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!!

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!

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!

1dan Progress Update

It's not going too good!

3p is still lol

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

Rouge Message

Hey, I hit 1kyu tonight.  Some 4th place finishes this session, which is a bummer, but I did get 1st 5 times out of 11, which is good.  I'm mostly going to just go over the 3rd and 4th place games to see what went wrong.  I had some pretty unfortunate draws this time around, if I recall.

Game 1: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+12.0) つみれ店長(-42.0) ujima(-17.0) NoName(+47.0)
A haneman win wasn't enough to guarantee me 1st.  I missed a chance to triple ron someone in East-4 because I didn't declare riichi.  That wouldn't have helped me win, but it would have been funny.
Game 2: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-41.0) 偽トニー(+54.0) 4ten(+9.0) （屮￣∀￣）屮(-22.0)
I draw someone's winning tile immediately after they declare riichi in East-1.  With a potential oya-baiman waiting for me, I cut it a turn later.  Another unfortunate draw in East-2-1 leads me to deal in again.  And then, tsumos.
Game 3: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+45.0) Joker16(-34.0) 柚麻(-17.0) kazuo(+6.0)
Woo 2kyu!  Since there were only 3 new games I didn't bother making an update just for that.
Game 4: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+53.0) Ｕたれぞう(-52.0) TEKI(+14.0) NoName(-15.0)
I ate a 5200 hit in this one, but otherwise it went well for me.
Game 5: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+42.0) Cress(+5.0) ☆瓢虫(-29.0) mukyu(-18.0)
A kan gives me 3 dora and a mangan win in East-1, and then three cheap hands get thrown around, ending the game.  Sometimes one win is all it takes.
Game 6: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-15.0) chichi(-32.0) monocon(+40.0) ちゅん(+7.0)
One deal-in during East-4 was enough to drop me from 1st to 3rd, sadly.  Remember when I said "no more cutting live dora tiles to stay in tenpai" a few posts ago?  I wish I had!
Game 7: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+15.0) かめかめ001(-54.0) matida_k(+62.0) lili1222(-23.0)
I decided to bust かめかめ001 and take 2nd instead of risking lilil222 busting him and dropping me to 3rd.  Not sure if that was the best decision, but I think overtaking matida_k would have been tough anyways.
Game 8: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-19.0) NoName(-57.0) keimizu(+19.0) shapa-(+57.0)
Yet another unfortunate draw in East-3-2.  With 3 5s visible and the 4s and 5s discards in his pool I figured the 3s wasn't too dangerous, but there you go.
Game 9: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+56.0) とつ(+4.0) coooooo1(-41.0) myt97036(-19.0)
It's hard to fall from 1st if you have almost 50,000 points by the midway point.
Game 10: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-39.0) xjj(+8.0) カイジ２(-15.0) myt97036(+46.0)
Yes, it's another unfortunate draw in East-1.  I tried my best to get out of 4th but I wasn't able to win anything after a weak riichi-pinfu hand.  The game ends with me getting another death tile immediately after someone hits tenpai.
Game 11: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+48.0) NoName(-36.0) kumatara(+7.0) obakekke(-19.0)
A drawn-out game.  My decision to not riichi in South-1 leads to 4 more hands getting played before I can pull myself above 30,000 points to win.  Oh, and you can probably guess what my one deal-in was (hint: I draw the worst tiles, all the time, forever.)

I'm still looking way worse than I was a few sessions ago, but it's an improvement.  It looks like I'll hit 1dan before I can hit 1800 rate, but that's not so bad.  I'd really like to see that 4th rate drop, though.  Having 1st, 2nd, and 3rd all in the 25-30% range isn't too off-putting, but I miss my 10% 4th rate.  I suspect it'll never get back to that level, unfortunately.  Such is life.

Today's lesson is, if someone declares riichi and I don't draw a 100% safe tile on my next turn, I am dead.  I guess that's only really helpful for me, though.  Well, if you ever want to beat me, just declare riichi all the time.  I'll probably give you an ippatsu or two.

