Yuudai Maehara 9 Dan held on to Japan Professional Mahjong League's highest title for the 2nd year. Yuudai has won the Hououisen four times (1995, 2008, 2016, 2017) and shares the record of winning the Hououisen the most times with the late Mitsuru Andou-pro.

Yuudai Maehara +53.1P
Hiro Shibata +43.1P
Naoki Setokuma ▲45.5P
Koutarou Uchikawa ▲51.8P

Image Source: https://twitter.com/JPML0306/status/960116132999970816

Orginal post: http://doraaka.exblog.jp/15552053/ by Kita Haz. Translation by Butane with permission

Hi. Sorry to be getting straight to the point, but let’s say that you’re the dealer in a normal round, and on the 8th turn someone declares Riichi while your hand looks like this.

The dora is 9s, and another player has already discarded one.
Even though you might be still one away, being dealer while holding two aka dora and two normal dora means that you’ll be raking in at least 12000 points if you pull it off, and so you’re looking to push back against the Riichi call.

There’s a school of thought saying that since you can’t predict the opponent’s hand, you should base your judgment on whether to push on the expected value of your own hand. But is it really impossible to know anything about the value of their Riichi hand?

The sample data is from Tenhou Houou Paifu, with a total of 104,6221 rounds excluding those with double riichi and any kans.
We should talk about the expected value of an incoming Riichi.
According to the existing data, there is about a 75% chance of the Riichi containing at least one aka dora or dora. This makes it all the more important to be keeping track of the number of dora visible.

In a game with akadora, there are three aka dora in addition to the four normal dora.
It may seem obvious, but the more dora you can see either in your own hand or in the discards, the higher the chances are that they are not in the hands of other players. Conversely, if you’re already past midgame and you still don’t see any dora, there’s an increased risk that someone is hoarding them. It may be total common sense, but the same logic works in Riichi situations. After all, its important to have some awareness of the risk of dealing into a potentially expensive Riichi hand.

First, we introduce the average value for all Riichi hands. Based on the Houou level paifu, we can say that the average for normal cases is around 6000 points, and 8700 points for the dealer. We then added the number of dora visible to a third player as a variable. Likewise, following the graph above, you can expect the Riichi of a non-dealer to average around 6600 points if you cannot see any dora. However, if you can see already five dora in total, the average value of the Riichi drops to around 4700, a difference of almost 30%. By the way, we tried analyzing the dora separately by type of tile, but found no significant differences affecting our analysis.

However, it’s only really in cases where you have a lot of dora or other expected value that you’d want to chase after a declared Riichi. If you can see a lot of dora out, there are strategies for how you should proceed based on how many turns into the round you are.

The example may be an extreme case, but let’s look at the expected payoff of chasing as a function of both the number of tiles you are away and how far into the round you are.

This graph illustrates the average value of chasing, given that you are the dealer chasing a non-dealer riichi, and there are either five dora visible, of which at least three dora are in your hand. It does not factor in any consideration for the kind of yaku otherwise present in the hand, but if as dealer you’re holding that many dora, there is a positive payoff to be expected from pushing even into midgame with a one-away hand. However, regardless of how many dora you may have in your hand, entering midgame still two away or more means that the odds are strongly stacked against you. That said, it’s still remarkable how big the gap is between tenpai and even one away, hmm.

Putting the one-away talk aside, I wanted to conclude by discussing how much the number of visible dora affects the expected value of a riichi hand. I think consideration of this data makes a contribution to building a more rigorous, definitive framework for deciding whether to push or fold when you’re already at tenpai.

Online mahjong game Tonpuusou announced it is turning off the servers in March after 21 years of service.

Created by Katsu "mjman" Azuma, Tonpuusou made its splash on the mahjong world in December 1996. It quickly became popular and after 3 years had reached 500,000 active accounts. It had been ported to various systems, including two PS2 games developed by Konami and Success, both had cross platform play with the PC server.

Tonpuusou's game log feature, which allowed people to amass a large collection of game logs, paved a way for researchers such as Totsugeki and Hiii to prove and disprove theories, thus creating the modern day digital style.

