Left Panel of the 2025 card

 

Greetings and salutations from your Bubbe, who's been watching way too much professional basketball.

I'm imagining the hype that you hear before they introduce the team. The searchlights go on, sometimes there are even (indoor!) fireworks. Thumping rhythms blast over the sound system. A DJ yells, “Are you ready to meet your…. Left hand panel of the 2025 card?!”

Let's get to it!!

 

YEAR

Technically the 2025 card lists only four hands here, but there are some others hidden in the Winds and Dragons section as well as Singles and Pairs. Know the whole card, don't rely strictly on the idea of neighborhoods.

Everyone who plays against me knows I'm a sucker for a soap and they never pass them to me (except of course my dear friend Sharon who occasionally threw me a bone). I'll find any excuse to play this corner of the card. The problem is, it can be tricky to amass all the components, especially when “2025” itself is four singles and you can't call for anything but a final tile. Having a pung/kong Year hand makes my heart sing.

Y1 Fair enough, that 2025 meld can be tricky, but the rest of the hand is doable. A kong of Flowers, two pungs of 2s in different suits…true, a smart defender might not throw you any of the 2s in that third suit because they think you're going for LN2, but perhaps someone will throw a soap or a 5 that they don't need. Almost a pung/kong hand. If you've got three out of the four components of the “2025” after the Charleston, you're in great shape!

Y2: the true pung/kong Year hand. Pung of 2s in suit A, kong of soaps, pung of 2s and kong of 5s in suit B. Note that neither suit A nor suit B has to be dots, although either one could be. Like Y1, we're dealing with potential exposure of two pungs of 2’s…. There are a lot of switching opportunities here, hard to defend!

Y3: for this hand, suit matters. As I've said before, the soap goes with any suit to make 2025. The trick here is that you'll need pungs of 2s and 5s in suit B and four dragons of suit C. Obviously, kongs may include jokers, so if your “2025” meld is not dots, there's a possibility that you'll need at least one joker to make the dragon kong. Just remember, three suits: year meld; pungs of 2s and 5s; and dragon kong.

Y4: Surprise, this time the concealed hand has got nothing to do with Winds. Those hands appear on the right panel of the card.

This particular hand reminds me more of a classic concealed hand, four pungs and a pair. I talk all the time about how a winning mahj hand must add up to 14. 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2 = 14. Each of the numbers (2, 2, and 5) has to be in its own suit, and it doesn't matter in which order. It would be a super easy hand to complete if you could call for each of the pungs, but you can't. Make sure you have that pair of Flowers.

 

 

EVENS

Bubbe doesn't mark up her card as she makes each hand, but if she did there'd be a lot fewer dots here than most sections. Years, Like Numbers, Quints, Consecutive Runs…those are the ones she'll gravitate to. On the other hand, she knows that if the tiles say it's time to go a certain way, you just play it.

E1.1 and E1.2: pung/kong, super accessible. If you find yourself with lots of even tiles, and/or people seem to be passing them around in the Charleston and you have no better idea, grab ’em. Can either be all in one suit, or suit A for the first pung/kong and suit B for the second. Easy peasy.

E2a or E2b: looky here, it's an addition hand tucked away in the Evens section. A pair of Flowers with three different-suited kongs of even numbers. It's not differential calculus, just 2 + 4 = 6 or 2 + 6 = 8. Just remember the kongs are in three different suits.

E3: a one-suited Even stutter-step hand. We've talked about these in previous years, pair+pung, pair+pung, and then a kong of matching dragons on the top step with 14 tiles. The pairs are definitely the trickiest part.

E4: Pep rally, with lots of color. 2468, who do we appreciate? Even tiles! A kong of Flowers, the 2468 meld in suit A, and matching even-numbered pungs (pung-pungs?) in the other two suits. It's quite cute, and the exposures are ambiguous with, at minimum, LN2. Go team!

E5: another monochrome hand. Remember the 14 rule: somehow all the tiles have to add up. This is the one that uses a pung of Flowers. Then there are pairs of the 2s and 4s, the pung of 6s and the kong of 8s to get you to 14. The big difference between E3 and E5 is where the pairs fall, and whether you have Flowers or matching dragons.

