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!