Intro to Backup Hands: 2024 edition

 

Greetings and salutations from your traditionalist, Bubbe, ready to begin her usual discussion of “Backup Hands.”

 

This article is especially important those of you who are new to mah jongg, or new to my blog, this is a very important component of strategy. I want you to learn about backup hands because I consider them an essential subject for any player who hopes to improve beyond the “beginner” level. You need to consider a backup hand because discarded tiles or an opponent’s exposure may 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.

 

I feel like I should have the following engraved on a 20-foot-high stone wall:

You need to be familiar with the entire card, so that you can consider your different options and be able to switch to a backup hand when necessary.

 

By the way, your friends and tablemates would really appreciate if you do your familiarizing and considering before you come to the table, so that you are ready to focus on the game in the moment. Prepare in advance; that’s what my articles, as well as online apps, are for. Actually, when you start winning a lot more, maybe they won’t appreciate it as much---but at least you won’t be slowing the game down!

 

 

Backup hands generally share some components/melds, or at least similar tiles. The goal is to identify at least one backup scenario before you make one, and definitely before you make TWO, exposures.

 

Let’s look at an example: on this year’s card, a natural backup for L71 would be CR3.1. Both hands require two Flowers and consecutive kongs of 6’s and 7’s in the same suit.

In our scenario, you’re playing the hand in craks. L71 requires a third kong of 1 craks; CR3.1 requires a third kong of either 5 or 8 craks.

What if one of your opponents exposes a meld of 1 craks? Perhaps they are going for like numbers, or Quints…there are all sorts of possible conflicts. If you’ve already got three (or possibly only two) of the 1 craks, you could “stay the course” and hope for a joker to complete your kong. BUT….if you don’t have at least two of the 1’s in your hand, you might exchange your 1 crak(s) for joker(s), if possible, and switch to CR3.1, collecting the 5 or 8 craks. The really savvy player might already have at least one of the 5’s or 8’s, anticipating that eventuality.

 

OR…let’s say you thought you were playing L71, but you didn’t have your pair, yet. What if Flowers became impossible to obtain; for instance, imagine someone exposed a quint of Flowers and the other players traded theirs for any available exposed jokers, and two of the other Flowers were discarded before you were ready to call to complete your pair for mah jongg?

Fortunately, even if you had exposed the kongs of 6 and 7 craks, your hand could not be called “dead”. You could attempt to switch to either CR 7.1 or CR 7.2, with two consecutive pungs of 4’s and 5’s in any suit (including craks), plus the already exposed kongs.

 

The reality is that you may not end up winning the hand, but at least you can still complete the game with a goal in mind. If you find out and switch, earlier in the game, you likely have a better chance of succeeding with the new plan because you have more opportunity to achieve the modified goal.

 

Tomorrow I will talk about specific hands that go well with one another as backups, so that you can start thinking creatively about the card.

As ever, if you have questions or comments, feel free to contact me at bubbefischer@gmail.com  I love hearing from you!

See you tomorrow!!

Bubbe