Next time, I'll be 1dan!  Probably!  Unless something really weird happens!  Look forward to it!

system0

welp,

Game 1: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+4.0) kenoko(-17.0) tetu4649(+40.0) 歩鳥.(-27.0)
My usual habit of not thinking before cutting appears in East-3.  I was bailing, so why didn't I just cut the 1p? Two riichis threw me off and I panicked, and instead of taking as much time as possible to look at the discards I just picked the 4m because it was safe for one player and dealt in.  1p and 2p were 100% safe for both.  Basically, I'm stupid (still.)
Game 2: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-30.0) mentaiko(-19.0) アルパカくん(+44.0) NoName(+5.0)
Being in noten East-1 ruined me, I guess.  No deal-ins, but I just couldn't win a hand (or even get into tenpai at all.)
Game 3: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-20.0) kirimi(+44.0) ABEE(+6.0) umetan(-30.0)
Not really sure why I made that riichi in East-1.  I got into tenpai a lot this time, but I still couldn't win anything.  It was just luck of the draw that I was 3rd instead of 4th, since we had the same amount of points.
Game 4: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-29.0) ハチ3(+40.0) あくむら(+8.0) 雀骨(-19.0)
I'm not a good player so I don't know if it was the right decision to go for it in South-1.  If it was, I guess it was just my bad luck that I had his tiles.  If it wasn't, I guess I should have bailed, in which case if he won I would have gotten 2nd at least.
Game 5: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-56.0) じゃむぱわふる(+56.0) @bacchus(-18.0) yoyodayo(+18.0)
I guess I should have bailed East-1.  There's no coming back from an oya-haneman hit in a tonpuusen.  I guess I shouldn't have thrown out the riichi in East-3, either.  I need to play more calmly.  I still would have lost, in all likelihood, but I would have at least had a shot.

So yeah, I'm still garbage.  Not going to bother posting a stat screenshot, but my rate fell 99 points to 1664 and my 4th place rate jumped to .156.  Maybe I'll play some more games tonight, in which case I'll edit this post with the new logs.

Today I remembered why I usually stuck with hanchans before; I'm an idiot, so I need to have an extra round to make up for the mistakes I make.  If that isn't there, I'm just going to deal in once and lose.  The obvious solution, one which I realized a year ago but still haven't put into practice, is to not deal in.  Unfortunately I'm not good enough to do that consistently.  That's why I started this blog, though, so maybe next time I'll show some improvement.

Part 2:
Game 1: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-20.0) ulaz.(+47.0) takon(+5.0) きみとぼく(-32.0)
Not much to say.  Didn't deal in, didn't win anything.  Tonpuusen are over too fast.
Game 2: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+5.0) DOTTI(-40.0) dadaweae(+52.0) かものはし(-17.0)
Going for Kokushi in East-4 was silly but it didn't seem to affect anything.  4 hands played, only 2 of them had a winner.  Tonpuusen are over too fast!
Game 3: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+45.0) @あっと@(-39.0) NoName(-16.0) Pokopen(+10.0)
Hey, I actually got to win some hands this time.
Game 4: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-18.0) y@k(+5.0) nabeat(+47.0) 秋風五丈原(-34.0)
Stupid turn 3 3-way wait.  Stupid uradora.  The other two deal-ins are basically my fault (although given the discards souzu tiles didn't look particularily dangerous in South-1.)  I thought for sure I had it in the bag in South-2 with a damaten wait on the 9p, especially after my shimocha declared riichi with a 6p in his discards. Just not lucky, I guess.  If it's me and another guy in tenpai, the other guy usually gets the ron.
Game 5: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-20.0) k.k714(+53.0) NoName(-39.0) 強くなりたい人(+6.0)
1s didn't look very dangerous in East-2.  Shanpon waits!  Aargh!  My riichi in East-3 didn't pan out and my damaten in East-4 didn't pan out either.  For some reason NoName turned on tsumokiri near the end of the first hand and spent the rest of the game absent.  Man, I hate that.

Better playing this time around.  I didn't deal into anything huge (or at all in the first 3 games) and I didn't get 4th at all this time.  I just...couldn't get my winning tiles to come out.  Didn't seem to matter if I was damaten or riichi, they were just stuck in the wall or used in someone's hand.  Guess that just happens sometimes, even though it sucks.  I'm feeling kind of blah about tonpuusen after all this so I might try some hanchans next time.  I'm at 90/100 rank points, though, so I'll wait until I rank up for those.  Hopefully it won't be too many more games.

Day of Peace

Hi friends!  This session was a good one, to the point where I'm almost afraid to play another game, because fate can't keep smiling on me forever.  I guess I wasn't kidding when I said this post was going to be my comeback.  Not a lot to say about these because things went well. 

