True Confessions

Greetings and salutations from Bubbe, with more true stories from the mahj table.

I'm going to make a confession to you, dear readers. I got to play the 2019 card yesterday for the first time, and I was almost cleaned out. We play with a four-dollar pie, and I walked away with a quarter!

It wasn't for lack of trying. I had some good ideas, but without Jokers, it's not easy to win. There was one hand where I was dealt two of them, but otherwise it was pretty much a dry spell.

I was playing against my usual group, all of whom are experienced players. We only ended up with one Wall game. I think that says something about this card, that hands are easier to make. I expected this when I noticed just how many hands use the 3-4 pattern, just pungs and kongs and no pairs. Obviously it's easier to make a hand when you don't have to achieve pairs, and can call for exposures. I sensed this most specifically in the new Consecutive kongs with Dragon hand, which requires pungs of Flowers and suit-matched Dragons. Without the challenge of achieving a pair of either of those two coveted items, it is a very simple hand to achieve...if you have Jokers.

No one went for Quint hands during our game, and no one made a Singles and Pairs hand either. They were mainly straightforward hands, a pair of Flowers with three consecutive kongs or the first or second Consecutive Runs hand. Someone made the concealed 13579 hand.

Probably the most interesting, ambiguous double exposure was kongs of 5 and 7 crak. I didn't know whether my opponent was going for an Addition hand with “12,” a Consecutive Run of kongs of 5, 6, and 7 crak, or (since my head wasn't completely in the new card yet) last year's 579 three-kong hand. I threw out two 1 craks, but in the end, it turned out that she was collecting 6 craks, and she made mah jongg.

My own experience showed just how flexible the card is. In my “best” (still losing) performance, I finished the Charleston with two 9 cracks, one 9 bam and one 9 dot, a Flower, a North, two Souths, and two Jokers, plus three random tiles from the optional “across.” My first thought was to go for the Like Numbers/Winds and Dragons hand with two kongs of 9’s and pairs of Flowers, Norths, and Souths. I had exposed a kong of 9 craks (including a Joker) when the third North went out, so THAT hand was scrubbed. I was still able to go for the “regular” Like Numbers hand of three kongs of 9’s. I didn't have enough Jokers to make it, unfortunately, but it certainly was an easy switch.

I had trouble making decisions about the 2019 hands. Don't forget that there is an extra 2019 hand in the Winds and Dragons section, as well as the “big” (75 cent) Singles and Pairs hand. There are monochrome (single-suit), two- and three-suit options for 2019 hands. It is a lot to keep straight: should you only collect in one suit, or all three? Should you keep Winds? What about Dragons? Obviously, keep the Soaps because they make your hand much more versatile. Flowers aren't required for several of the hands, but they're indispensable for the first hand and the Dragon kong hand...and of course, the big hand.

Any of you who've read my book or played against me know that I'm a sucker for a Soap. Since I'll never give that up, I must train myself to make better decisions about the hands, going forward. I'm going to practice making them by myself in the next week or two. I plan to devote a whole column just to playing 2019 hands...stay tuned.

All over Facebook, people have been posting how they've won five or six hands on the new card already... by now, the really committed daily players may have won 20 different hands. I know my turn will come around, at some point, and so will yours. Much of winning depends on getting the right tiles at the right time. Remember Bubbe's most important lesson: luck favors the prepared mind. Do your best to learn and understand the card, and the potential within your own tiles, so that if lucky tiles come to you (an additional Joker, that Flower or Dragon, the tile you needed to complete the “sum” in the Addition hand), you will know what to do!

As always, I'm happy to answer questions or hear any comments you might want to share. You can contact me at bubbefischer@gmail.com

Talk to you soon!

Bubbe