PAIR UP

Deciding when it's time to break up with your hand can be a hard decision.

All of us know about the most dreaded and most forgotten rule of all, no jokers with singles or pairs. And NO, not even for mahjong, and not even if you bribe me with cake. So why do a lot of us keep picking hands that have pairs in them? Especially when we don't have those pairs to start with? The answer to that, is hope.

Hope is awesome. It helps motivate us to keep going, even when things seem impossible or insurmountable. Hope keeps us excited. When we have hope, we believe that we will mahjong! Hope is also supposed to reduce stress. However, in mahjong, I think it has the tendency to do just the opposite. It often has us on the edge of our seats.

So let me share with you some tips about when it may be the right moment to give up on those pairs ☹ or to maybe avoid pair hands completely.

EG1. If you have a decent to good hand after the Charleston (3-4 tiles away from mahj) but are needing to complete two to three pairs to win. STAY AWAY. It's not worth the risk. Here’s an example hand and what you could do…

Consecutive Run #8        FF 111 22 33 444 DD

If you were missing 3-4 of the following tiles (flowers, 2’s, 3’s, or dragons), then you need to abort. Think about another hand in consecutive run. There are lots of options, like Consecutive Run #2, 3, or 5. The advantage to these hands are that they are made-up of multiple pungs and kongs, so lots of possibilities to use jokers.

EG2. If you still need to form more than one pair and the game is 3/4 of the way through, consider an alternate hand.

Consecutive Run #1          11 222 3333 444 55

(your hand) 1 3333 444 5J

Here, you've exposed a pung of 2's. You are missing the pair of 1’s and 5’s to make a mahjong. You do however have a joker in your hand, which you cannot use for this particular hand (no jokers with pairs). You scan the table to see that someone has just exposed a pung of 1’s that you need. Time to deviate. Consecutive Run #2 is your next best option and you could use your joker to complete the kong of 5’s.

*Don't forget to scan discards and exposures regularly. Your pairs may already be impossible to make and you’ll go through the entire game with a false sense of hope. As you know, most of the tiles come in multiples of four, so obviously if you have one in your hand, and three others are showing, then it's time to give up and pivot. You may just be able to form a different winning hand… even if you've exposed some tiles, just as in the scenario above.

A good rule of thumb is… if you need 2 sets of pairs, try to get at least one set before committing to a hand, and definitely before exposing any part of your hand.

And very often, the mahj gods have something else in mind for you. Even if you are only one away from the win, there's always that chance that someone is vying for the same tiles as you, and that you may never be able to mahjong. It’s always a risk when trying to form pairs. That's where hope comes in!

As an experienced player, you sometimes have to ask yourself…is my ego getting in the way of trying to win on a ‘more difficult’ hand instead of just trying to win?

Whether you’re new to the game or a more experienced player, if you find yourself struggling with these kinds of decisions, consider an intermediate lesson to strengthen those skills. Reach out anytime to book a class.

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