Organizing and Evaluating Your Hand

The turning point from a beginner to an intermediate Mahjong player is when one begins to think strategically about the game. When one tries to optimize the score for the hands they are trying to construct and think about what their opponents are doing and factor that into their plans. This article is part of a series to help beginning Mahjong players start thinking strategically about the game. These articles will build on the Strategy Guide Pamphlet created by the San Diego Mahjong Club. These tips are meant to be ecumenical but format-specific tips will be offered where relevant.

When you receive your tiles for your opening hand at the start of the game, it is generally a good idea to organize your tiles by rank and suit. This is so that it is easy to evaluate your hand, how far away you are from winning, and what patterns are possible for you to build. As the game progresses and you draw and discard new tiles, it is a good practice to keep your hand organized. It is worth mentioning that many highly seasoned players do not organize their hands. The reason is because organizing your hand can give information about your hand away to other players. However, being able to evaluate an unorganized hand is a skill that must be developed and not suitable for beginning and intermediate players. Having your hand read by organizing it is not a concern for a beginning and intermediate player, this is also a skill that needs to be developed.

One of the most important skills a beginning player can learn is how to evaluate their opening hand. When you first see your opening hand you should be asking yourself questions like: how many complete sets do I currently have in my hand and how far away am I from winning? Where are the points in my hand coming from? What patterns are easy to work toward? What should I get rid of?

While a patternless hand, or a Chicken Hand, is allowable in some formats, it is not allowable in all Mahjong formats. In formats where Chicken Hand is allow, such as Zung Jung, it is often the fastest hand to construct. However, playing Chicken Hand is not a winning strategy in the long run as it will be outpaced by hands that score higher points. Therefore, evaluating your opening hand is important!

Let’s evaluate Opening Hand 1. Looking at this hand, notice how the Dots suit is over-represented and there are four Honor tiles in hand. This hand looks like a hand that you could develop into a Half Flush and it looks like Value Honor is on the table as well if you can pick up a third Red Dragon tile. Let’s look at the set-level pattern in hand. Notice that you have Dot345 but the same tiles can be used to form Dot456. You have one Sequence in hand but it is ambigous what it is. If you pick up Dot4 then things become more coherent as you have two distinct Sequences: Dot345 and Dot456. This is not the only scenario that can happen though, this is why the situation is ambiguous. That ambiguity is good because it gives you options.

We can look at a different interpretation of this ambiguity. We need a pair to form a winning hand and we have two pairs currently in this hand: Dot5 and Red Dragon. Focusing again on the Dot tiles, if we choose to interpret the Dot5 tiles as a pair then we have two potentional Sequences that we could complete. The Dot34 grouping can be completed with another Dot2 or Dot5 to create Dot234 or Dot345. The grouping of Dot68 can be completed with Dot7 to form Dot678. If this were my hand I would favor interpreting the Dot5s in hand as a pair because I would strongly favor picking up a third Red Dragon to get Value Honor.

Another thing to consider about the hand is the grouping of Characters Char78. This grouping can be completed with Char6 or Char9 for the Sequence Char678 or Char789. Choosing to take this path will lock you out of Half Flush but it keeps Value Honor on the table. This example presents a strategic question in every Mahjong variant: do you optimize for speed or for value? Completing the Character grouping optimizes for speed, it trades value of the hand for ease of completing the hand. Pursuing Half Flush optimizes for value. Half Flush is much harder to complete because it is more restrictive. Therefore, it is slower. However, if you are able to win on Half Flush you will receive a larger point reward than if you choose the speedy route. Choosing the value route, however, typically gives your opponents more time to complete their hands and win. If this happens, then you win no points or may even have to pay your opponent points!

Discard strategy will be discussed in a future article but for this hand I think it makes sense to try and get rid of the East and North Winds first and the Bam5 tile assuming that we do not pick any copies of the Winds or the tiles Bam4, Bam5, or Bam6.

Let’s evaluate a different opening hand

Opening Hand 2 is very different from Opening Hand 1. Its tile groupings are as follows: Char4556, Bam4678, Dot23569. The first thing I would like to draw to your attention in this hand is how developed it already is. We already have two complete sets! We have the Sequences Char456 and Bam678. Not only that but we have groupings that are favorable to building Sequences with Dot23 and Dot56. It should be immediately clear that the All Sequences hand is on the table. Alternatively, if the style being played is Riichi Mahjong than it should be clear that Minimum Minipoints (Pinfu) is on the table. Additionally, notice how we have no Honor tiles (Winds and Dragons) and only one Terminal (ones and nines) tile, the Dot9. This means that All Simples is very easy to achieve with this hand as well. There is no reason not to push for both All Sequences and All Simples in this hand.

The wonderful thing about this hand is that, unlike Opening Hand 1, we do not need to make hard decisions about speed and value with this hand. If we optimize for value then we would try to pick up a Bam5 and a Dot4 to obtain the Sequences Char456, Bam456, and Dot456 for the Mixed Triple Sequence hand. This pattern is fully compatible with All Sequences and All Simples so we only need to choose for speed if we do not get the two tiles we need for Mixed Triple Sequence while pursuing these smaller patterns. This is a opening great hand!

Remaining Flexible and Continuous Hand Evaluation

Evaluating your hand is a continuous process that persists through the duration of the entire game. The reason is because it is common to draw tiles that alter your hand building possibilities. Beginners often like to claim tiles to complete Sequences and Triplets in their hand faster. The strategically minded player does not reflexively claim tiles because they can. Riichi Mahjong actively punishes players for claiming discards without a plan but I would say that it is good Mahjong practice not to claim discarded tiles until you have worked our what your strategy is. What patterns can you build with your hand? Are you trying to win fast or win big? Can you afford to let that tile go or is it too important to take? I would not claim discarded tiles until you have answered these questions. Once you claim discarded tiles, your strategic horizon shrinks and you become more locked in to a specific strategy because you cannot swap out melded tiles from your hand. You can swap out non-melded tiles in your hand. Therefore, it is best to remain flexible for as long as possible and Concealed Hand scores you points!

Set Completions

When evaluating and building your hand, a good rule of thumb is to favor Sequences over Triplets. To a beginning player this may seem counterintuitive because you can only claim discards for Sequences from the player to your left but you can claim discards for Triplets from any player. However, you are statistically more likely to complete a Sequence set than you are a Triplet set. There are four of every tile (not counting Flowers) in the game of Mahjong. This means that for every pair of tiles in your hand there are only two tiles in the entire game that can complete a Triplet. At the bare minimum, all things being equal there are at minimum four tiles able to complete a Sequence and at most eight. If we take a terminal grouping like Dot12, there are four Dot3s in the game that can give you Dot123. If we take a grouping like Char68, there are four Char7s that can give you Char678. If we take a grouping like Bam56 then there are four Bam4s to give you Bam456 and four Bam7s to give you Bam567.

Thank you for reading this article, I hope it was helpful! Interested beginners are encountaged to read further about the Five Block Theory of Mahjong.

As an exercise for the reader how would you evaluate this hand?

Take a look at SDMC’s Mahjong Cheat Sheets and leave a comment about how you evaluate it!