Nu, what's New/PATTERNS

 

Greetings and salutations from Bubbe, who's going to shower you with "new card" posts for at least another week!

My overall goal is to get you comfortable and fluent in this card as quickly as possible. I hope these essays will help you think creatively about the card. Read them right away, before the card comes; or wait, and read them with the card on your lap…or both! Who’s going to judge you?!

A brief schedule: Today I will write about specific PATTERNS of the new card, in the hope that you can master more hands more quickly. 

For the next three days, I will have three articles going section by section, reviewing the left, middle, and right sides of the card. (***Going forward I will be referring to each section in an abbreviated way. Looking on the card, from left to right, I will be calling the sections 2021, Evens, LN, Q, CR, Odds, WD, 369, and SP.***)

Following the section reviews will be a post about illegal exposures. Don't make them, watch out if anyone else makes them--you might call that hand dead, or not, based on your situation, but at least you'll be clear that such a hand will not win.

After that, we'll get into two articles about more sophisticated stuff: 

A) ambiguous exposures, which are harder to defend against, but good for the player who might need to switch hands after already making exposures; and 

B) ideas about which particular hands, still unexposed, can be switched due to special circumstances, e.g. when your original hand goes dead or you suddenly pick up extra jokers.

Finally, I'll probably run a few quiz columns about how to tell one hand from another and help you figure out the best hands to try for, with a given group of tiles.

 

 

 

So what's new for 2021? As I mentioned in my first 2021 blogpost, the card is on the surface quite similar to last year's. Same nine sections, approximately the exact same number of hands…but of course there are important differences, and you need to recognize and understand them!! I highly recommend learning all of the key PATTERNS.

The first important pattern that I look for is always found in CR #1. 2021’s is different from 2020’s: it now resembles a bell curve, with pairs on either end of the number line and a kong in the middle. In other words:

 

        3

    2  3  4

1  2  3  4  5

1  2  3  4  5

 

This pattern shows up again in Evens #1 and Odds #1 and #4. Technically if you put the pair of Flowers at the end, it also appears in Odds #2. This is an important pattern to remember, knowing that the pairs, which are the hardest part to achieve, are on the ends. 

The next pattern that I always look for is the "pung/kong" hand, combining two sets of three of a kind and two sets of four of a kind. This year the pattern is 3434, in two suits. These hands are 2021 #2, Evens #2, LN #3, CR #2, Odds #3, and 369 #1. It's always good to keep this particular pattern in mind, it's an easy hand to make because there are no pairs! You can expose each meld and your hand can't go dead, you can use Jokers.... it's perennially popular as a fallback hand. The key is to remember 3-4 in suit A, and 3-4 in suit B. Easy-peasy.

**One thing to absolutely be careful about: 3434 does not apply to WD #1. Although it is all pungs and kongs, the order is 4334: kongs of North and South, pungs of East and West. Don't forget, or your hand could easily go dead. **

What other interesting patterns are on this card? Well, as I intimated in the first post, there are a few hands using five Flowers. The first, of course, is Q #1. However, putting out five Flowers does not necessarily mean you are playing that quint hand. It also is a necessary part of CR #4: five Flowers, followed by any three consecutive numbers as a pair, pung, and kong in one suit. That same five-Flower, pair, pung, and kong shows up again as 369 #4 where the 3s must be the pair, the 6s must be the pung and the 9s must be the kong, all in the same suit.

There are also several hands using a kong of Flowers. Those involve either two more kongs and a pair, as in 2021 #3, LN #2, and Odds #5; or two pairs and two pungs, as in Evens #1, Evens #3, and WD #3.

There are many hands with a pair of Flowers and three kongs, all over the card. So many, in fact, I'm not going to list them. This isn't a particularly unique hand.

On the other hand, there are a few pretty funky standout hands involving opposite Dragons, single tiles, or both. The two three-suited hands with opposite Dragons are CR #8 and Evens #7. CR #8 is a concealed hand with a pair of Flowers and four pungs: two consecutive numbers in suit A, and Dragon pungs in suits B and C. Evens #7 has a pair of Flowers and singles of 2, 4, 6, and 8 in suit A, with Dragon kongs in suits B and C.

The other singles I want to point out involve Winds. One such hand is SP #1, which includes six pairs: Flowers, North, South and any like number in all three suits, with a single East and a single West. The other is WD #7, a concealed hand with four pungs: North, South, and any two Dragons, plus (again) a single East and a single West. 

Speaking of the WD section, one final very important tip for those of you who are new to the blog, and a reminder to my veteran readers: the "long-E" rule.

It is an NMJL convention that East/West, Green, and Even numbers all go together. The non-"EEE" group of North/South, Red and Odd go together. This is borne out in WD #2, 4, and 5.

 

I think that's enough Bubbe Wisdom for one day. Tune in tomorrow, when I will start writing in detail about the whole left side of the new card! 

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at bubbefischer@gmail.com. I love to hear from you.

Bubbe Fischer