Hold onto your hats--it's the 2024 Card!!

 

Greetings and salutations from your Bubbe, who is actually somewhat gobsmacked by the new card.

 

I promise over the next days I will be more specific, focusing on the three panels of the card, describing each hand in each section. I will talk about illegal exposures and ambiguous exposures, hands that are easy to use for backup of one another, all the good stuff that you are used to getting from Bubbe. But since most cards haven’t been received, I don’t want to get into too much fine detail yet. Consider this to be the 40,000-foot overview.

 

Hold on to your hats, quite literally.

 

There are hands on here that I have never seen in my 21 years of playing. There are combinations that show that somebody over at the League is creative and has a sense of humor.

 

Whoever you are, card committee, my hat is off to you.

 

I appreciate that for years, it was super-simple to decipher these cards–and I taught my readers how to do it for themselves. This year, the authors have made it more intricate and challenging. It may take me a few weeks to get my mind around each of these different combinations.

 

There is something for everybody on this new card:

* pairs, kongs, and quints of Flowers.

* pungs and kongs of dragons, sometimes in the same hand.

* the infamous “number vomit” Singles and Pairs hands, using consecutive numbers on either end of the number line.

* arithmetic hands: an entire section of “Lucky Seven” Addition Hands as well as multiplication hands embedded in the Even and Odd sections

* Year hands (obviously). The Big Hand this year only involves two suits of 2024, and no flowers.

*Winds hands scattered all over the card, including in Like Numbers. Note: there is one hand in the Like Numbers section that does not require pairs—I am sure it will be very popular

*more variety in the Quints section, with four different hands

 

The hand that made me do a double take, and frankly won my heart, is the place that I have traditionally looked to decipher the year’s patterns: CR 1, the first consecutive run hand. I don’t know who created it, but I love her.

 

**Bubbe apologizes in advance for the miserable quality of her graphics **

Rather than the traditional steps (pair, pair, pung, pung, kong)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or bell curve (pair, pung, kong, pung, pair)

 

 

 

 

 

 This year we have a sombrero, with brim on both ends and a peak in the middle (pung, pair, kong, pair, pung):

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course the numbers can either run between 1 and 5 or 5 and 9, and the pattern occurs again in the Odds section, either in one suit or three, with the pungs of 1s and 9s being the brim and the peak being the kong of 5s.

 

Just to make you crazy, other patterns that we’ve seen before appear on the card as well. There are bell curves, there are steps. There are three pairs and two kongs. There are pung/kong (3-4) hands which, for the most part, are in the 3344 pattern this year. They’ve even brought back that remarkable first Wind hand with pungs and kongs, where you can choose whether you want the pungs to be East-West or North-South.

 

But back to creativity. Other innovations this year are:

*consecutive single, pair, kong in two suits

*a quint of Flowers with a run of three consecutive same-suit singles (a “chow” in traditional Chinese mahjong) and then two matching pungs in the fourth number

* a hybrid 369 hand in the Singles and Pairs section that involves singles and pairs

What I am trying to say is, you’re going to want to keep reading these articles. You will need some time to work on learning this card. And in the end, it’s going to be worth it!

 

One of my favorite “Bubbe-isms” is “life’s too short to play boring mah jongg.” Something tells me that 2024–in mah jongg, like many other things– is not going to be boring.

 

See you tomorrow, I’ll be posting every day for a while!

 

Bubbe

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

Backup Hand Tale #3: The Confession

 Greetings and salutations from your guilt-plagued Bubbe, who has a confession to make:

 “It’s been nearly two years since I played an in-person game.” 

All those articles I wrote about game scenarios were “real….mahjongg,” online. I have several very vulnerable family members and am also health-compromised, so I didn’t want to take chances, even after being boostered.

I recently moved and one of my new neighbors (who doesn’t play….yet) told me about a drop-in session at the library. I RSVP’d, and the organizer wrote back saying, “We only want experienced players, no beginners. Are you an experienced player?” I said I thought so, I’d been playing since the 2003 card.

