Greetings and salutations from your lyric-loving Bubbe, with a tale of woe plus links to a few pop hits!
There’s a very famous saying in mah jongg: “Don’t
fall in love with your tiles.” Don't get fixated and lose objectivity. You need to pay attention as new tiles come in,
and respect that fate may have a different hand waiting for you.
Well, I completely ignored that this afternoon, and
ended up in a wall game. So sad.
I had an amazing Charleston: as East, I ended up
with
FF 444 55 66 77 D 8
E
I mean, seriously—it was about as close as I get to
a heavenly hand, two tiles away from CR8.
I threw the East to start the game. About five tiles
in, someone threw a Green dragon which I obviously wasn’t ready for, but I figured
there would be another later on. In fact, two turns late I picked up a joker to
complete my pung of 7 bams, so I was on call for the Green for the win.
As Tom Petty says, “The waiting is the hardest part.”
Unfortunately, the mahj spirits had something else in
mind for me and I kept ignoring them. “I’ve never made this cool concealed hand
with Flowers, Dragons, and consecutive numbers, I’m gonna show everyone and get
that extra nickel!”
Famous last words.
I never picked the Green, and no one ever discarded the
third or fourth one, but I DID pull three more jokers. Obviously when I picked the
first one I could not have known that there would be several more, and I was
satisfied to complete that pung… but after another eight picks or so, when a
joker showed up and a dragon did not, I should have stopped and reconsidered my
options. Holding out for a pair instead of switching to an open hand was not
the best winning strategy—it was more about my ego and “falling in love” with
that concealed hand.
What WERE my options?
With that second joker pick, my hand was FF 444 55 66 77J D J.
I could have switched to
CR5.1: FF 444 55J 66J (77D to discard while
waiting for an additional 4, 5, and 6 bam)
Or
CR2.1: 444 55J 66 77J (FFD to discard while waiting for an addition 5,
6, and 7 bam)
Either of those options would have allowed me to
call for exposures instead of twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a Green dragon
that never appeared. It was like the reverse of Puff, the Magic Dragon—instead of
Jackie Paper, it was Puff who didn't come back.
So what did I do with all those nice jokers? Like an
idiot, I started trading them for the pung tiles: eventually, after my fourth
joker, my hand looked like
FF 4JJ 55 66 7JJ D
I often say, “Don’t tip anyone off about how close
you are, by throwing jokers,” but let’s be clear: it was a concealed hand and I
didn’t need a Flower. No one would know what it was that I was waiting for,
simply because I was discarding jokers. By throwing out the 4’s, there was no
way I was going to successfully switch back to either CR2.1 or CR5.1. I fell
in love and locked onto CR8, and it never came to fruition.
We’ve all been there, I know--seemingly set after
the Charleston. You can’t force a pair, you can’t coax out a Flower or a joker
or any tile….but I had the opportunity to switch to an easier hand and was too
proud and in love to change. Alas. To complete the lyrics from the Bacharach and David song, "So for at least until tomorrow, I'll never fall in love again."
Incidentally, I was finally playing with my old
group and when we sat down, they asked if there was ever resolution on the CR5 hands. One of my friends played CR5.1 at a tournament with 5, 6, and 7 craks and an opponent called her hand dead—and the tournament director agreed! Three months into the new
card, they still didn’t know that the League explained that it was kongs of ANY three
consecutive numbers. I said, “You should have called me.”
You, dear read, should email me at bubbefischer@gmail.com if something like
that comes up, I’m happy to help.
Talk to you soon.
Bubbe
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