Game 1: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+64.0) kent1231(+19.0) 2929(-35.0) H.A(-48.0)
Really strong start.  I wasn't expecting any real challenge after that, but a dealer haneman tsumo put kent1231 within range and I spent the rest of the game trying to pull away.  He came pretty close, and I made a completely boneheaded riichi in the last hand that only paid off because of my dumb luck.  If I had fallen into 2nd there I would have had it coming, haha.
Game 2: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+14.0) NoName(-10.0) tokuton(-51.0) samurank(+47.0)
Probably missed a win in East-2-0 because I decided not to cut the 3s.  I figured someone probably had a pair and would win off of it or advance their hand if I cut it.  I was only half right, though, so if I had cut it tokuton probably would have dealt in right after.  I took the tsumo win in East-3-3 because 1st was probably not going to happen.  Pulling myself up to 2nd was better than having someone else bust tokuton and ending in 3rd.
Game 3: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+15.0) Koton(+56.0) core&A(-58.0) ｃｃｃ(-13.0)
I couldn't not take the win in the last hand, even if it stuck me in 2nd.  It was the ideal tile, just not from the ideal person.
Game 4: 2位 辞世テンプレート(0.0) kogado(-23.0) ampere(+57.0) H@ssy(-34.0)
Two haneman tsumos put ampere comfortably in 1st.  I was East for the final hand, so an upset was theoretically possible, but two calls (one of which was a pon on the dora) by kogado made me decide to just bail and take 2nd.  He didn't even get into tenpai until the final draw so I didn't actually need to, but that's how it goes.  I guess his aggression backfired on him.
Game 5: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+54.0) wildwild(-16.0) yura93(+9.0) eiri(-47.0)
eirisux
Game 6: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+46.0) quayso(-12.0) zardoz(-46.0) ゆう☆★(+12.0)
Not sure why I made that kan in East-1.  That could have gone real bad.  zardoz's kan went bad (for him) in East-3.  Dumb luck again, I guess.
Game 7: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+75.0) みくる～(-39.0) 目の前からうせろ(-51.0) mohami(+15.0)
Honestly didn't expect the dora to come out after my riichi in East-1-2.  I was feeling pretty safe after another strong start (with a player at 2000 and another at 5200, it would be hard for mohami to get enough points to overtake me without preemptively busting someone.)  Absolutely gorgeous draws in the last hand.  That's the best kind of speed.

I guess I did have some stuff to say after all.  Anyways, 7 games, no 3rd or 4th place finishes.  That's not going to last, but so far I've at least been good at avoiding 4th.  If I can keep this up it should be relatively smooth sailing to 4dan!  Once I hit 1dan I'll gain rank points for 2nd place finishes, and 3rd place finishes don't lose you points, so it'll be a steady climb if I can maintain these stats.  Speaking of, here's where I stand now:

Oh yeah. Plus 120 rate, another rank up, higher hand win rate, lower deal-in rate.  My open and riichi rates are up a little, which means I'm playing more aggressively as well.  It seems to be paying off!  I might even hit 1800R within the next few sessions.  Then it's just a matter of maintaining it until 4dan.  I can do it!  Yeah!!

Today's lesson is, sometimes luck can protect you from your dumb mistakes.  Don't rely on it, though!  If you catch yourself making a dumb mistake, learn from it, and don't make it again.  Or, if you're me, make it at least 3 more times before you remember for good.  This is the surest path to success.

santa claus in the rain

Just a status update today.  I played 5 games Friday night and 5 games tonight.  The first session went OK, if uneventful.  The second session went...less than OK.  I don't really remember the happenings of the first session at this point; I don't think anything really incredible happened.  Apparently I stomped some guys when I got that 1st place win, though. I'll try to go over what happened in the second session after this logdump.

Game 1: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+6.0) 懲役２００年(-40.0) jantome(+49.0) NoName(-15.0)
Game 2: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-22.0) ガッツ秀(+53.0) MAGGIO(-39.0) Re:V(+8.0)
Game 3: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+11.0) caco5824(-58.0) core&A(+68.0) モハメド・ナシ(-21.0)
Game 4: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+86.0) MOCVD(-50.0) Lupin3(-32.0) akinoko(-4.0)
Game 5: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+9.0) NoName(-19.0) aquafina(+44.0) horima(-34.0)