ASAPIN, the legendary player who reached Tenhou's summit twice, announced this week that he will be joining the Saikouisen Nihon Pro Mahjong Kyoukai (Saikouisen). In his announcement post on his new blog, ASAPIN says, although he has received offers from several professional leagues, he felt he will fit in at Saikouisen more than the other leagues but it was hard to make a decision. He also stated he will be using his real name, Koushin Asakura, from now on.

Koushin made Tenhou history in 2011 by becoming the first person to reach the highest rank, Tenhoui (天鳳位). Then in 2016 he became the first person to reach tenhoui on two separate accounts. (ASAPIN and トトリ先生19歳).

Various reactions to the announcment:

もしかしたら飛行機でこの方と一緒に乗せたのがマイナスポイントだったかもしれません。 pic.twitter.com/4iEaGBDxIi

— 内川幸太郎 (@kotarouchikawa) March 2, 2018

アマチュア連合のチームメイトがプロ入り。今年の駅伝どうしよう… https://t.co/wHZsAz8i97

— 藤田晋 (@susumu_fujita) March 2, 2018

プロになって初ゲスト
3本打って434
引退

— 朝倉康心/ASAPIN (@asakarapinpin) March 2, 2018

"My guest pro debut
I played 3 games, 4th 3rd 4th.
I am retiring"

Original article by Kentaro on his blog, but was republished on Mahjong Watch recently. Translated by an annoymous translator.

Looking at ASAPIN (@asakarapinpin’s) paifu, there are plenty of cases where he makes unexpected melds, from pushing his chances of winning to the absolute max, to unexpectedly chasing after a Riichi. Although some are often difficult to understand from first glance, they are carefully thought out, and extremely experienced plays.

This time, we’ll look at ASAPIN’s melding in two parts. Understanding this can certainly help you improve your win rate, and by extension, your other statistics. In the first part, we will look at 1) deciding the conditions for opening a closed hand and 2) chii'ing to elongate a shape and 3) chii'ing to switch out a tile. In Part 2, we will look at 1) melding in situations where you’re cornered, and 2) chasing after riichis by melding.

Conditions for opening a closed hand.

Deciding whether to make the first call is the most important aspect of melding. That’s because regardless of whether you decide to call again or not, you won’t be allowed to riichi for the rest of the round. Thus, deciding when to call is essentially deciding when you can accept the minuses of not being able to riichi.

Two distinctive aspects of ASAPIN’s melding are 1) aggressively melding with dora 2 hands, and 2) relaxing the conditions for melding greatly when it's obvious that kamicha is going for a non-standard hand (such as Kokushi Musou, or Chiitoitsu). Let us look at some examples.

ASAPIN’s Condition 1: Dora Dora Dash!!

The naming of this is clearly, a rip-off of the recently popular “Toitoi Dash”

In modern mahjong, it is recommended that you call even from an early stage in the game if you are 1-shanten (1 away) with two ryanmen waits in a tanyao dora 2 situation. One might tend to prefer to keep it closed for a possible mangan, but it is important to recognize that completing a melded 3900 or 5800 point hand is much more likely to be successful.

ASAPIN melds dora 2 hands extremely aggressively. If he completes the hand, its still relatively valuable, and if he manages to incorporate another dora or aka dora while rushing, the hands becomes almost mangan level.

In this situation, he is 2-shanten with dora 2. However, with the possible terminal wait in the pinzu set, one may feel uneasy melding for tanyao.

Quickly, he Chiis to expand the shape. Waiting for what is effectively a penchan and the dora indicator kanchan would have been difficult. By elongating the souzu shape, he’s effectively now just trying to pick up anything that would work with to make a potential shape. Points-wise, just one aka dora would make this a mangan hand. Even if we had continued with a closed hand, there would have been no guarantee this would have been a mangan hand. In the worst case scenario, it would have even become a Riichi dora 1, 2600 point hand.