Today was my first day with the group. One of the first things I noticed, being back at a real table, was the fun of turning over those smooth tiles, one by one, to see what I was dealt. It also took adjusting to remember to set up my rack defensively—not making it obvious whether I was keeping a pass, or separating tiles that I knew weren’t useful.

I was the only player who wore a mask, but no one batted an eye about it. Leaning back in my chair, I compensated for the mask and distance by speaking loudly when I named my discards.

In the first game I bluffed a little, “getting excited” about a pick that was actually dreck, just to throw my opponents off from any tells that I ordinarily would show. We ended in a wall game, and I mused about how normal it felt to be playing in person again.

The one thing I did—that I never used to do, before Covid, and certainly don’t do online—ended up creating a big problem in the second game. Online, the tiles can be shuffled and readjusted automatically. They are set up pretty much the way I would normally set up my tiles: Flowers to the left, then the three suits, dragons, Winds, and Jokers.

At the end of the Charleston I had:

5 8  2 22 44 66 88 W J

Since I had no Flowers or dragons, the best option was definitely E3.1, a pung/kong hand in dots. I was ready to call for the third tile in the 2 and 6 dot pungs, and could use the Joker with the 4 or 8 dots to call for at least one kong.

But then--I have NO IDEA why--I thought it would be fun to put the joker between the pairs of 4s and 6s. I never play that way. Big mistake.

Someone threw a 6 dot, and I called for it. Although I only needed the pung and didn’t need to use my Joker, my brain was confused by the placement of that Joker so I used it to expose a KONG of 6 dots. It wasn’t until the next two players had picked and thrown that I realized I had messed up the E3.1 hand!

Remember: there are no “bad” first exposures that will make your hand dead. There is always another hand that you can go for, after you make one exposure. In this case, although it was a ridiculous longshot and a waste of all those nice dots, I realized I had to try for the next hand down, E4.  I certainly would have no problem keeping that pair of 4 dots to go with my kong of 6 dots. I would need to complete the pairs of 2 craks and 8 bams, and SOMEHOW acquire a kong of 4 craks when I had none to begin with.

It was definitely a longshot. Fortunately for me, my opponents seemed to be going for Odd hands; there were a lot of even tiles passed around during the Charleston, and I had grabbed them.

I actually picked up a 4 crak and exchanged for someone's exposed Joker, so I knew it was not a COMPLETELY ridiculous plan. A few picks later, I got my second 2 crak. My supposition was confirmed about “Odd” hands when my opponents started making more exposures, and I felt a little more confident that at least no one might want the same tiles as I did. In fact, they were starting to block each other’s success, cancelling one another out.

I exchanged for my own (6 dot) Joker, and was now looking at

22 4JJ 44 6666 (exposed) 8 D

One of my opponents threw out a 4 crak, so I called it for an exposure. I realized that I had a GREAT ambiguous double exposure with kongs of 4 craks and 6 dots: it might be logical to assume that I was going for CR5.3 and needed a kong of 5 bams and a pair of Flowers, or CR2.2 and needed pungs of 3 craks and 5 dots. I know I would have assumed that—most people don’t think of the wacky, three-suited, three-paired hand in the Evens section. I had the pairs of 2 craks and 4 dots; all I needed was that last 8 bam.

Fortunately for me, I picked it on the next turn! Of course, I caught everyone by surprise, but it was the only hand of the three possibilities that actually made any sense, considering they were all playing Odd hands on the upper number line! I had really lucked out that their choices had cancelled one another out; it bought me a lot of time and extra picks, since none of them was able to wrap up their own hand.

My opponents were impressed by this more challenging hand; I confessed that it wasn’t a typical choice for me, and that I was forced to try for it after I made the wrong exposure. I didn’t harp on about how knowing the card makes all the difference, and not being afraid to try every hand, etc.—I figured no one wants to hear that kind of stuff from an opponent.

It felt good to be back, and to be able to think on the fly like that. I don’t know WHY I fooled around with the Jokers on my rack. I’m not going to do that ever again!!

You can email me at bubbefischer@gmail.com to let me know if you have any questions, or drop me a line to say how you’re doing with the new card. I love hearing from you!

Talk to you soon!

 

Bubbe