Chinese Official and the 81 Hands

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I've been reading through Pritchard's "New Mahjong" and it gets my
curiousity going.

1. How do you remember 81 hands, especially in in a high-pressure situation?
By my estimate, the Japanese Yaku table has 45 hands and Chinese Classical
has 18 limit hands and 21 doubles. In practical terms, we're talking about
twice the number of combinations to remember.
2. I see there was an original pool of 440 hands collected from all over
China. Does that list exist anywhere? It might be a useful reference.

Simon Davosi

--
American Code Of Laws For Mah-Jongg: http://tinyurl.com/445ld

 

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From: "Simon Davosi"

>How do you remember 81 hands,

Someone asked me this exact same question on January 29th. I don't think I
gave a satisfactory answer then, but maybe I can do better this time.

You remember 81 things the same way you remember 18 things or 45 things.
Long and repeated use of a large number of things eventually results in your
memorizing them all. Ten, twenty, eighty, a hundred... The number doesn't
matter.

Here in the USA, we use an alphabet of 26 characters. In Japan, they use
that alphabet, and they also use two Japanese alphabets (each of which
consists of twice the number of characters in our Roman alphabet), and they
also use a portion of the Chinese "alphabet" (a misnomer, but let's stick
with it for the moment). Through my own immersion in Japanese culture over
a period of time, I came to be able to recognize and remember not only both
Japanese alphabets (of 52 characters each) but also 80 of the Chinese
characters that I encountered frequently there. I'm not bragging - I should
have learned more of it, and would have, if I'd been younger when I started
(and if I'd worked harder at it).

BTW, I'm coming to the conclusion that to call the scoring elements in CO
"hands" is to confuse oneself (by giving them all equal importance). Some of
them are indeed scores awarded to patterns that apply to the entire hand,
but some of them are patterns of just three, or two, or even one tile
grouping in the hand. So I've come to see that they shouldn't all be
referred to as "hands."

CO has 81 different "scoring elements." And almost all of them are already
found in those other variants you mentioned - so if one has learned those,
one has a head start at memorizing the rest.

>especially in in a high-pressure situation?

It's just natural to become forgetful when the pressure increases. With
practice and exposure, one gets better, stronger. It takes time, practice,
and perseverance.

To begin, one need only start with the more common scoring elements (those
that earn 8 points or less). Through repeated gameplay, the novice will be
exposed to the other scoring elements (and hands), and those will inevitably
be committed to memory without much effort.

>I see there was an original pool of 440 hands collected from all over
>China. Does that list exist anywhere?

I assume that one or more of the members of the Chinese committee who
created the CO rules would still have that list. But of course, it would be
in Chinese - possibly handwritten, possibly not well documented. I recommend
studying Chinese, for those who are young. Fluency in that language would
stand a mah-jongg researcher in good stead!

May the tiles be with you...
Tom

 

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Tom Sloper wrote, in passing:

> I recommend
>studying Chinese, for those who are young. Fluency in that language would
>stand a mah-jongg researcher in good stead!
>
>
Hear, hear. However, I am tempted to add two modifications. One, one
does not need to be young, although young minds tend to be more
retentive. Two, studying Chinese is a good thing for everyone, MJ
researchers included. Our daughter, who came to visit us over the
weekend, left us with a clipping from the April 4, 2005, issue of New
York. A full-page article on page 12 has the following heading and
subheading:

GREAT TODDLE FORWARD
To make their babies competitive in the global economy, parents are
making them learn Chinese.

David Li

 

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"David H Li" <davidli@erols.com> wrote in message
news:HIOdneswZ47PCcDfRVn-iw@rcn.net...> To make their babies competitive in
the global economy, parents are
> making them learn Chinese.

What are the important Chinese books on mahjong -- and can they be ordered
from the US? Is there a pop MJ literature like that published in Japan?

Simon Davosi

--
American Code Of Laws For Mah-Jongg: http://tinyurl.com/445ld

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.mahjong (More info?)

> GREAT TODDLE FORWARD
> To make their babies competitive in the global economy, parents are
> making them learn Chinese.
>
> David Li

I can share a bit my experience with Oriental languages. I myself know
fairly Japanese (esp. characters), can speak and write. As for Chinese
surely I can UNDERSTAND some samll portion of it looking and
characters though NOT be able to read aloud a single word..

I once came home and my 6 y.o. son told me: "Daddy, let me write to
you four winds (NEWS) characters NOT PEEKING at the source (I wrote
down a while ago sample writing with directions how to write)".
Out of 28 strokes altogether he slipped at 1!

Encouraged with such a deed I surfed the WEB and found that there are
at least dozen sources to learn Chinese/Japanese characters
(www.zhongwen.com etc.).
Most important that you can find over there a Character 256*256 pixels
size (which is fantastic!) and also GIF-animated files showing how to
write down single character. My son places them to PowerPoint file and
enjoy the show.

Vitaly

 

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"Tom Sloper" <tomsterSPAM@sloperamaSPAM.com> wrote in message news:<nfKdnaFymLUa08bfRVn-pw@comcast.com>...
> From: "Simon Davosi"
>
> >How do you remember 81 hands,
>
> You remember 81 things the same way you remember 18 things or 45 things.
> Long and repeated use of a large number of things eventually results in your
> memorizing them all. Ten, twenty, eighty, a hundred... The number doesn't
> matter.

Recently, we have started to play CO rules tournaments in Moscow. At
the very first play guys who played a lot CC rules asked me (who
played at that point 800 CO hands vs. "4W") how to approach those 81
hands?

I answered that in general from point of view of overall strategy it
comes to 3-4 major directions:
* Half-Flush (6+)/ Full Flush (24+)
* Mixed Shifted Chows (6+), or better
* Pung hand (6+)
* Rarities (like Knitted, 7 Pairs etc.)
* Ways to finish hand (4th tile, Last tile ..., Single Wait etc.)

Those listed items IMHO show DIRECTIONS how to constructed winning
hand. All other "elements" come as additives to "main course".

I almost finished propabilities table of 512 (!) actual hands played
against computer in "4W". I can send you (or other interesting
parties) results right now (e-mail me), or better wait until, say,
1000 hands were processed. This table would show exactly what is "HOT"
in CO, what to pay attention at.

Vitaly