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!