King Kong

Greetings and salutations from your story-telling Bubbe, who promised yesterday that I would tell you about a special kong that would unlock some of the mysteries of the new card.

 

As I said before, all hands have 14 tiles. Many hands include three kongs, and use a pair Flowers as filler to reach the total.

 

Flowers don't only appear as pairs. Last year’s card used pairs, pungs, kongs, and DOUBLE pungs of Flowers. The 2023 card has only pairs and kongs of Flowers.

 

Well, those Flower kongs (hereafter referred to as 4F*) are actually much more interesting than you might think, at first glance. Kongs can use jokers, which makes the 4F meld easier to attain--you can use as many jokers as you need to complete the set. Pairs of Flowers must be natural and can't be called, except for your final mah jongg tile. You could be waiting the whole game to call a final Flower and never have the opportunity.

 

Last year I was fixated on what I called the “wedding hands,” so named because they had two (bouquet) pungs of Flowers, but those hands weren't as common on the 2022 card as 4Fs are for 2023. Anyway, there's no value in studying an old card when I am trying to learn this one.

 

I noticed that, on the 2023 card, there is breadth but not depth to the distribution of 4F hands. They appear in every section of the card except Addition hands and Singles and Pairs (obviously), so they are pretty ubiquitous--but 4Fs appear only ONCE in each of the other sections (technically twice in the Odd section, with the same pattern on upper or lower ends of the Odd number line, and twice in the 369 section as a pattern in either one or three suits.) I will talk more about the significance of these facts in my next article.

 

 

Today we're going to go section by section to look at each 4F hand. Per my previous article, we know that setting aside an entire kong leaves only ten (14 minus 4) number, dragon, and/or Wind tiles to define the hand, so really, we only need to think about how the specific ten tiles are laid out:

 

Y3. This 4F hand uses one meld of 2023 (all singles), leaving a scant six tiles. These tiles are divided into pungs of dragons in two different suits. The suit of the year meld may or may not be one of these two suits, so the hand is either a two- or three-suited hand. 

 

E1. I earlier described this 4F hand as too much bread with a very skimpy filling. It is a single-suited hand with kongs of 2s and 8s (the lowest and the highest numbers), leaving only two additional tiles, a single 4 and 6, in that same suit. 

 

LN1. This is a three-suited hand, meaning the same number appears in all three suits. Because we've already taken up four tiles with the 4F, we somehow have to split up the remaining ten among three suits. This year, the like numbers are split as two kongs and a pair. 

 

Q3. This 4F hand leaves two quints, 5 + 5=10, for its remaining balance. The quints are sequential numbers in two different suits.

 

CR7. This 4F is a consecutive runs hand in three suits, with the first suit represented by two consecutive pairs, and the second and third suits being matching pungs in that third number. All together, 4F + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 = 14. It's kind of a tricky hand to visualize so I recommend laying it out with your own tiles, as practice, to get used to it.

 

O6a and O6b. These 4F hands are very similar to CR7: same pattern of two consecutive odd pairs in one suit, followed by matching pungs of the third consecutive odd number in the other two suits. It's presented on either the bottom or top of the Odd number line.

 

W5. This 4F can most easily be remembered by the way that the ten Wind tiles begin with a single North, and gradually increase (pair of East, pung of West, kong of South).

 

369 #2.1 and 2.3.  The pattern of this 4F hand closely resembles the Even 4F hand, especially in the a single-suited version: kongs of 3 and 9 (the lowest and highest numbers), and the remaining two tiles being a pair of 6s. It is the same pattern for the three-suit version, but of course each number meld is represented in its own suit.

 

 

 

Now that we have a clear description of each of the 4F hands, I want to talk about whether it's possible, once you've displayed a 4F, to switch to a backup hand. It truly depends on your original plan. I’m actually introducing a new color (!!!)—yellow—to indicate CAUTION--you may have trouble backing up!!

 

If you are playing Y3 and put out 4F and a pung of dragons, you are definitely committing to that hand. You can switch the suit of the year meld if you need to, and likewise you can make the second suit of dragons either of the other two remaining suits, so there is a slight amount of flexibility. If you can’t get the Soap and/or the numbers, you’ll never make this hand.

 

If you're going for E1 and expose a kong but can't get one of the singles, you might be able to switch to LN1 in 2’s or 8’s.

 

The converse, if you are playing LN1 and expose 4F and a kong, is you might be able to switch to E1 (or either of the 369 #2 hands) if your chosen like number is 2, 3, 8, or 9.

 

Backing up Q3, the 4F quints hand, is easiest if you plan ahead and/or have a lot of jokers. Like Y3, once you make the exposure of 4F and one meld (a quint of X in suit A), you are locked down to this hand. You have at most four options for the second quint: X-1 or X+1 in suit B, or X-1 or X+1 in suit C. If you expose a quint of 1s or a quint of 9s, you only have two options. 

 

If you expose 4F and one of the pungs in CR7, O6a or O6b, finding a backup will be interesting. By exposing a pung, you've clearly committed to one of these hands (and if it's not a 5 or a 9 pung,  you're obviously doing CR7). You could either switch up the order of suits—if possible—OR….

Because of the similarity of structure of CR7 to the O6 hands, you might be able to salvage the hand depending on the numbers involved. Certainly you could switch from an O6 to CR7, but switching the other way (from CR to Odds) only works if your initial pair is 3 or 7. A 345 sequence could become 135, or 789 could become 579.

 

W5 is another hand like Y3 and Q3 where you're truly locked down if you expose 4F and a meld. Once you put out either Wests or Souths, you're in big trouble if all four North, or three East, tiles are exposed or discarded. There's nowhere else you can go, and your hand will be dead.

 

369 #2’s: If you are going for 369 #2 (either version) and expose 4F and a kong and then find you have problems with the 6’s, you could either go from the 2.1 to 2.3 version (or vice versa), switch up the order of the suits of 2.3, or, per the situation of E1, try LN1 in 3’s or 9’s, based on which number kong you exposed.

 

 

I hope this has been useful exploration for you to better understand the 4F hands. Believe me, I have more to say, but I'll save that for tomorrow!

 

As ever, if you have questions or comments, feel free to reach me at bubbefischer@gmail.com ! Always a pleasure to hear from you!

 

Talk to you soon!

 

Bubbe

*Yes, 4F is also a military classification for people who are “unfit for military service,” due to physical issues, but today I'm using it for mah jongg