E6: slightly more challenging but way snazzier than E1.1, you have to pay attention. Pung of 2, kong of 4, and pung of 6 in suit A, but it's completed by pairs of 8 in suits B and C. You could easily have your opponents thinking that you're going for E1.1. Clever!

E7: Is this an Evens hand or a Like Numbers hand? Come on. It's three-suited, three kongs and a pair of Flowers. The kongs are like Even numbers in two suits, with a kong of Dragons in the complementary suit. Don't forget it doesn't have to be 2s, it could be any even number as long as they match.

E8: The concealed one. That's a lot of components, using all three suits. It almost could be in the Singles and Pairs section, except that once you get your pairs across the board in suit A (2+2+2+2), you're going to need matching even pungs (3+3) in suits B&C. Remember it's closed, you'll have to quietly amass those pungs on your own… unless of course someone discards that last tile for you!

 

LIKE NUMBERS

I've already alluded to the fact that Like Numbers are all over this card. It's certainly easy to do the Charleston by just collecting one promising number, and then seeing what other honors fall your way. Flowers? Dragons? Winds?  Let's just see what happens!!

LN1: Yesterday I mentioned there are single dragons on this card. Kind of fun. It is easier to get a single than a pair. As we go over the components, keep that number 14 in your mind: two kongs of like number, a pair of that number in the third suit, and you're up to 10 tiles. Add one dragon that matches each of the two kongs, and finish it off with a pair of Flowers.

Or, if you're one of those who enjoys Bubbe’s trippy visuals: three parties of Picnickers. Two are families of four, both of whom brought their dogs, and the third picnickers are a young, carefree couple in the throes of romance. Look, one of them even brought the other a pair of Flowers!!

LN2: The sneaky one. It's got five components, kind of. I alluded to this yesterday when I said it was a like-numbered pung/kong hand.  You need a kong of Flowers and a natural kong of the number in suit A, which you will have to split into two pairs. The other two suits will have pungs which can use as many Jokers as you need and can be called for exposure, so honestly, the trick is to determine which number you can get all four of, naturally, without exposing…. Unless you feel lucky and it'll be your final tile.

LN3: concealed. Like Y4, this is one of those classic “four pungs and a pair” concealed hands. It's as basic as it gets. A pair of Flowers. Pungs of number X in all three suits. A pung of dragons in your choice of suit. This is one where a good Charleston can really set you up nicely, especially if you have a few jokers. Just make sure you have the pair of Flowers, and you're good to go.

 

Okay, that's the left side of the card. I tried to jazz it up a bit, especially with the E4 pep rally and the LN1 picnickers…. We'll see if the middle section is more inspiring, tomorrow.

 

As ever, if you have any comments, you can reach me at bubbefischer@gmail.com

Talk to you tomorrow

 

Bubbe

Illegal Exposures, 2025 edition

 

Greetings and salutations, and welcome back to Bubbe’s Big Rush, season 2025!

Today I'm going to talk about illegal exposures and some other interesting features of this card. Come back over the next three days and you'll get to see articles detailing every hand on each of the three panels of the card!

One of the first things I encourage when going over a new card is to see what CR1, the first Consecutive Run hand, looks like. This year it is a standard bell curve, with pairs on each end building up to a kong in the middle. It looks like two-three-four-three-two, a bell or a little hill. CR1 has two versions, 1-5 (CR1a) and 5-9 (CR1b). Its companion hand, in the Odd section of the card, is O1.1/O1.3. O1.1 is another bell curve with pairs of 1s and 9s on the ends, all in the same suit. O1.3 has the same shape, rising to a peak in the middle, but the ascending pair-pung and the descending pung-pair are in two different suits, with the middle kong of 5s in the third suit. We'll discuss again In a few days, but the number one thing to remember about these hands is that they all have the pairs at the ends and the kong in the middle, with pungs leading up to and down from the kong. There will be other hands that are not exactly designed as bell curves, but I’m going to show you a trick, juxtaposing the order just a bit, so that you can make them easier to remember that way.

I also like to talk about pung/kong hands, or three-four hands, where all the components are either melds of three or four of a kind. These are the easiest hands to win, because every unit can use jokers and/or be called for exposure.