Game 6: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-36.0) 1eoantls(+11.0) 生羽隆志(+42.0) 北浦の赤犬(-17.0)
Basically, I'm an idiot and when I drew the 6s in East-2 I was like "hmm let's look at the discards, oh this passed, right? I think it passed *cut* wait that was before the riichi aaarrrrghhh I would have cut the 9m if I realized that sooner why am I so dumb"
I tried to recover after that but I couldn't win before a tsumo in East-3, and in East-4 I decided not to riichi in hopes of either hitting 1eoantls with the Ton or drawing it myself to pull the game into the South rounds, but instead I just ended up dealing in again.
Game 7: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-16.0) 19680206(+57.0) K‐5(-52.0) Lyric180(+11.0)
K-5 dealt into a lot of hands, but none of them were mine.
Game 8: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+5.0) ASUKA@N(+40.0) NoName(-15.0) みきと(-30.0)
My greed made me deal into a mangan East-1.  I passed on a ron in East-4-0 because I wanted to aim for more than 3rd and then immediately dealt in, and then dealt in again in East-4-1 without even hitting tenpai.  I took a big risk in East-4-2, throwing out a riichi with 2 already on the table, but it paid off.  Honestly I shouldn't have gotten 2nd here, this game was terrible.
Game 9: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+13.0) lowe(-39.0) kagerou7(-17.0) 天使ちゃんアジ天(+43.0)
This one wasn't terrible.  I just couldn't win that last hand to get into 1st.  I actually did something really dumb in the last hand and put myself into furiten, but someone tsumoed before that could backfire on me.
Game 10: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-21.0) NoName．(-39.0) NoName(+2.0) 随風(+58.0)
NoName． ragequit or something after dealing in during East-2.  He ended up dealing into an ippatsu mangan and letting the same player pon the dora in the next hand.  Having a player redname is really annoying...they turn into a tsumokiri bot and it completely changes the outcome of the game. There's nothing you can really do about it except hope that their draws favor you more than the other players. Sucks.

Upon reflection I didn't suck as hard as I thought I did.  I did still suck, though.  I'm catching myself cutting a tile and then going "oh wait fuck" a second later, which indicated that I should really think more when I'm playing.  Things usually turn out fine regardless, but making so many misses is going to be bad for me in the long run. Playing 10 games and getting a 1-5-3-1 spread is pretty disappointing as well.  I'm essentially just stagnating at this point.

Also, there were too many big hits this time; getting hit with a 1000 or 2000 point hand isn't the end of the world, but I'm eating too many mangans, and it's showing in these logs.  This session I tried to be a little more aggressive and work on faster wins, and although it didn't pay off big, I think it was helpful (or at least, it was just my bad luck that stopped me from winning in those cases, instead of my incompetence.)  Next session I'm going to try extra hard to not stupidly deal into big hands.  No more cutting the dora tile to maintain tenpai!  What am I thinking!

 

For consistency's sake, here are the stats.  Pretty much nothing has changed, though.  I didn't take a shot in between the two sessions but these are down from that midpoint, so that's a bummer.  I have the next two days off of work, so I should have time for another round sometime soon.  I got beaten up this time, so next time will be my comeback!  Look forward to it!

edit:  To make this post slightly less depressing, here is a completely mahjong-unrelated sweet thing I did today.  I've been playing this game fanatically for about 2 months trying to get a score like this, so the payoff pretty much made my day.

Missing Power

 A fairly uneventful block of games. I didn't deal in once, which was good, but I also only won 4 hands total in 5 games, which was boring.  This was also oya-baiman tsumo day; I saw 3 of them tonight (only one was mine, sadly.)  Two wins was enough to take me to 5kyu and I'm sitting at exactly R1600 right now, which isn't too bad.  Not a lot to say about these matches; I made about the usual number of discard mistakes, but it wasn't enough to ruin me this time. The night is still young, so after I take a break I'll probably play some more games.  I'll edit this post with those logs and the latest stat update when that happens.  In the meantime, here's the first session:

Game 1: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+70.0) NoName(+4.0) moos(-32.0) tome_268(-42.0)
Game 2: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+49.0) YaYaYa(-32.0) 栗花落(-21.0) yoshieye(+4.0)
Game 3: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+5.0) samurank(-18.0) WuKe(-36.0) LISP(+49.0)
Game 4: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-29.0) NoName(+64.0) 人肉市場(-39.0) 綾小路秀麻呂(+4.0)
Game 5: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-31.0) ryuparis(-41.0) ☆エリア５１☆(+8.0) 青髪ピアス(+64.0)

All right, I downed an energy drink and threw on an old episode of Idle Thumbs to get me ultra-boosted for another 5 tonpuusen (tonpuusens? How do you pluralize this stuff anyways?)  Let's go!

