Mahjong Soul – How to Win More Often Through Tile Efficiency

Quick Guide to Win More Often

Explanation

Generally, the best way to increase hand win rate is by increasing your tile efficiency. This refers to making the correct discards to build your hand as fast as possible.

Sets can be either sequences [123s] or triplets [555p]. Incomplete sets (protosets/taatsu) can be named based on their wait pattern. Here’s a list of all the basic wait patterns:

The [12p] and [35m] waits both accept the same number of tiles; however, [35m] can be upgraded to an open wait with [2m] and [6m] draws, so it’s better. The two-pair wait has the most upgrades if the pairs are middle tiles. The [23s] open wait here is the best because it can accept 8 tiles in total.

Focus on tile acceptance! Find the weakest tile groups and get rid of them in favor of stronger ones.

These simple wait patterns can be combined to form more complex wait patterns:

• [2345s] is a 2-sided pair wait for [25s]. By drawing [6s], it becomes a 3-sided open wait for [147s].
• [4555p] is the combination of a [4p] pair wait and a [36p] open wait.
• [2233344m] has a two-pair wait for [24m] as well as a middle wait for [3m].

Try to remember some of these patterns, and keep tiles that can upgrade your sets into better waits.

Case #1

When developing a hand, having two heads (potential pairs) is usually optimal.

One head could suddenly become a set, while the other can then become the pair. This allows for more flexibility.

Here, our [66p44s] heads can be easily upgraded to 2-sided or even 3-sided open waits.

You might consider cutting [6p] to maintain the [3m] wait, but then we can’t upgrade [44s] to an open wait without losing our pair.

Therefore, you should cut the edge wait [12m], as its acceptance is the weakest and the only missed draw would be [3m].

This way we may also gain Pinfu.

Case #2

While two heads are usually optimal, it can be better to have three heads if you intend to call.

When you’re able to pon a tile, you’re also able to get it around four times faster compared to relying on self-draw. This is especially true for terminal tiles and honors.

Here we have three heads: [99m99sRR]. [9s] might seem like a good tile to cut due to having so many heads, but remember that we will likely call pon on [Red Dragon].

After doing so, making a [9m] or [9s] pon should be easy, as these are terminal tiles that people are more likely to discard.

Therefore, for faster hand advancement, it’s better to keep three heads and cut something like [6m] or [4s] instead. You may keep the dora tiles for now to aim for more value.

Case #3

Be aware of Seven Pairs (chiitoitsu) when you have multiple pairs. This yaku can suddenly sneak up on you! It can often be faster to complete than a regular hand, so keep it in mind whenever you have multiple (4+) pairs and draw a new one.

The above example has decent open waits for a regular hand, but notice that upon drawing [8s], it has entered one-away for Seven Pairs. You shouldn’t cut any pairs, so discard [6p] or [4s] instead.

Case #4

Think about the shape that you want your hand to be in when you call riichi.

It’s okay to cut away bad wait patterns early on to aim for a better tenpai (ready hand) shape, even if you go back one shanten (one step) from achieving tenpai.

In the above example, we’re one away from tenpai, so [7m] might seem like an excess “floating” tile.

However, by drawing [6m], we get a three-sided wait, with room for other upgrades as well.

Keeping this in mind, it’s better to cut the weak edge wait [1-2s]. Not only is the winning chance of a multi-sided wait much higher, but we may also gain additional yaku, such as Pinfu.

I hope these tips were useful. Keep them in mind when jumping into your next match!