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.