Game 1: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+9.0) fktgt5(-36.0) Ki44(+44.0) ケロりん(-17.0)
Dealt in during East-3, but given the situation I don't really blame myself. Damaten 3-way waits :<
Game 2: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-17.0) kaka22(+3.0) steelo78(+45.0) 殿下(-31.0)
East-4: "Well, might as well throw down a riichi. If I can get a hit with the haku and pull out some uradora I might get first, and I don't think anythNO DON'T TAKE MY RIICHI STICK AAAAAA FUCK WHY"
Game 3: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-21.0) tba(+1.0) Yuihorie(+58.0) 美輪信者(-38.0)
East-2-0: "With the wall of the 6man this 8man would be the best discard here.  Aw what the hell.  Well, at least it's just some riichi-only garbage hanAW WHAT THE HELL"
Game 4: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+41.0) bck375(+10.0) deko(-15.0) aj(-36.0)
Game 5: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+56.0) サリーパパ(-22.0) OOO!!!(-51.0) 132009(+17.0)

As promised, here's the stats.  Deal-in rate is a little lower, which is good.  1st rate and 3rd rate went up, 2nd went down some, 4th dropped quite a bit.  Pleased about that as well!  I'd like to get 2nd more than 3rd, obviously, but escaping 4th place is more important, I think.  Rate's up almost 80 points from last time, too, so hell yeah.  I'm still catching myself making mistakes and taking some unwise risks, but as long as I'm making progress, we're golden.

Today's lesson is, riichi sticks can and will make or break your rank if you're not careful.  1000 points can go a long way in a close game!

Some Other Time

No ranked games for the past couple days. Since that tournament got moved from Wednesday to Sunday I'll have time for that tomorrow...or I guess later today at this point.  I have been playing a fair amount of jansou tonpuusens in my free time, though.  It's technically ranked but I care about that much less than my actual 4p rank, so it's a good place to play when I'm not up for the pressure of a regular game.  Also, it's the only place where you can pull of stupid wins like this:

25,700 points?  Yeah, that'll do.  Here's your G, buddy.

In other news BakaBT is running a mahjong tournament sometime in the near future. I didn't enter because I forgot ( ლ(╹◡╹ლ) ) but it's notable because they have 98 entrants, which is more players than I thought the English-speaking community even had at this point. Right on! I'm not entirely sure how that's all going to get organized but I'll be keeping my eyes on it. Seems like it could be interesting!

You Make Me Feel So Bad

 Jammed through some more tonpuusen rounds tonight.  I started off feeling pretty good but I took a major dive halfway through, which sucks.  As usual I pretty much only have myself to blame, though.  This should about sum it up:

 

He chose...poorly.

Here are the logs.  I pushed through the bad stuff in order to hit 6kyu, but ideally that bad stuff shouldn't have happened to begin with.  A lot of boneheaded mistakes in here, even in the games where I placed first or second.  Starting to feel a lot less confident about this plan; I guess I'm the kind of guy who never really learns his lessons.  I think the tonpuusen rounds are good for me, though.  It's better that I get punished for my mistakes harshly early on so when I move onto hanchans I'll stop dealing into dealer mangans all the damn time.

Game 1: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+10.0) じいちゃん(+44.0) 鬼怒川亭(-21.0) Purapur(-33.0)

Game 2: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+41.0) masato33(-14.0) parabola(-33.0) ran2(+6.0)

Game 3: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+8.0) oppo゜(-38.0) なめだるま親方(+47.0) サフラン(-17.0)

Game 4: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+49.0) NoName(-45.0) onikuma(-13.0) kent1231(+9.0)

Game 5: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-72.0) samurank(-16.0) 有段者(+5.0) NoName(+83.0)

Game 6: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-34.0) ヘリウ(-18.0) sazanami(+45.0) samurank(+7.0)

Game 7: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-16.0) tiioo(+7.0) NoName(+42.0) NoName(-33.0)

Game 8: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+42.0) ルーヤン(+4.0) adanxx(-18.0) 1094800(-28.0)

And, here are the stats as of tonight.

As you can see my deal-in rate is almost double what it was last time.  My win/loss numbers have evened out a lot as well.  I'd be fine with an even spread between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd if my 4th place rate wasn't as high as it was...it's still early in my career, though.  Hopefully I can shape up soon.

Oh, also, some guy on /jp/ made a championship lobby out of nowhere.  It's tonnansen ari red, and running at midnight 10/28 Japan time (or 3pm PST 10/27, I think?) for some reason.  Given the weird choice of day I'm not sure there's going to be any kind of turnout, but I have the 27th off so I'll be playing in it anyways.  My records were way better in 7447 than they ever were in 0000 so maybe it'll be a good morale booster.  Alternatively I could just get destroyed and lose all faith in myself...I guess we'll see (ﾟぺ)

edit: Whoops, guess he changed the date to Sunday evening instead.  I do work that day so no tournament for me.  Oh well!

