Dora Abnormalities

A player’s discard pool are like the crumbs Hansel and Gretel left behind as they made their way through the woods. If we keep our eyes on them, we can just about figure out a player’s journey. The thing that throws a wrench in that often are dora and red fives. They distort efficiency which can create anomalies in a player’s discard pool.

One of the general rules of reading a discard pool is the closer you get to a tile riichi is declared on, the more similar to the player’s hand it becomes.

The warning to that rule comes next… That does not work with dora tile riichi.

If we followed our first rule, we would imagine the player opposite had a complete or waiting group near to that red five. However, this is highly unlikely — if they did, why would they then throw a whole han away? This should tell us the player has NOTHING near that tile and they held on to the red 5 in the hope that they would pick something up. In the end, they had to abandon it for tempai.

As suspected! And for those suji watchers out there… This is a perfect demonstration of matagi and ura. I’m in a tight spot now because I have a very dangerous 6-man with nowhere to go…