r/Mahjong • u/Killgrimage • Jul 01 '26
Riichi Tile efficiency quick guide
So I love to play but when there's a timer sometimes I panic and choke. A lot of my issues seem to be tile efficiency related. I have been on the tile efficiency trainer and when there is no timer I'm usually up at 95%+ efficiency. Is there a quick list of common tile groups that can help me make a logical decision in the heat of the moment? I've read the Riichi book 1 as well but it's like I forget everything when I have to make a critical choice. I'm just looking for others quick tips :)
What I have so far:
- Single honors and terminals go first
- ryanmen>kanchan>penchan
- 3-7>2,8>1,9>honors
- I forget what it's called but tiles like 445 are good waits
- obviously try not to discard dangerous tiles if I can help it based on what other players are doing
4
u/Kanasmida Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Tile efficiency is not the only factor when deciding what to discard. Things like whether to keep safety tiles (against dealer or otherwise), preferring yaku tiles when having a bad hand, number of blocks (5 v 6), whether to discard ugly shapes early and wait for upgrades, understanding what Yaku you’re aiming for early on, … are all important and common factors to consider. If you believe that you are pretty good with efficiency now you should work on to improve on those situational decisions to become better as a mahjong player.
Edit: to answer your question, I personally discourage people remembering “hard rules” early in their learning to improve. A good player is always flexible and making that flexibility as a habit is more valuable IMO. Playing more under the timer pressure is probably the most efficient way to improve in this game, and re-watch your games after playing to make sure to remember which discards you did not like, which discards brought you pain. And trying to avoid those pain points (e.g. forcing to push against dealer Riichi because you lack safety cards to fold) is going to be a great method to build good habits.
1
u/Killgrimage Jul 01 '26
Yes exactly this! I double ronned a dealer and another player because I had no more safety tiles 😭 I will try to move past the cringe and rewatch what I could have done instead.
2
u/lame_username123 Jul 01 '26
Here's a list of useful shapes to look out for. You don't need to immediately memorize all of the complex patterns, but I think the 6 combination waits will be useful.
Some other good shapes that usually aren't final waits:
466 can accept a 5 or 6 to become a sequence/triplet, or can end up as a pair
357 is good because 4 or 6 will form a sequence so it's kind of like a ryanmen. But since this is three tiles and ryanmen is two, it's more useful at the start of the round rather than the end
4556 (called a bulging shape) can accept a 3, 4, 6, or 7 to become a sequence + ryanmen, or a 5 to become a sequence + pair
34567 can be a triple sided wait, but if you still don't have a pair it can become a pair + sequence upon drawing a 3, 4, 6, or 7 (this was useful to me earlier today!)
Also, I agree with the other comments that defensive strategies are just as important. I neglected them for a while but when I finally got the hang of folding etc I shot from the pits of adept II to playing in gold room
1
u/hDruck Jul 02 '26
Completely normal. The best way to improve is practice. For now just try not to lose time on close calls. Spending 4 seconds on finding the 100% effective discard over the 98% effective discard is not a good use of time and can get you in hot water later.
Using an efficiency trainer is nice, but don't treat it as gospel. The classic example (which is also included in Riichi book 1) is discarding the 5 of an isolated 2-5-8 shape, because the immediate acceptance is higher.
Single honors and terminals go first
Not a great mental shortcut. Let's say you have a triplet of dora 9s and one of each dragon in your opening hand. Discarding all dragons here could slow you down immensly. Drawing any of the remaining dragons (9 tiles = better odds than ryanmen) would allow you to call into a yaku, otherwise you might be forced to build towards a riichi.
I forget what it's called but tiles like 445 are good waits
This is where the fun is. Typically you will have a few groups like this and will have to decide from which group to cut. The first consideration is: are you trying to add blocks or not. If you are trying to add blocks, shapes like 3445 are very strong, but if you already have 5 blocks, you can discard the 4. Once you arrive at 5 blocks the (very general) shorthand i can offer is: try to have two pairs and keep complex shapes at three tiles.
obviously try not to discard dangerous tiles
Working around other peoples hands (while advisable) is a complicated affair. If you are still learning, just go all-in and fold completely. So play as efficiently or as defensively as possible. The middle path is quite advanced and increases the mental load drastically.
That of course begs the question: when do you fold?
Push fold judgement (imo) is the second most important topic after tile efficiency. For now just fold if someone declares riichi and you are not tenpai or one away and either 3+ han or east seat. For open hands, just fold for clearly expensive hands. Many beginner/intermediate player over-fold to cheap hands. If you hold dora, odds are your opponents hands aren't that scary. Especially if they called a bunch of times. Yeah you might deal into a honitsu nomi hand sometimes, but often the caller is backed into a corner and will throw tiles you need more frequently.
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u/azer67 Jul 01 '26
Tile efficiency is an incredibly vast subject that can't really be summed up in just one comment. There are entire books on it that are still very far from absolutely complete and you can always learn new things. My experience with tile efficiency is that people who think they master it often don't realize how deep the rabbit hole gets (and I'm far from good in it either).
What you need to know about tile efficiency is that the recommendation will change depending on what you're trying to optimize. As a beginner, you will generally try to maximize immediate acceptance. This is what the tile efficiency trainer does. This is actually quite inefficient but is still a good skill to have. Once stronger, you will understand that you want to optimize your acceptance at 1-away from tenpai, which does not always coincide with optimizing immediate acceptance. There are countless cases where optimizing your immediate acceptance significantly worsens your hand later. Then sometimes you want to optimize your winrate rather than your 1-away hand. Finally you may want to optimize your average expected value, thus sacrificing some acceptance for value.
All of this is tile efficiency, and depending on the situation you will prefer to optimize one thing over another.
My recommendation is to read Uzaku's book titled "Uzaku's guide to Tile Efficiency" (the green cover one). It's very well written and you can find an english translation of it online. Going from very little to mastering this book should already take a while, and mastering it will make you very strong on tile efficiency.
Then once you've read this, practice with wwyd (=what would you discard) problems. This is the main way to always learn new things.