Afternoon tea dream

No real games today, but I've been playing a little jansou mode. Here's something I learned today: you should pay attention to what your hand actually is instead of just how many taatsu and mentsu you have. Here's why!

From the 3446 pattern, I will cut the 6. This is logical.

Tenpai at last! Time to declare riichi.

Tsumo! Thanks for the points, chumps. Hey wait a minute

ffffffffffwhoops there goes a missed haneman

I sure could use a 9000 point difference in my favor right about now

Sooooo yeah, don't play mahjong when you're running off of less than 4 hours of sleep. That's today's lesson!

Bonus "lol 3p" post

I felt like throwing some more tiles around so I played a couple 3p hanchans. The first one ended in East 1-1 with me tsumoing for 2600 points, which busted someone. The second one ended like this:
lol 3p

Sweet Soul Revue

Hey guys. Today's been a busy day! I ran to the bookstore, picked up my paycheck, and got a badly-needed haircut. I think losing some of that extra weight is going to make my mahjong game extra nimble for this session.

As per Kime's advice in the comments of my last post I'm gonna try tonpuusen rounds for the night. He's right in that hanchans are pretty much just wasting time at this point, especially in the lower ranks where one tonpuusen win is enough to push me up. I also noticed a trend last night where I would get a good lead in the beginning of the game and then lose it by the end, so maybe cutting out the last half of the round will stop me from hemorrhaging points so much. It should make these posts a little shorter, too, since there'll be less hands to commentate on. Also, I'm gonna listen to Pizzicato Five tonight. I think I was listening to them at the beginning of the Summer #mahjong League when I pulled a daisangen out of my ass, so hopefully they'll bring me some luck again.

Tonight's goal is to think harder about my discards. My defensive game was pretty decent last night but some mistakes in my discards cost me more than once. You can't see this in the replays, but I rarely spend more than 1 or 2 seconds thinking about a cut. I need to stop coasting so much, since it's clearing bringing me down. I just gotta focus. Focus! Focus harder!

Too much! Too much!

Game 1: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+46.0) ママには内緒♪(-37.0) トート(-22.0) 卍saru卍(+13.0)

Yeah! That's more like it. A haneman in East-1 was enough to keep me in 1st the entire game. I spent the rest of the game moving forward and then retreating in various ways. I'm glad I riichi'd in East-1, though! If I hadn't, I would have dropped to 2nd in the end.

Game 2: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-46.0) tama222(+14.0) NoName(+52.0) yosuke3(-20.0)

Okay, less like it. This one is completely my fault though. I decided to drop the possible sanshoku in East-1 in favor of chanta, which was the wrong thing to do. Throwing out a riichi in East-3 was pretty dumb too. I was thinking 'well, if I take apart my hand I'll just end up in East-4 with less points and only one shot and getting out of 4th' but that still would have been preferable to dealing in, and declaring riichi basically guaranteed that 36p wasn't going to come out anyways. In East-4 I decided not to declare riichi for some reason, which immediately backfired as I lost my shot at an ippatsu tsumo and a possible comeback baiman. This was really terrible. I suck.

Game 3: 3位 辞世テンプレート(-16.0) 黒猪(-36.0) おげおげ(+8.0) Mg2+(+44.0)

Probably shouldn't have let the nan go in East-2. Otherwise, I just couldn't get a winning hand together. Props to 黒猪 for making a kan to give my shimo-cha two extra dora, causing the round to end when he dealt in. Thanks for that, jerk.

Game 4: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+14.0) BH(-49.0) NoName(+49.0) kondoh(-14.0)

This BH dude should work on his defense a little. Not much to say here. I'm glad I picked the right wait in East-4. It would have taken 3 uradora to get 1st but at least I came close! I've always considered 2nd place a victory in its own right.

Game 5: 2位 辞世テンプレート(+6.0) じいちゃん(-25.0) MONOSTER(+61.0) NoName(-42.0)

Made the mistake of cutting 8p instead of 1p in East-2, which backfired when I drew another one immediately afterwards, leaving me 1shanten instead of in tenpai. Spent the rest of that hand in various flavours of noten until the 2dan R1966 cut a live chun turn 15 to deal into a mangan. Good going, bud. I made the executive decision to go for a cheap tanyao in East-3 to prevent my shimo-cha from assembling a honitsu. I guess that wasn't actually necessary, looking at the replay, but oh well. I chased sanshoku for a while in East-4-0 but eventually called just so I wouldn't be in noten when the game drew, and then MONOSTER pulled out a hilarious 5-uradora baiman before I could assemble my tanyao dora-2. Another 2nd place finish...I guess it could be worse. I'm at 1 win out of 10 games, though. That kind of sucks.

