No-No's---Illegal Exposures 2022

 

Greetings and salutations from Bubbe, who loves reviewing this new card with you.

Today we’ll discuss illegal exposures. Believe it or not, there are new things to be seen this year!

 

I'll remind you again why it's important to know illegal exposures. Especially early in the new card season, it's easy to make a mistake on exposures that result in a dead hand. Obviously none of us wants our own hand to go dead, but if it happens, NEVER announce it! You have to wait for someone else to recognize it and call your hand out. They're actually putting you out of your misery, since there's just no way you're going to win that hand. As an upside, remember that remaining involved in the game means that you're slowing down your opponents, and the play might end as a wall game.

DEFENSIVELY, it's always important to pay attention to everyone else's exposures, but especially when everyone is a newbie with the card. Per above, mistakes will be made--if you call an opponent's hand dead, you might be able to get a chance at more picks and put together a winning hand!

Because it's early in the season and no one knows the card well, when in doubt, probably best NOT to call an opponent's hand dead. On the other hand, based on the information in this article, you will know a lot better than your opponents what is, and is not, legal/kosher on this year's card!

 

Let’s start with Dragons. You can expose a pung, kong, or QUINT of Dragons! You can expose TWO kongs of Dragons. You can expose a kong AND a pung of Dragons. You can even expose two kongs AND a pung of Dragons.  HOWEVER—exposing TWO PUNGS of Dragons is illegal; those appear together only in W7, the concealed hand of the Winds and Dragons section!

Speaking of Winds…the only legal Wind exposure is a kong! Some hands use pairs, which can’t be exposed. The only time Wind pungs are used are in concealed hands (Y4, W7). Note that a kong of Norths doesn’t necessitate a kong of Souths. A kong of Easts goes with a kong of Wests (W1, W6)--except in Q1, where there's only a sole Wind kong (kudos to Cheryl R. for catching that one!). If you see a kong of Norths with either Easts or Wests, there’s only one hand it can be, W1!

As for numbers: sure, there are combinations all over the card, but WHICH (if any) specific number exposures are illegal? (I remember years where a legal exposure of a pung of 9’s just did not exist!) Well, thanks to Like Numbers, there is no unique exposure of numbers that is illegal: you may see a pung, kong, or quints of any number. We can talk about illegal combinations at a later date, but recognize that no “sole” exposure of numbers is problematic.

Finally, let’s talk about Flowers. We've seen that the Flower pung is back—and sometimes twice in one hand! Remember that for a pung of Flowers, any or all of them can be Jokers. There are several hands using a kong of Flowers. There are no hands using a quint of Flowers.

 

Let’s get a little more complicated! Flowers and Dragons? You can have four Flowers and three Dragons, or four Dragons and three Flowers, but there’s only one hand of each (CR7 and W2, respectively) so pay attention! Note that W2 also involves three Flowers and three Dragons--essentially, there is NO hand that has four Flowers and four Dragons.

Flowers and numbers? There are Flower kongs with a quint of a number, or a pung of a number, but there are no hands using a kong of Flowers with a kong of a number, so if you see that combination the hand is dead. There are hands that use a Flower pung with a kong of numbers, especially the various "wedding" hands (E6, L1, CR2). The ONLY hands that use a pung of Flowers and a pung of a number use the number “6”: E1 or 32. An exposure of a pung of Flowers with a pung of any number other than 6 is illegal.

Winds with Numbers or Dragons? Oh, I weep. I weep for the loss of my “Long E” rule this year. There are NO related long E rules for the 2022 card. They JUST DON’T CARE. W4 uses two suits of kongs of any odd or even Like Number. W5 and W6 are identical hands using three consecutive numbers with Winds, so obviously they all involve both even and odd numbers; the only thing that matters is that the Wind kongs are complementary (East with West or North with South). Even the concealed W7 hand just doesn’t care about suits—pungs of Norths and Souths and any two Dragons. In fact, the only legal Wind/number or Wind/Dragon exposures are kong of a Wind with a pung of a number between 3 and 9; a quint of any number; or a quint of any Dragon.

 

I hope this helped you think a little constructively about how the combinations work or don’t work on this card. You can check in with me at bubbefischer@gmail.com!!

Talk to you tomorrow.

Bubbe