Waits and Discards

Missing a wait option and getting yourself into furiten, or even worse chombo, is something we’ve all done. However, not even having your wait live is something even easier to miss.

Look at the below… I’m East so lots of incentive to keep my dealership. It’s awkward and I need to choose the best discard that will maximize my chances of winning with this hand.

The first person I showed this to cried “Ippeiko!” homing in on that 223344 shape. However, look at the discard pool, 1 and 3 are dead. So you are not going to structure your hand that way. But discarding 1 and 3 does not only create a 223344 shape with a pair waiting to be formed.

Option one… Let’s consider the 4 as the pair and mentally remove it for a second. That would give us 122333 from which to discard. We could discard the 3 and wait on the 1 or the 4. This has the benefit of maintaining an iipeiko chance and pinfu on the 1 or just pinfu on the 4. BUT we’ve established the 1 is dead so no iipeiko and there are only two 4 left (and they’re central so highly likely to be incorporated in someone’s hand).

Option two… If we discard the 1 that would leave us with this shape 2233344 waiting on the 2, 3, 4 (remove a pair of 3 to see an inside wait on a 22344 shape) and a tanyao-no pinfu. BUT 3 is dead. 2 is dead. Two 4 left. Same issue as option one. We can’t expand our outs.

So basically both options lead us to the exact same conclusion, the 4 is our only hope. However, there is a riichi declaration on the table. The 3 is not safe but the 1 is. If someone is trying to read suji, the 4 may come out as a desperate throw if they’re short on safe tiles (dealer has 1-7 in their pool) especially if you throw the 1. For that reason, I chose to throw the 1.

You’re basically choosing between two equal yaku. Pinfu or tanyao. No other options are open to you now when we consider the discard context.

If you wanted to be real crazy, you could imagine that there was some opportunity for seven pairs but at this late stage of the hand I would not recommend that. Priority should be taking tempai and staying East.

Benefit is you can dama and hope to massage the bamboos into an iipeiko with a lucky 5s draw!

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