My focus is waning but I'm going to play one more game. I want to pull my rate back above 1500 and hit 8kyu before the night ends. We'll see!

Game 6: 1位 辞世テンプレート(+41.0) NUUUUUUU(-40.0) おむあいす(+11.0) tokuton(-12.0)

I took some risks I probably shouldn't have, and I very, very narrowly escaped falling into 2nd in East-4-1. But whatever, I totally won. Ya'll can just take it.


Here's where we stand now. It's been a rough start but I'm hoping that my next couple of sessions will even out those numbers some. Till next time!

ReSTARTER

Now that I've spent a bunch of time creating this blog and writing the intro post it's high time to play some dang old mahjong. Here's how this is going to work: I'll link the replay for every match and throw out some comments about how things went down, as well as my general thoughts about how I played. I'll try to point out the interesting rounds so you can skip through the replays to find the good parts if you want. Here we go!

Game 1: 3位 (辞世テンプレート(-19.0) NoName(+65.0) 安武弐号機(-55.0) フェンウェイ(+9.0))

It's disappointing to end up 3rd in my first match, but I'm pleased with how I played overall.
A small mistake in East-1 left me with my shimo-cha's winning tile in my hand, but I resisted the urge to force it and avoided dealing into a pseudo-mangan. Given the state of my hand at the turn before he declared riichi (12m 49p 23567789s SS) the better play would have been to cut the 4p; it was pretty clear the 4p and 9p were both going to have to go, unless I drew 3p or 5p sometime soon. It's a bad habit of mine to coast into cutting end tiles so I don't have to really think about what I'm doing.
I took apart my tenpai and avoided dealing into a houdei in South-2-1. Pleased with that. I lost more points being in no-ten than I would have from dealing in, but I think that was better than moving the match forward to South-3 and giving myself less time to make an upset.
After that a turn 4 ippatsu tsumo from my shimo-cha dropped me into 3rd and 安武弐号機 busted himself before I could make a recovery. It's a bummer, but I never dealt in and I got myself into tenpai a fair number of times, so I don't feel bad about it. Sometimes there's nothing you can do; that's the kind of game mahjong is.

Game 2: 2位 (辞世テンプレート(+16.0) ひとみ♪(-7.0) をっぱいもみもみ(+46.0) ちゃり乙(-55.0))

Another game cut short by someone busting.
No deal-ins again. I made the regrettable decision to not riichi upon hitting tenpai in South-1-1, which resulted in the aforementioned bust and me losing by 1000 points. I stand by the decision, though; I wasn't about to thrown down a riichi with two sets of dora tiles completely unaccounted for, especially with such a low-value hand. Of course, making the logical decision probably cost me the win. So it goes.

Game 3: 3位 (辞世テンプレート(-33.0) yokodrag(+98.0) ｃｋ４＿０３１４(-12.0) takata(-53.0))

I decided to go for the 8p wait in East-4-1 because I figured with my discards the way they were it would probably come out if I threw down a riichi. That turned out to be the wrong decision, as my shimo-cha drew the 7p and cut it immediately and then I dealt into an ippatsu dealer baiman. There goes my .000 deal-in rate! After struggling intensely to pull myself out of sub-1000 point hell, I was saved from 4th place by my shimo-cha busting himself again. I must be bad luck or something.
It blows that after such a promising start I got destroyed by one error in my play, but I guess that's mahjong for you. This ain't no game where you get to make mistakes!

Game 4: 3位 (辞世テンプレート(-19.0) イサコ(+23.0) 燕雀217(-60.0) SAN-346(+56.0))

For some reason I cut the nan in East-1 instead of the haku or chun, which is what I'd usually do (and what I should have done) with a hand that's hinting at pinfu. This immediately backfired on me, as by turn 4 I should have already been in tenpai and turn 5 I should have pulled out an ippatsu tsumo. I didn't want to riichi for a worthless hand with a bad wait, but then I immediately drew my winning tile turn 6. I hesitated for a while but decided to take the cheap win because I didn't want to mess around in furiten while I try to get my hand into a better shape.
Trying to push my luck in South-2-1 got me a dealer-mangan hit for my troubles. I tried to recover but my shimo-cha got a hot streak and busted 燕雀217 to pull himself from 3rd to 1st. That's real good for him but I wasn't thrilled. It's too bad; I don't feel like I'm playing poorly or anything but somehow I just keep ending up in 3rd. Well, I'll play one more game for the night and then I think it's time to call it quits.

