Backup Hand Tale #5: What Do You Get When You Fall in Love?

Greetings and salutations from your lyric-loving Bubbe, with a tale of woe plus links to a few pop hits!

There’s a very famous saying in mah jongg: “Don’t fall in love with your tiles.” Don't get fixated and lose objectivity. You need to pay attention as new tiles come in, and respect that fate may have a different hand waiting for you.

Well, I completely ignored that this afternoon, and ended up in a wall game. So sad.

I had an amazing Charleston: as East, I ended up with

        FF 444 55 66 77 D 8 E

I mean, seriously—it was about as close as I get to a heavenly hand, two tiles away from CR8.

I threw the East to start the game. About five tiles in, someone threw a Green dragon which I obviously wasn’t ready for, but I figured there would be another later on. In fact, two turns late I picked up a joker to complete my pung of 7 bams, so I was on call for the Green for the win.

As Tom Petty says, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

Unfortunately, the mahj spirits had something else in mind for me and I kept ignoring them. “I’ve never made this cool concealed hand with Flowers, Dragons, and consecutive numbers, I’m gonna show everyone and get that extra nickel!”

Famous last words.

I never picked the Green, and no one ever discarded the third or fourth one, but I DID pull three more jokers. Obviously when I picked the first one I could not have known that there would be several more, and I was satisfied to complete that pung… but after another eight picks or so, when a joker showed up and a dragon did not, I should have stopped and reconsidered my options. Holding out for a pair instead of switching to an open hand was not the best winning strategy—it was more about my ego and “falling in love” with that concealed hand.

What WERE my options?

With that second joker pick, my hand was FF 444 55 66 77J D J. I could have switched to

CR5.1: FF 444 55J 66J (77D to discard while waiting for an additional 4, 5, and 6 bam)

Or

CR2.1: 444 55J 66 77J (FFD to discard while waiting for an addition 5, 6, and 7 bam)

Either of those options would have allowed me to call for exposures instead of twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a Green dragon that never appeared. It was like the reverse of Puff, the Magic Dragon—instead of Jackie Paper, it was Puff who didn't come back.

So what did I do with all those nice jokers? Like an idiot, I started trading them for the pung tiles: eventually, after my fourth joker, my hand looked like

FF 4JJ 55 66 7JJ D

I often say, “Don’t tip anyone off about how close you are, by throwing jokers,” but let’s be clear: it was a concealed hand and I didn’t need a Flower. No one would know what it was that I was waiting for, simply because I was discarding jokers. By throwing out the 4’s, there was no way I was going to successfully switch back to either CR2.1 or CR5.1. I fell in love and locked onto CR8, and it never came to fruition.

We’ve all been there, I know--seemingly set after the Charleston. You can’t force a pair, you can’t coax out a Flower or a joker or any tile….but I had the opportunity to switch to an easier hand and was too proud and in love to change. Alas. To complete the lyrics from the Bacharach and David song, "So for at least until tomorrow, I'll never fall in love again."

Incidentally, I was finally playing with my old group and when we sat down, they asked if there was ever resolution on the CR5 hands. One of my friends played CR5.1 at a tournament with 5, 6, and 7 craks and an opponent called her hand dead—and the tournament director agreed! Three months into the new card, they still didn’t know that the League explained that it was kongs of ANY three consecutive numbers. I said, “You should have called me.”

You, dear read, should email me at bubbefischer@gmail.com if something like that comes up, I’m happy to help.

Talk to you soon.

 

Bubbe

 

 

 

Backup Hand Tale #4: A Second Look

 

Greetings and salutations from your observant Bubbe, always looking for a teachable moment.

 

Yesterday, I was one of many teaching helpers at my local library's "beginner" class. In fact, there were more of us than there were students, so I was asked to be a regular player. (I'm going to kvell for a moment, to say that Bobbie, one of my former students, is one of the teachers and she's very good!)

 

In the middle of the game, I stopped to take a photo of my tiles, and the main instructor asked, "Why are you doing that?" I explained that my hand looked like good material for an article, and indeed it was!

 

 

 

I had been dealt the beginnings of two very different hands. By the end of the first across, I had

 

F 77899 NNEEW 2 3

 

I gave away the 2 and 3, taking advantage of the option to "steal" on first left. I was hoping that one of my two new tiles would point me toward either CR5.3 or something in the Winds section. Sure enough, I got another 8 bam, and proceeded to disperse my Winds and other non-useful tiles through the rest of the Charleston. While I had no jokers, I did at least have a focus of what to play.

