through my mp3 playlist!  Yeah!!

That said, these buttons occasionally get me into trouble.  I'm usually pretty good about turning auto-win off if I need to avoid busting someone or I'm looking for a specific 'side' of my wait, but my habit of turning on 'no-call' at the start of every hand occasionally locks me out of a yakupai/dora pon opportunity before I've processed my hand.  Also sometimes I click the button on and off because I'm being wishy-washy about calling, which triggers the 'doubleclick tsumokiri' feature of Tenhou and makes me deal into a houdei baiman for no reason.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA DUDE WAIT NO

4p progress is slow because I've only played a couple of games since I hit shodan.  I am slightly up in rank points, though, so I am getting somewhere.  I'll probably have an actual update sometime later this week.  I'm sure I won't hit 2dan, but I should be able to improve my rate and make some progress, I think.  xKime's post on "Pechorin's Style Doctrine" has inspired me, so I'm gonna believe in myself and wait for the good results to show themselves over time.  Until then, take care of each other!

November 29, 2010

Waltz For Life Will Born

All right, that's over with, thank God.  It only took 7 games after that last mopey post to hit 1dan, so I guess the moral of the story is that I will go to any length to make myself look like a dumb baby, even if that means winning a bunch of games.  I'm not gonna bother commenting on any of my matches 'cause there are just too dang many, but I will at least post the logs and overviews here. 

Game 1: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+5.0) kazu@さそり(-18.0) bl(+45.0) pokke(-32.0)
Game 2: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+74.0) サスピ(-50.0) 03850246(+4.0) エメリウム光線(-28.0)
Game 3: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+11.0) SCRIPT(+57.0) ク_ソ_ゲー乙(-51.0) yakamasy(-17.0)

Game 4: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-36.0) はまてぃ(+12.0) isa(-24.0) 3203X(+48.0)
Game 5: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-13.0) teaapple(-37.0) FRESTA(+10.0) Temp1e(+40.0)
Game 6: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+57.0) GAHAKU(-34.0) NoName(-24.0) 広島迷人(+1.0)
Game 7: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-15.0) てんほうnow(+40.0) gyaba(+6.0) Conanwww(-31.0)
Game 8: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-38.0) ウーロンあああ(+7.0) NoName(-20.0) you-my(+51.0)
Game 9: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+14.0) 聖k,(-41.0) taka1999(-21.0) アパートとむ(+48.0)
Game 10: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-18.0) (^^(-34.0) BULLBONE(+45.0) NoName(+7.0)
Game 11: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+11.0) はちみつ放浪記2(+54.0) あきすけ!!!。(-26.0) Remilia.(-39.0)
Game 12: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-32.0) uchey(+4.0) jalNoNam(-21.0) っし(+49.0)
Game 13: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-33.0) cryst(-22.0) だるま68(+47.0) NoName(+8.0)
Game 14: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-38.0) oinari7(+68.0) 武蔵☆小次郎(-52.0) ホロ♀(+22.0)
Game 15: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+45.0) torara88(-15.0) yotuba(-44.0) putimosu(+14.0)
Game 16: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+15.0) みつみな(-46.0) NoName(-22.0) 和可(+53.0)
Game 17: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+51.0) 式波さんは俺の嫁(-23.0) genzku(+9.0) HI-LIGHT(-37.0)
Game 18: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-12.0) 出席番号31(+45.0) NoName(-46.0) yoyodayo(+13.0)
Game 19: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+45.0) シダ♪(+8.0) 江頭2時50分(-13.0) NoName(-40.0)
Game 20: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+18.0) NoName(-27.0) 醍(-40.0) hair-1(+49.0)
Game 21: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+41.0) qp(-32.0) kaya27(-19.0) 緋路(+10.0)


21 games!  Phew!  I started off okay but then I just fell into a streak of bad luck or bad playing, or something.  I switched over to red fast tonpuusens for the last 5 games, which is where I got 3 of my wins.  Maybe that was the key all along!  I guess it doesn't matter now, though, because in the lowerdan lobby everybody either plays fast tonpuusen or slow hanchans ლ(╹◡╹ლ)

So yeah, I'm not playing in the free lobby anymore.  Forget that!  I'm also going to play hanchans for a while, to see if my rates improve at all.  I feel like a lot of my 4th place finishes result from either a single deal-in or from not winning any hands, and I think extending the length of the games will decrease the chances of that happening.  We'll see, though!  I'd say I'm excited to be in the dan lobby but honestly a lot of my matches in the free lobby were with all dan-ranked players (occasionally dan-ranked players with R1800+, those jerks) so I'm not actually sure it'll be that much different, haha.

In other news, the BakaBT Mahjong Tournament is almost finished with its first phase!  The pre-elimination period ends at the end of the month.  It'll be interesting to see what happens; there are still a lot of matches that need to be played and I really doubt that's gonna happen before December 1st.  As it is, about 2/3rd of the matches that have been played have had at least one substitute player involved.  I guess that's not really surprising, though, given the size of the player roster.  Once the no-shows and new players get weeded out things might get interesting!

November 17, 2010

3p is still lol


In lighter news, 3p is still pretty hilarious.  21 games to get to R1800+ woo yeah this game rules