This year we see several different combinations but the most prominent is 3434, a pung and kong in suit A and a second pung and kong in suit B. This combination shows up all over the card, including the Year section, Evens, Odds, and 369. Consider it the old reliable.

Interestingly, there are two different Wind hands, one with and one without “2025,” that offer variations. Please pay attention on your first exposure. In both cases, the companion wind must have the same number of tiles, that is Easts equal Wests, Norths equal Souths. I also noticed that they've returned to the conventional East-West goes with Even tile (W6) and North-South goes with Odd tile (W5).

Yesterday I mentioned that there are Addition Hands hidden in the Even and Odd sections. I neglected to mention that there's also an addition hand in the 369 section. Note that both those Even and 369 hands have two versions, allowing the use of one or all three suits, but the addition hand in the Odd section only has a two-suited version.

 

So here are the specific exposure by tile type: Flowers are used as pairs, pungs, and kongs this year. There are no Quints or single flowers.

Dragons show up as singles, pairs, pungs, and kongs. They're in all sorts of interesting places, and as I said, “14” is going to be your best friend, reminding you how each of the components of a hand come together. Note that there are no Quints of Dragons.

Winds obviously appear as singles in “NEWS,” but they also appear in pairs, pungs, and kongs as well. There are no Quints of Winds. 

Other observations:

You will really need to pay attention on this card. Order matters. There are many three-suited hands, but there is only one two-suited hand that I would refer to as a modified knit hand, where the melds alternate by suit. In that hand, 369 #4, there is a pung of Flowers (not suited), a kong of 3s in suit A, a meld of single 369 in suit B, and a final kong of 9s in suit A. Y4 is not a knit hand, remember that zeroes have no suit.

Someone had a real sense of humor with the Like Number hands. We've all played them before, sometimes getting natural (jokerless) melds and sometimes needing to cobble melds together with jokers. LN2 involves four different number melds: pungs of X in suits A and B, and two pairs of X in suit C. Essentially that means that as you're collecting number X, figure out whether any of the suits is a natural kong to hold on to, or at worst a natural pung where you'll hope to call that fourth tile (second pair) as your final mahj tile.  There's some strategy involved but it isn't impossible to make this hand.

Another tricky one where you need to pay strict attention is CR7. This disguised Like Number hand may turn out to be my favorite on the card, I'm going to call it “the Floating Pair”. In suit A, you will need to have a consecutive run of five straight numbers anywhere on the number line. So that's five tiles. They're going to be accented by two like-number kongs within that number line, of the complimentary other two suits (B and C) That's another eight tiles. That leaves you needing one more tile to get your 14, which is your “floating pair” tile. It must be the same number as the two kongs, but in suit A. In other words, the two kongs in suits B&C are of the same number (X) as the pair in suit A. The other four tiles need to fall on a number line which includes X. X can be the highest number, it can be the lowest number, it can be somewhere in the middle, but somehow there need to be four other singles around the pair X which matches the X kongs. It looks pretty fun, I'm looking forward to trying it.

 This leads me to a reminder for newbies, but it never hurts to say it to everyone: any single tile or pair, or a combination of single tiles, is an illegal exposure.  It cannot be called for anything but the final mah jongg tile. This is going to come up frequently until you get used to the card, and especially this year with single dragons, floating pairs, all sorts of weird things, you must pay attention!! I warn again: even if a hand isn't concealed, there may be components of it that can't be called except as the final mahj tile.

 

So just as a reminder: It is legal to make a first exposure of a pung of anything: Flowers, any number, dragon or Wind–and you can use as many jokers as you need to make that pung.  The same holds true for a first exposure of a kong of anything: Flowers, any number, dragon, or Wind. The only legal Quints on the 2025 hand are numbers: any first exposure of a Quint number is fine.

Some of you are new to this and may not understand what I mean. What I'm saying is things get complicated once you've put out that first exposure. That's when your hand becomes vulnerable. Often, when you put out the second exposure, you are locked into one very specific hand. If a tile you need for that hand is unavailable, you need to make an alternative plan. If there is no alternative plan, your hand could be called dead.