On the third turn of East 1, he chiis from a penchan and ryanmen 1-shanten position, opening a hand while staying 1-shanten. Even though the wait was ryanmen, three tiles were already visible. Since he basically needed to complete that set, he melds it for now and waits to make use of the red that was picked up and complete a 5800 point hand. Instead of drawing and waiting on a penchan , attempting to incorporate this somehow is much more desirable.

ASAPIN’s melding condition number 2: Start melding aggressively when Kamicha is going for a non-conventional hand!

The second of ASAPIN’s distinctive melding behaviors is aggressively melding when kamicha is going for a non-conventional hand. If kamicha is discarding a significant number of middle tiles, it helps make even less than optimal hands more likely to succeed.

Of course, just two or three turns is not enough information to tell you if they are going for a non-conventional hand, but if a middle tile appears without warning, don’t miss the opportunity to start melding.

Kamicha discards in the second turn. He starts melding now. It’s not certain at this stage whether kamicha is going for a non-conventional hand, but the possibility is certainly there. Kamicha would also certainly discard if he ever gets it, so ASAPIN melds with leaving another likely to be completed. In essence, we can say that this chii is essentially helping us make two complete sets, an obvious call.

The final shape ends up being a strong wait. The other players have difficulty reading this wait, especially with the early meld in the same area.

In this scenario, he combines both the dora dora dash and the non-conventional wait principles. It’s extremely valuable to finish a 3900 hand quickly and end third place’s dealer turn. Planning to open this hand anyways, he starts calling here, creating the right number of blocks to complete the hand.

It seems his perception was correct. It’s clear that kamicha is going for a Honitsu in manzu. After calling three times in quick succession, ASAPIN is already tenpai. Even from the kamicha’s position, would have been likely a kan or a pon rather than a chi. It would have been even more difficult to predict that he could have had the red .

Pushing hand completion chances to the limit with 1) chii'ing to elongate and 2) chii'ing to switch out tiles.

The most technical aspect of ASAPIN’s melding would probably be elongating and switching shapes by chii'ing. Once the hand is opened, pushing the hand’s chances of completion to the max requires a high degree of finesse in using chii to both elongate existing shapes and swap out tiles. This includes using chii aggressively to move hands even slightly forward, or ensuring the use of dangerous tiles and skipping potentially risky draws by chii-swapping. There should be a lot to learn from ASAPIN here.

There’s not much to say here. Pon'ing the gives him a ryankan shape to accept . Even though it may reduce his defensive abilities, calling to speed up the hand even by a little bit is valuable because he certainly has the fastest hand out of the four. He shouldn’t be worried if he is left with good shapes. Clearly, this would be a different story if it was later into the round.

He is currently tenpai with a shanpon wait. Thus, when kamicha discards the ...

He chiis for the 678 shape and discards the remaining 。This prevents him from potentially drawing a sketchy souzu tile, in turn increasing the number of turns he can reasonably maintain tenpai. The kanchan wait is also stronger than the shanpon that he currently has. Although a casual player may not recognize the potential for a useful call here, it is the best choice given the circumstances.

This is from the example earlier. The (potential) non-conventional hand that kamicha is going for dictated his chii.

And subsequently, a as well. ASAPIN chiis it, leaving a . Once he opens the hand, he is focused on building up his middle tiles.

his is another great chi that was discussed earlier. He calls the , discarding the relatively safe while preventing his own draw. Reading from kamicha’s discards that he doesn’t have (or need) ASAPIN decides that a sidewait on is much more likely than a kanchan wait.

As predicted, he secures the , completing the mangan hand.

Japanese developer Fuzz released a new mahjong server in February called "Jong City" with support from pro leagues Real Mahjong Unit and Nihon Pro Mahjong. The server's key feature is webcam support and the ability to play top professionals from RMU and NPM as well as special guests, such as Takaharu Ooi, Tarou Suzuki, Nicolas, Kouichi Kihara and Masayuki Katayama.

Japanese developer Fuzz released a new mahjong server in February called "Jong City" with support from pro leagues Real Mahjong Unit and Nihon Pro Mahjong. The server's key feature is webcam support and the ability to play top professionals from RMU and NPM as well as special guests, such as Takaharu Ooi, Tarou Suzuki, Nicolas, Kouichi Kihara and Masayuki Katayama.

