Calling Techniques (1)
Over the next three pages, I will introduce practical calling techniques that are useful in real games.
If you already know them, they are the sort of small tricks you use almost without thinking.
But when you are not used to them yet, the idea of "calling here" may not even occur to you,
or you may simply feel resistance toward calling.
These are absolutely worth remembering.
You will definitely run into situations where they help.
They become especially powerful in red-five mahjong.
Kuinoshi
This is a technique where a chi increases the number of complete melds in the hand.
It comes up often in Honitsu.
Example 1
Take this hand, for example.
If the player on your left discards and you chi it, that is a typical kuinoshi.
That successfully stretches the lower manzu block into two melds.
This kind of call is also effective in Tanyao.
Example 2
Dora
If you keep this hand closed, it can even aim at Haneman.
But in actual play, if the player on your left starts discarding souzu, the practical line is to use kuinoshi and switch to Tanyao + 3 dora.
Chi 
Dora
Compared with trying to draw 
yourself,
it is much faster to make the hand into a one-shanten shape where 
can give you chi-ten.
Purely in terms of speed, this reaches tenpai about twice as fast.
No matter how beautiful a chance hand is, it means nothing if you cannot win it.
With a mangan-class hand like Example 2, you should always be mentally ready to chi the moment the chance appears.
Double-Mentsu Processing
This is a technique where you use a chi to turn a consecutive-pairs shape into two melds.
Example 3
When you have a concealed yakuhai triplet, people often feel that opening the hand would be wasteful,
and naturally want to finish it menzen.
So with Example 3, many players would probably stay closed and look toward Sanankou or maybe even Iipeikou in manzu.
Tiles like or can certainly be passed on.
But the real key tiles should be called.
The key tiles in this hand are and the range from through 
.
If the player on your left discards them, you should call.
As explained earlier in the tile-efficiency section,
shapes like 3344m and 5778p are basically poor shapes because of the double acceptance overlap.
The idea here is to use a call to resolve that bad shape directly.
Once you do, the whole hand becomes much lighter.
Change 1: 
Change 2: 
This is not just a matter of becoming one-shanten with a direct chi-ten route.
In Change 1, if the player on your left later draws the range from through again, there is now a much better chance they will discard it.
The same is true in Change 2: the range from through becomes much easier to call than before.
For that reason, whenever this kind of double-acceptance overlap can be resolved by calling, it is generally best to do so.
However, be careful with your tile arrangement.
Example 4
Dora
If the player on your left discards 
here, many people will happily chi it immediately.
But then never appear, and the hand ends in a draw.
Why?
Because from the other players' perspective, this call is almost transparent.
↓ "Chi!"
↓
← Watch this
↓
← (´д｀)
↓
kacha...
Once the hand spreads out into a shape like that, it becomes obvious that the lower pinzu tiles are what remain.
To a strong player, this is a glass-clear tenpai shape.
They will immediately think:
"The main waits are definitely 1p and 4p; other than that, maybe 2p or edge 3p, at most."
So before calling , you should first have rearranged the hand a little.
For example, you could prepare the hand more like this:
Example:
The kuinoshi and double-acceptance calls introduced on this page can leave the hand in an unnatural arrangement.
So once you get used to them, it is best either to:
- arrange the tiles in advance with the coming call already in mind, or
- quickly slide the two tiles you are about to expose to the right before you say "chi."
That way you can reduce the amount of information you reveal.
Original Japanese page: http://beginners.biz/naki/naki13.html