But wait, there's more!

Greetings and salutations, only a few hours later. Bubbe's back with a little bit more about the 2019 card. Obviously I haven't had a chance to play with it, I don't have it in physical form yet and none of my friends do, either. But just from looking it over, I wanted to give you my usual warnings and hints.

Per my previous blog about the 2019 card, there will be hands with a pair of Flowers, with three Flowers, and sometimes with four Flowers. It will be really important for you to keep these straight. The most obvious point is that IF your hand has three kongs (**except for 2222 4444 6666), the remaining two tiles are going to be a pair of Flowers. Beyond that, I haven't figured out an easy trick for deciding how many Flowers for each kind of hand. I think this aspect of the 2019 card is going to take a while to master.

As for illegal exposures, the only single exposures that are illegal are three of any Wind or five of any Dragon or Flower. Three Dragons are legal, three of any number-- yes, including 9s--is legal. It's just the Winds, which only show up as pungs in the closed Winds hand.

As for unique combinations:

There is a Consecutive Runs hand with AAA AAA (pungs of the same number in two different suits). It is viable for any number between 2 and 9. There is no legal exposure of pungs of the number 1 in two different suits. There happens to be a second legal exposure of two pungs of 6's in different suits; it's in the 369 section. 

I want to talk a little bit now about ambiguous exposures: times when two exposures still don't make the hand obvious. This is important both for defense (being able to guess what your opponent might be playing, based on their exposures) and also for switching your own hand. Many times, players are afraid to call for a tile because they don't want to be tied to one hand. Understand that every single legal exposure on this card (except five Winds) could be in at least two hands. Even better, many of the second exposures don't tie you to one hand in particular; if you are stymied in your original goal, you might still be able to switch your hand. If you want to learn more about this, why not try reading my book?

In the case of AAAA AAAA (kongs of the same number in two different suits): there are at least two different hands for any number tile, one in the Like Numbers section and one in the Winds and Dragons section. (Reminder again: Evens go with East and West; Odds go with North and South). Any two kongs of the same odd number could also be a 13579 hand. Finally, two like kongs of the numbers 4 and up appear in a Consecutive Runs hand. 

ALSO:

*There are two very different hands that use kongs of North/South or East/West. 

*There are two DDDD DDDD hands (kongs of two suits of Dragons): a 2019 and a Winds/Dragon hand.

*There are at least two different hands with kongs of two consecutive numbers in the same suit (1111 2222, any number): the hand with a pair of Flowers and three consecutive kongs, and the hand with three Flowers, two consecutive kongs, and the pung of matching dragons. The extra hand that you might have forgotten about is the addition hand 5555 + 6666.

In addition:

There's an ambiguous exposure that reflects the difference between the first Consecutive Runs hand and this year's first Quint hand. As written on the card, they begin identically with a pair of 1s, a pung of 2s, a kong of 3s. If you were trying to go for the Consecutive Runs hand, but the 5s kept being discarded, you couldn't attain the pair and make the hand....but you can use your 4s and some Jokers to get a quint. Pretty nifty trick. Obviously this works for the 5 through 9, as well! NOTE: The Quint hand does NOT have to be 1 through 4; it's any four consecutive numbers.

I could probably go on and on about this. I just wanted to make you think analytically about the card. The most important lesson from my book is that "luck favors the prepared mind." Learn the card and think about the tiles--prepare yourself to play well. By knowing the various hands, and thinking in advance about your options, you will be ready when "lucky" tiles come to you, and you'll know what to do with them!!!

Please feel free to contact me at bubbefischer@gmail.com , I love hearing from you.

Talk to you soon.

Bubbe