 

I hope this has whetted your appetite for learning more about the new card. I think it's going to be a good one. There's enough flexibility, enough like numbers to cruise all over the card. I'm going to talk about specific panels (left, center, right) starting tomorrow, and then it's time to get to the meat of advanced strategy: Figuring out backup hands.

Remember, Bubbe always says luck favors the prepared mind. What that means is, by having a backup hand, you have prepared yourself. You have a plan in mind for what to do if your current hand goes dead and/or you suddenly come across some really helpful, lucky tiles that point you toward a totally different hand.  Perfect example of this is the player who suddenly, as the game goes on, draws five or six Jokers and is completely at sea about what to do. Talk about frustrating!!

If you ever have any questions or comments, you can contact me at bubbefischer@gmail.com

 

Talk to you soon

 

Bubbe

NEW 2025 Card: The Overview

 

Greetings and salutations from your one and only Bubbe, looking at the signs of Spring: chirping birds, a few daffodils here and there, and the LEGIT NMJL 2025 card!!

Before I give my overview of what seems interesting this year, I just want to point out that anyone that tried to buy an “early” card via Amazon got ripped off. Somebody has been trying to pass off an older card, with a few cut-and-paste 2025 hands, as the new card. Some hands on this “card” don’t even use 14 tiles! The only way to get the NMJL card (upon release, anyway) is to buy it FROM NMJL, whether as part of a mass organization order or by placing an order directly on the website: www.nationalmahjonggleague.org . Bubbe suggests that you don’t bother with Amazon, even after April—just buy it straight from NMJL.

A brief reminder: I try to put out new observation/strategy articles every day for the next week or so. Today is the first one, the quick overview. Tomorrow I will put out a more detailed impression including illegal exposures. Then, on the next three successive days, I will drill down to EACH HAND: first the left panel of the card, then the middle panel, then the far panel. I will go on to discuss ambiguous exposures and to identify hands that are good backups.

For those of you who have never read my articles before, I will be using special coding for each hand. For instance, the second hand in the “2025” section will be called Y2; the fifth hand in the 13579 section will be called O5 (for Odd). This year’s card happens to have two different options in O5: one suit or all three suits can be used. In that case, I will refer to them as O5.1 and O5.3. There are also a few hands, such as the first Consecutive Run hand, that utilize EITHER the lower or upper end of the number line. In that case, I refer to CR1a as the numbers from 1-5, and CR1b as the numbers from 5-9. Also I do my best to indicate any concealed hand using red font.

 

So let’s take a quick peek. I do NOT see anything as dramatic as last year’s “Sombrero” hand, where the order was neither a stair step (pair, pair, pung, pung, kong) nor a bell curve (pair, pung, kong, pung, pair), but rather a whole different concept: pung, pair, kong, pair, pung, like a hat with a brim and a peak.

This year, you’re going to have to look a little harder when deciding what hand to use. The neighborhoods are less clearly delineated than in the past. For instance:

*the hand that often shows up as a concealed Year hand, involving pairs and pungs of Winds and 2025, will be in the Winds and Dragons section this year

*there is no “addition” section, per se, but both the Even and Odd sections include addition hands

*Bubbe’s favorite mnemonic: EAST/West with Even numbered tiles, NORTH/South with Odd numbered tiles, comes back this year

* There is an extra “Like Numbers/Dragons” hand in the 369 section. Yes, it has to be like 3’s, 6’s, or 9’s.

There’s no groundbreaking hand like last year’s Sombrero or FFFFF 123 444 444. HOWEVER, that hand laid the path for this year’s, in that there are singles sprinkled all over the card. You’re not going to learn this one quickly without the important “14” rule: the combination of tiles will always add up to 14.

 

I will add one more thing: the first, OBVIOUS mistake on the card is the third hand in the CR section. CR3.1 is obviously in one suit. The proofreader dropped the ball: the second option should be represented in THREE suit colors, with the middle consecutive number being a pair. How do I know this? Because the parentheses say “Any 1 or 3 suits”!

 

Looking forward to providing you with lots of fun insights. You can always contact me at bubbefischer@gmail.com

Talk to you soon!

 

Bubbe