Greetings and salutations from your
observant Bubbe, always looking for a teachable moment.
Yesterday, I was one of many teaching helpers at my
local library's "beginner" class. In fact, there were more of us than
there were students, so I was asked to be a regular player. (I'm going to kvell
for a moment, to say that Bobbie, one of my former students, is one of the
teachers and she's very good!)
In the middle of the game, I stopped to take a photo of
my tiles, and the main instructor asked, "Why are you doing that?" I
explained that my hand looked like good material for an article, and indeed it
was!
I had been dealt the beginnings of two very different
hands. By the end of the first across, I had
F 77899 NNEEW 2 3
I gave away the 2 and 3, taking advantage of the option
to "steal" on first left. I was hoping that one of my two new tiles
would point me toward either CR5.3 or something in the Winds section.
Sure enough, I got another 8 bam, and proceeded to disperse my Winds and other
non-useful tiles through the rest of the Charleston. While I had no jokers, I
did at least have a focus of what to play.
By the end of the third wall, I still didn't have a
second Flower or any jokers, but something else had developed that made me
curious. That’s when I took the photo. I can’t show it here because it’s got the
card in the foreground, but the tiles were
F 77 888 999 5 6 8 E
What do you see in that group of tiles?
If I were to pick up another 6 dot, I would be on call
for the 7 dot pung and the kongs of 8 bam and 9 crak, able to make CR4
without needing any jokers or Flowers!
It became an interesting decision point. If I picked up
a joker, I still wouldn't necessarily know which hand to play, because they
both hinged on having a pair. The pivotal issue was whether I picked up a 6 dot
or a Flower first.
So how did it actually play out?
I did pick up a Flower before anything else, and discarded the East. I was still keeping my eye out for that second 6 dot, hoping
it would show up before the 7 dots were thrown because, being jokerless, I
wasn't ready to call for the KONG of 7 dots.
Someone threw a 9 crak, so of course I called for it
and exposed the jokerless kong. At this point I had
FF 5 6 77 888 (9999 exposed)
I contined to see whether I would pick the 6 dot before
a 7 dot was thrown....and then someone else threw a 5 dot, which one of the new
students called for a kong exposure!
Well, that settled that – I exchanged my 5 dot for her
joker and was ready to call for the 7 dot and 8 bam to complete those kongs.
Of course, we never got that far. One of the new
players had been dealt two jokers and picked another during the game and completed a
beautiful CR2.1, 5 through 8 crak.
This particular game was educational for me, too. I
hadn't seriously considered CR4 as a backup because... well, because
it's a harder hand to make, but when I wasn't getting that second Flower and
didn't have the joker for that 7 dot kong, the "hard" option deserved
a second look.
As a former Girl Scout leader, Bubbe believes strongly
in the motto "be prepared"--know the card, think of backup hands, pay
attention to what's going on with your own tiles and others', and be ready to
switch your hand if and when you need to. "Luck favors the prepared
mind," so the more you can anticipate and make changes and incorporate
lucky tiles as they come to you (or compensate if they don't), the more successful you will be. Of course, we
can't magically invoke jokers, we aren't like Samantha or Jeannie (you can tell I've been
watching old sitcoms on cable)....
I hope this exercise helped you to think about why and
how you might switch, and what the key events would be to help you decide.
I'll keep my eye out for other teachable moments, I'm
happy to share them with you. Meanwhile contact me if you have questions or
comments, you can always reach me at bubbefischer@gmail.com
Talk to you soon!
Bubbe
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