The game is completely free to play although players can spend real money on gems which allow them to 'request' games with Professionals/Guests (500jpy) and other players (300jpy). Jong City has muliple rooms with a variarty of rule sets, including:

Base Rules

• East only
• Headbump
• No abortive draws
• Chii switch OK
• No Pao

Area specific rules

Gotanda (五反田)

• Uma: 10/20
• Busting ends the game
• No red dora

Shinjuku (新宿)

• Uma: 10/20
• Busting ends the game
• 1 red 5 pin/sou/man

Ikebukuro (池袋)

• Sanma
• No 2-8 manzu
• No chii
• No nuki dora (normally pei)
• Pei counts as dora (when used in hand)
• Uma: 10/20
• Busting ends the game

Ginza (銀座)

• Uma: 10/20
• Busting ends the game
• 2 red 5 pin/sou/man
• Rounds start with 2 dora indicators

As well as an event room which currently houses a room with Aotenjou.

Jong City's official website

Original article by Kentaro on his blog, but was republished on Mahjong Watch recently. Translated by an annoymous translator.

In the first part, we introduced ASAPIN’s criteria for opening his hands, and calling to elongate and switch out shapes. This time, we will discuss melding when you’re cornered, chasing after riichi by melding, and assorted other topics. It’s not exaggeration to say that this is the essence of ASAPIN’s mahjong technique.

Calling when you’re cornered

For us, being “cornered” means a situation in which winning the round would be extremely critical points wise. We’re not talking about getting out of sticky situations on the board.

Currently, ASAPIN doesn’t have a yaku, but it’s totally possible to try and pick up a second , or to go for chanta, ittsu, or sanshoku. Accordingly, he opens his hand calling the to complete the kanchan. There’s no guarantee that he will be able to secure a yaku, but there’s also no guarantee that he would be able to complete this hand closed. Since that’s the case, he’s decided that worrying about the yaku after completing the existing sets would probably be easier.

Luckily, he soon draws a second . Moreover, he’s closer to completing his hand than if he had picked up the second while keeping his hand closed. Since this hand would have needed some luck to complete either way, one might as well maximize the utility of their potential luck with the chi.

Soon after, he tsumos the hand without incident. Judging from kamicha’s discards, it wouldn’t have been surprising if a riichi was incoming soon had he not completed the hand.

Third place in oorasu, with a difficult points situation. Ideally one would go for tanyao, but there are not enough potential tanyao sets. Here, ASAPIN chis a completed set, with a left over to make a second tanyao set. Moreover, by announcing his intentions with this chi, he is also looking to first-place kamicha to help him with useful discards.

This is also a tricky points situation, in South 3. Cutting here and waiting to pon or otherwise complete one of the pairs to take tenpai means giving up sanshoku, but he does so anyways as is easier to pon. In a normal round, one would cut , but he is playing according to the circumstances.

Chasing right after riichi by calling

In this situation, Kamicha has just declared riichi. ASAPIN’s hand, although just one away, is full of difficult shapes.

He chis to complete a set, cutting . From here, he has five options to call again: , , and . Compared to having a weak wait even if he passed here and drew a 3s afterwards, having 5 ways to chi or pon into tenpai is quite strong. It clearly improves his chances to complete the hand.

Despite the double riichi, ASAPIN has somehow worked himself into one away from a dora 2 hand. And to that hand he adds the double dora red …

He chiis, cutting . Since in this situation it’s likely that he will be taking advantage of kamicha’s discards to chi and pon towards tenpai anyways, he opens here to secure a mangan level hand. There are plenty of tiles that have not yet passed, and his hand does not have any guaranteed safe tiles, so even though it’s a dealer double riichi, there’s no problem with pushing here.

And he also chiis here! This was the most enlightening part for me. Although chiing here only increases the possible tile acceptance by itself, with the discard from dealer it wouldn’t be surprising if one of the other two players follows by dropping theirs as well. If that’s the case, it’s clear that chiing here goes a long way in increasing his chances of completing the hand. ASAPIN truly never lets down his guard.

