Greetings and salutations from Bubbe, talking more about score
stats from my Boston weekend.
It wasn’t a typical tournament for me. Not at all. I usually
get about 250-325 points in twelve rounds—falling somewhere in the 3rd quadrile--because I have no poker face. I make it obvious when someone discards a
tile I need, which limits me as a tournament player. In my book, Searching for Bubbe Fischer, I say that on average, over time, among well-matched
players, you should expect to win 20% of the games and end another 20% as
wall games. So, based on that, what kind of a tournament score would be
“average”?
In 48 games, generously rounding the 20%, each player
would win 10 times with 8 wall games. Some are 25 points, some are more; we’ll call it 30 points per hand. In
addition, the tournament I attended awards 10 points for self-picking and 20 points
for a jokerless “non-Singles and Pairs” hand, plus 10-25 point penalties
for throwing winning tiles.
Going by those standards, the “average” player (before
penalties and bonuses) should get:
10 wins @ 30 points/hand 300
points
8 wall games @ 10 points/hand 80 points
Every winning game ends with a self-pick (bonus of 10
points), or calling for a discarded tile (10-25 point penalty to the person who threw it). The winner had
a little more than a 25% chance of picking her mahj tile and a little less than
75% chance of calling for it—she only gets 25% of the picks, but her chance increases
because she might also pick a tile to exchange for a joker. Let’s say she has a
31% chance of self-picking, on average.
Meanwhile, each of her opponents has slightly less
than 25% chance of incurring the “throwing” penalty, which can range from 10-25
points. The majority of penalties are going to be 10 points for throwing to
zero or one exposure, but there will be the occasional 20 or even 25 point
penalties for throwing to multiple exposures. On average, let’s call it a 11
point penalty, and each player would be expected to throw to 23% of the 30 wins
made by other players, incurring 7 penalties (rounding up).
31%
chance of self-picking 31
points for 10 wins
23%
chance of 11 point penalty -77 points for throwing to 7 opponents’ wins
In addition, in my stats the 20 point jokerless bonus was
very rare (only 5% of all wins that I saw). Let’s be generous and say 10% of 40
games, or four hands, are jokerless winners, so we can expect an average of one
jokerless win per tournament per player, resulting in a 20 point bonus.
I would estimate that the average score for 12 rounds should
be something on the order of
300
+ 80 + 31 – 77 + 20 = 354, or just under
30 points per round
This estimate was a bit low. Per Sheryl Perry, the scorekeeping maven of
DMJ tournaments, the mean (average) score was 380, the median (center
ranked) score was 370 and the mode (most common) score was 420!
Note: a previous tournament, with almost twice as many competitors, had a mean
score of 382.
In my previous article, I vaguely alluded to my performance:
I was dealt the average amount of Jokers (2/3 per hand, or 32 overall) and a
few extra Flowers (3/4 per hand, or 36 overall). When I got bonanza deals of
three Jokers or four Flowers, I ended up winning the hand. I also said that
31%, or a sizeable chunk, of my winning hands were “CR5” (the fifth hand in the
Consecutive Runs section):
FFF 1111 2222
DDD
31% is 4/13; in other words, CR5s were four of the thirteen
hands that I won, out of 48. That’s a fairly good performance, a little
better than one game per round. I also hung on for 10 wall games. In
total, I “didn’t lose” 23/48, almost half the games (48%), significantly higher than the
expected 20% win and 20% wall games. I only threw the mahj tile in four games, so
suffered 40 points’ worth of penalties. I had 4 self-picked hands (above the
“average” 3) and one jokerless “regular” hand.
Most importantly of all, I didn’t just stick to 25 point
hands. I took advantage of Jokers to make Quints:
Q1:
11 222 3333 44444
Q2:
FFFF 11111 NNNNN
and made the best of having no Jokers at all with the sixth
Singles and Pairs hand, two suits of consecutive numbers with matching Jokers:
SP6:
FF 11
22 DD 11 22 DD
In addition to the Singles and Pairs hand, I made another
closed hand, in Like Numbers:
L2: 11
DD 111 DDD 1111
Compared with my "expected average," I won three more games, completed two extra
Wall games, played several high-scoring hands, finished one “regular” hand without jokers, and had three fewer penalties for throwing mahj tiles. These were all things of which I was quite proud.
Strategy-wise, tournament play can be different than your regular
game. I generally love to play difficult hands with my group (they joke that I’m
always going for Quints). I only play once a week, so I challenge myself to try
interesting hands. After all, life’s too short to play boring mah jongg.
However, a tournament can be a different story. Let me
explain:
I played a steady, regular game during the Friday evening
session and landed in a five-way tie for 12th place (out of 84). In
the Saturday morning session, I got the jokers for Quints and made the Singles
and Pairs hand, and by noon I had moved all the way up to a tie for 2nd
place!!
It made me think about actually finishing “in the money,” so
at that point, halfway through the tournament, I went for simpler hands as the
most direct way to score points. After all, you only get points for mahj-ing
first: if I wanted to continue to do well in the tournament, I would have to go
for the most attainable hand, rather than the most interesting. I still couldn't force tiles to come to me, though; other players
got hot while my tiles got cold, and I moved down to 6th place by Saturday
evening. Sunday started slowly, too, but I eked out two quick wins in the last round on Sunday. It was
VERY close: my 520 points meant that I ended in a tie for 8th place.
What about you? What are your tips for winning in a
tournament? You can always contact me at bubbefischer@gmail.com
; I love hearing from you!
Talk to you soon!
Bubbe Fischer
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