Intro to Backup Hands, 2022, plus a Little Quiz!

 

Greetings and salutations from Bubbe, who's got more to say about the new card, and about improving your game in general!

 

Today Bubbe's going to talk about having a backup hand, which is an essential skill for any player who hopes to improve beyond the "beginner" level. It's important to have a backup hand because sometimes the discarded tiles or an opponent's exposure prove that you can't complete your original choice of hand. For any number of reasons, including that you might pick new tiles that point you in a different direction, it's really important to be aware of the entire card and how hands interrelate. The better you know the card, the better you can think about all your different options and create your own backup hands.

 

Backup hands generally share some components/melds. Just for fun, I looked at how many hands on the 2022 card include a kong of 2s. There are 12 different hands on the card that can potentially incorporate "2222." Tell me you can't find a backup hand among 11 other choices! 

 

Within that subset are, of course, the wedding hands: E6, LN1, and CR2. A kong of 2 bams with two pungs of Flowers could go with a kong of 1, 2, 3 or 8 in craks OR dots. And again, that's just a subset of the 12 different “2222” hands. In other words, it is challenging to defend against a single exposure of four 2s. 

 

Certain other combinations of exposures appear frequently on the card. You could expose two kongs of ANY like numbers, and even if you had originally thought to do W4 or LN3, which involve pairs and could conceivably be unattainable, no one will know that you're not doing LN1. They cannot call you dead and you still can switch your hand if you need to do so. 

 

 

Let’s look at a different component. I decided to look at a pung of 5s to see how often that appears. There are ten hands that use a pung of 5s, although two of them are concealed. Can you identify them all? 

 

Many of the hands that involve a pung of 5s also require a pair (or single tiles in the concealed hands), so if you do expose a pung of 5s, you will want to have a backup plan in mind--especially if you are going for one that has pairs, and you aren’t quite ready. Until you make the second exposure, no one will know exactly what you need, but once a second meld is exposed you might be nailed down to a specific hand.

 

For instance, if you put out a pung of 5 dots and a kong of 7 craks, you could be playing CR5.2* or O3b. If you put out a pung of 5 dots and a pung of 5 bams, you could be playing LN2 or CR4. 

 

Other second exposures point to only one hand. 

 

Quick quiz: which is the only hand for each of these second exposures after a pung of 5 dots?

 

A)  kong of 8 bams  

 

B)  kong of Red dragons  

C) pung of soaps   

D) pung of 9 bams  

D) kong of Flowers

E) kong of Norths 

F) pung of 7 dots 

G) kong of 5 bams   

 

 

Look over your card and think about which exposures are likely to have more options for you. If you go out on a limb with very specific multiple exposures, for a hand that requires a pair that you don't yet have, you are at risk of your hand going dead. My best example is Q2. If you put out a quint of 8 bams by itself, you're fine. No one knows which quint hand you are playing. But if you expose the additional pung or kong without having the pair of 2 bams in your rack, you're taking a risk. It's unlikely that anyone who knows the card well is going to throw the 2 bam to you.

 

Tomorrow we will look at hands that work nicely as backups for one another. The hope is that it gives you the confidence to make that first exposure, and the forethought to be able to change comfortably if you need to do so. Bubbe is an aggressive/assertive player. If somebody throws a tile that would work for both her first choice and backup hands, she's going to call it early on, rather than wait and take the chance that it never shows up again. If you know you can use the exposure in multiple ways, why wait?

 

[The traditional caveat has been Winds. There's usually the dilemma of being conspicuous, tied down to the Wind section if you expose one meld, but of course this year, Q1 throws that balance off!]

 

I really hope you're having as much fun learning about the new card as I am, talking about it. As ever, happy to hear questions and comments. Somebody caught me out the other day and corrected me, it was super helpful! You can reach me at bubbefischer@gmail.com

 

Bubbe

 

 

 

 

 

Quick Quiz answers: exposure of a pung of 5 dots with....

 

A)  kong of 8 bams  CR5.2*

 

B)  kong of Red dragons  CR4

C) pung of soaps   CR7

D) pung of 9 bams  (Trick question, it’s a dead 07)

D) kong of Flowers CR7

E) kong of Norths W5

F) pung of 7 dots O3b (or a dead CR8!)

G) kong of 5 bams   LN2

 

 

*thank you to Bonnie Kuncl for spotting the error, there are only a ONE and TWO suited versions of the fifth consecutive runs hand, "CR5".