 

By the end of the third wall, I still didn't have a second Flower or any jokers, but something else had developed that made me curious. That’s when I took the photo. I can’t show it here because it’s got the card in the foreground, but the tiles were

 

F 77 888 999 5 6 8 E

 

What do you see in that group of tiles?

 

If I were to pick up another 6 dot, I would be on call for the 7 dot pung and the kongs of 8 bam and 9 crak, able to make CR4 without needing any jokers or Flowers!

 

It became an interesting decision point. If I picked up a joker, I still wouldn't necessarily know which hand to play, because they both hinged on having a pair. The pivotal issue was whether I picked up a 6 dot or a Flower first.

 

So how did it actually play out?

 

I did pick up a Flower before anything else, and discarded the East. I was still keeping my eye out for that second 6 dot, hoping it would show up before the 7 dots were thrown because, being jokerless, I wasn't ready to call for the KONG of 7 dots.

 

Someone threw a 9 crak, so of course I called for it and exposed the jokerless kong. At this point I had

 

FF 5 6 77 888 (9999 exposed)

 

I contined to see whether I would pick the 6 dot before a 7 dot was thrown....and then someone else threw a 5 dot, which one of the new students called for a kong exposure!

 

Well, that settled that – I exchanged my 5 dot for her joker and was ready to call for the 7 dot and 8 bam to complete those kongs.

 

Of course, we never got that far. One of the new players had been dealt two jokers and picked another during the game and completed a beautiful CR2.1, 5 through 8 crak.

 

 

 

This particular game was educational for me, too. I hadn't seriously considered CR4 as a backup because... well, because it's a harder hand to make, but when I wasn't getting that second Flower and didn't have the joker for that 7 dot kong, the "hard" option deserved a second look.

 

As a former Girl Scout leader, Bubbe believes strongly in the motto "be prepared"--know the card, think of backup hands, pay attention to what's going on with your own tiles and others', and be ready to switch your hand if and when you need to. "Luck favors the prepared mind," so the more you can anticipate and make changes and incorporate lucky tiles as they come to you (or compensate if they don't), the more successful you will be. Of course, we can't magically invoke jokers, we aren't like Samantha or Jeannie (you can tell I've been watching old sitcoms on cable)....

 

I hope this exercise helped you to think about why and how you might switch, and what the key events would be to help you decide.

 

I'll keep my eye out for other teachable moments, I'm happy to share them with you. Meanwhile contact me if you have questions or comments, you can always reach me at bubbefischer@gmail.com

 

Talk to you soon!

 

Bubbe 

Kashrut and Mahj

Greetings and salutations from your heimish Bubbe, with a little metaphor that can be helpful to newbies, as well as those of us who TEACH newbies.

When we first display all of the tiles, instructors always point out which suit goes with which colored dragon. My old teaching partner used to say,"Bamboo is green, dots are like white soap bubbles, and if you crak your head you'll probably bleed...." 

Those images are effective for some students, but too violent for Bubbe. In fact, my mind uses a less visual mnemonic: Bam, Crak and Dot are in alphabetical order, corresponding to the similarly alphabetically ordered Green, Red, and White colors. (Side note:  I was asked to be the baseball statistician in high school and had to learn a lot about the game quickly. I found it helped to remember "the count" on the batter alphabetically, too: balls before strikes)

While these mnemonics helped to learn the color pairings, there were three groups of tiles that didn't HAVE a suit: Jokers, Flowers, and Winds. I'm Jewish, so there was a parallel that made perfect sense to me, related to kosher law (kashrut): 

Some foods are strictly milchig (dairy), e.g. milk, cheese, butter.

Some foods are strictly fleishig (meat), e.g. chicken, beef, lamb.

Still others are pareve--they contain neither milk nor meat, and can be served with either one--for instance fruits and vegetables, grains, eggs, fish, nuts, tofu. 

I tell my students that Flowers, Winds, and Jokers are pareve--they do not belong to any specific suit, and can be used with every suit.

HOWEVER: there is one additional group of tiles that is "forgotten," when it comes to suiting, that will continue to be highly relevant for the next 87 years, and every ten years thereafter: the "0" or Soap tile, used in the context of Year hands. Some players worry about whether or not they must consider "0" to be a member of the dots/white suit. Remind them that, just as with Flowers, Winds, or Jokers, "0" is suitless (or pareve).

How about you? Do you have some useful mnemonics that help you to understand the tiles better? Bubbe would love to hear from you at bubbefischer@gmail.com

Talk to you soon!

Bubbe