Game 5: 4位 辞世テンプレート(-39.0) Nikuman!(+2.0) ホエールばなな(-26.0) ミネラル(+63.0)

East-1 is basically a comedy of errors where I pick a tanki wait for some reason and then end up bailing and then getting into furiten in various ways because Nikuman! has a pon on the dora.
In South-1-0 I throw out a riichi with a shanpon wait on 9s and Xia because I figure there's a good chance they'll flow out. Instead I deal into a dealer mangan a couple turns later. Turns out he had an ankou of the dora. Whoops!
I tried various things in an attempt to recover but I couldn't win any hands after that, and I dropped into 4th in South-4-1 after a lucky haitei tsumo for a dealer mangan by ホエールばなな. So, there you go, I guess.

Uhh...I kind of figured this would go better than it did. I was pretty much hoping for a 5-win streak or something awesome like that, but instead I played 5 games and didn't win once. I only dealt in 3 times (2 of which were after declaring riichi) and it seemed like I won plenty of hands but it just wasn't enough this time. Pretty disappointing. I guess there are days like this sometimes. xKime told me before that I seem to not make many big mistakes, but my little mistakes add up and pull my rank down. Maybe that was the case this time!

Today's lesson appears to be "if you are VgameT's shimo-cha, you are probably either going to bust or get 1st." I think we can all learn something from this.


Here's where we're at now. Not too good! I have tomorrow off work so I'll probably play a few more then. Hopefully I'll be able to at least hit 9kyu next time!

Setting Off Together

Hi guys! I'm VgameT. I'm not too sure how to start all this off so I guess we'll just jump straight into story time.

I started playing mahjong about a year and a half ago (May 2009 was when I registered my first ID on Tenhou) and I guess since then I've achieved some measure of acknowledgment in the English-speaking mahjong community as a guy who plays a lot of mahjong and kind of knows what he's doing. I really like this game, but I feel that, as a player, I haven't really been progressing lately. My account hit 2-dan more than a year ago but since then I've basically stagnated. I rose to 3-dan at some point but this month I've just been getting thrashed in the lower-dan lobby, enough to regress a rank. I also dropped from 5-dan down to 4-dan in 3-player, and my rate in both areas is pretty mediocre (or worse). After spending about a week getting demolished in 3p jansou mode, I decided it was time to shape up.

So, I made a new ID.Say hello to 辞世テンプレート! I'm giving myself a fresh start for ranked matches. I'd played enough games as VgameT that I felt my stats were not going to change without some serious work. I've already abandoned the ID I used when I was still learning the rules of the game (prose, if I somehow left enough of an impression that someone would remember it) and I think it's about time to start over once more. I'll still use VgameT for games in 7447 and general foolin' around in the ranked lobbies but this is the ID that's going to take me to the top. Yeah!

The purpose of this blog is to log my games as I make my way towards my goal (the middle-dan lobby, or 4-dan R1800+) in 4p. I'm sure I'll play a fair amount of 3p as well but I'm not setting any goals there because that game is way too hard for me to play consistently (personally I think it's kind of a joke. A fun joke, though.) I'm hoping that the process of chronicling and analyzing my games as I play them will help me grow as a player. I'm sure if I keep at it I can find my bad habits and try to correct them. The other option would be to learn Japanese and dig into the wealth of information about the game available on the web, but I'm a lazy shit so that's probably never happening.

I may also use this space to post various things that pop into my head, like strategy talk or complaints about how ura-dora only shows up when I'm the one dealing in or whatever. I'm also considering recording some games and doing live commentary as I play, but that'll probably have to wait until I rank up enough to get into the lower-dan lobby. I'll try to keep this from becoming "VgameT's self-masturbatory progress blog" at any rate. To facilitate this, here is my disclaimer:

Everything that I post on this blog is just some stupid shit I came up with on my own. I don't know a damn thing about this game. Don't take anything I say here as a fact, or even as legitimate advice, because I am a Dumb Motherfucker.

If you see me say something that's completely wrong please feel free to tell me how stupid I am in the comments! My goal here is to get good at the game, not wave my mahjong dick all over the place. Please support me on my journey to find the Top...of Mahjong.