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Basic Waits (2)

If you understand irregular multi-sided waits, the knowledge helps not only when you tenpai with Honitsu or Chinitsu, but also by giving you a wider variety of attacking options in many situations.

Irregular Two-Sided Waits

Shape Winning tiles Number of winning tiles
四万牌图四万牌图四万牌图五万牌图六万牌图七万牌图九万牌图 八万牌图九万牌图 7

This is about the only irregular two-sided wait that really matters. There are other shapes too, but they appear so rarely that there is no real need to memorize them.

Irregular Three-Sided Waits

Shape Winning tiles Number of winning tiles
二索牌图二索牌图三索牌图三索牌图三索牌图四索牌图四索牌图 二索牌图三索牌图四索牌图 5
七筒牌图七筒牌图七筒牌图八筒牌图八筒牌图九筒牌图九筒牌图 七筒牌图八筒牌图九筒牌图 5
三万牌图三万牌图四万牌图四万牌图五万牌图五万牌图六万牌图六万牌图中牌图中牌图 三万牌图六万牌图中牌图 6
四筒牌图四筒牌图四筒牌图五筒牌图六筒牌图白牌图白牌图 四筒牌图七筒牌图白牌图 7
一索牌图一索牌图一索牌图二索牌图二索牌图三索牌图四索牌图 二索牌图三索牌图五索牌图 9
五筒牌图六筒牌图六筒牌图七筒牌图八筒牌图八筒牌图八筒牌图 四筒牌图六筒牌图七筒牌图 9
二万牌图二万牌图二万牌图四万牌图五万牌图六万牌图七万牌图 三万牌图四万牌图七万牌图 10
三筒牌图三筒牌图三筒牌图五筒牌图七筒牌图七筒牌图七筒牌图 四筒牌图五筒牌图六筒牌图 11

These are about all the irregular three-sided waits you are likely to see often in actual play.

The top two are hard to call good waits. In many cases, it is more advantageous to lock in iipeikou instead.

I found the following problem on an online message board, and here the answer should be an instant dora discard with no hesitation.

(Example 1) 四万牌图四万牌图五万牌图五万牌图五万牌图六万牌图六万牌图三索牌图三索牌图四索牌图四索牌图六索牌图七索牌图 Tsumo二索牌图 Dora五万牌图

In the souzu block, any draw except 九索牌图 reaches tenpai.

And except for drawing 二索牌图, the resulting waits are all good. If you draw 六索牌图 or 七索牌图, the hand becomes a huge Tanyao Pinfu Ryanpeikou Dora Dora hand.

There really should be no answer other than cutting the dora, yet more people chose to cut 六索牌图 instead (cutting 七索牌图 is no different). It is a result that is honestly hard to believe.

Here are a few cases where knowing irregular acceptance patterns gives you a real advantage in practice.

(Example 2) 三筒牌图三筒牌图三筒牌图四筒牌图五筒牌图五筒牌图六筒牌图六筒牌图中牌图中牌图 Tsumo中牌图 Chi八筒牌图七筒牌图九筒牌图

The hand was already tenpai on a wait from 四筒牌图 through 七筒牌图, and then Chun turned into a concealed triplet.

There is a line where you take a shanpon wait and aim for tsumo sanankou, but here the correct answer is to cut 六筒牌图 and switch to the 四筒牌图五筒牌图七筒牌图 wait.

If you carelessly cut 三筒牌图, your number of winning tiles does not increase.

(Example 3) 一万牌图一万牌图三万牌图四万牌图五万牌图六万牌图七万牌图Tsumo一万牌图Chi八万牌图七万牌图六万牌图Pon白牌图白牌图白牌图

It is easy to mindlessly tsumogiri here, but even though both choices are three-sided waits, cutting 七万牌图 to make the 二万牌图三万牌图六万牌图 wait is better. That is because the hand rounds up to 5200 points.

Waits with Four or More Winning Tile Types

Here I will only give examples. There are still many more, so it is worth trying to find them on your own.

Shape Winning tiles Number of winning tiles
六万牌图七万牌图七万牌图七万牌图八万牌图八万牌图八万牌图 五万牌图六万牌图七万牌图八万牌图 9
二索牌图二索牌图三索牌图三索牌图四索牌图四索牌图四索牌图 一索牌图二索牌图三索牌图四索牌图 9
二筒牌图三筒牌图三筒牌图三筒牌图四筒牌图五筒牌图六筒牌图 一筒牌图二筒牌图四筒牌图七筒牌图 14
一万牌图一万牌图一万牌图三万牌图四万牌图五万牌图六万牌图八万牌图八万牌图八万牌图 二万牌图三万牌图六万牌图七万牌图 14
三筒牌图三筒牌图三筒牌图四筒牌图五筒牌图五筒牌图五筒牌图 二筒牌图三筒牌图四筒牌图五筒牌图六筒牌图 13
三索牌图三索牌图三索牌图四索牌图五索牌图六索牌图七索牌图 二索牌图四索牌图五索牌图七索牌图八索牌图 17
二万牌图三万牌图四万牌图五万牌图六万牌图七万牌图八万牌图九万牌图九万牌图九万牌图 一万牌图二万牌图四万牌图五万牌图七万牌图八万牌图 19

No matter how complicated a multi-sided wait becomes, the basic idea remains:

do you interpret three identical tiles as a concealed triplet, or as a pair plus one extra tile?

Almost every complex wait can be handled with that way of thinking.

Original Japanese page: http://beginners.biz/kihon/kihon12.html

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