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.