In the end, without cutting particularly dangerous tiles, he completes the hand. What’s with this guy, he’s insane!

Here, he pons on the riichi player's ! He does so to open create the opportunity to accept to reach tenpai. It’s amazing enough that he’s able to see this opportunity, but that’s not all.

He also did it to give himself the haitei tile, although he finishes without reaching tenpai. The useful potential of the pon would not have been obvious unless one constantly looks out for anything they can do to improve their situation.

Assorted other situations

In this situation, he is waiting on 5p for a 2600 hand (as 2p are all visible). Here one should be thinking about….

A pon!

Although it becomes a naked tanki, the score improvement, from 2600 to 8000, is very significant. Since the number of winning tiles doesn’t change that much anyways, he pons here. Although cutting here and waiting on would be easy to read, swapping out the for whatever comes on the next turn would make the wait completely impossible to read. From the other players’ perspective, even a non-pinzu discards will risk dealing into a 5200 hand, making the situation very difficult for them.

This is an interruption pon. The could very well be a useful tile for the dealer, but ASAPIN denies him even the chance.

Here he chiis the , discarding . Although it may not make sense to call already deep into mid-game for only a 2 shanten 1000 pont hand, especially considering the loss in defense, he’s clearly considering these factors at Houou level.

and are safe against kamicha, and the ankou is safe against shimocha. Against toimen we only have , but since is a wall, and are no-chance and almost certainly safe. Chiing here and discarding is a balance between defensively passing here and aggressively chiing and discarding . A strong play that aims at moving towards completion while being neither slow nor too aggressive.

This is the first game after reaching tenhoui on his totorisensei19sai account. Points-wise, instead of worrying about losing points, it's more important to try and maximize value here. Currently there is no yaku, but ASAPIN calls an open kan seeking a Rinshan Kaihou. Even after reaching the new stage, he’s not cutting any slack. This isn’t something that would be obvious without daily training, either.

In a normal open hand, to keep the chance to pon, keeping a 556 shape is common sense, but it also depends on the situation. In this situation, keeping the gives you only the opportunity to receive the two extra tiles, while discarding the after ponning the or would make the resulting wait incredibly easy to read. Thus, to increases the chances of actually winning the hand, he reduces his ukeire here, using the early discard to camouflage his wait.

ASAPIN truly knows how to do everything. He displays high levels of finesse with all his plays. His paifu are probably the best resource for studying how to call and open the hand.

By the way…

The force behind ASAPIN’s strong discards is his extremely high adaptivity. This is certainly dangerous and shouldn’t be discarded, but most players would have trouble following their intuitions once they have opened their hand. I’d like to look further at ASAPIN’s adaptiveness and situational awareness in the future.

Mister Mahjong, Takeo Kojima, passed away in May. I believe it was known for some time that Kojima’s health was failing. In September Mondo released a documentary about his life (Mister Mahjong: Takeo Kojima's Footprint)

I met Kojima at the first World Riichi Championship. I don’t believe we spoke, other than to ask him to sign the WRC fan and take a picture with him. Unfortunately, I lost that picture due to an HDD crash and I didn’t take care of the fan.

Takeo Kojima moved to Tokyo in his 20s. There he worked at “AIUOE”, a large 2-floor mahjong parlour with more than 200 tables. His claim to fame came in 1968 after appearing in a mahjong segment of the popular late-night show, 11PM. It was at AIUOE where he met novelist Tetsuya “Mahjong Saint” Asada.

n 1970, men’s magazine Weekly Taishu created the first tournament title, “Mahjong Meijinsen”. The participants were:

Takeo Kojima (Mahjong critic)
Tetsuya Asada (Novelist)
Hideki Suzuki (Japan Mahjong League)
Toshio Muraishi (Japan Mahjong Way League)
Takashi Aoyama (Japan Tile Hall)

Writer Hirokazu Baba believes the tournament had an ulterior motive. The editors at Weekly Taishu wanted to birth new talent and a new industry. They hoped Kojima would defeat the amateur leagues' top players, crushing their 'influence'. But, things did not go as plan. Kojima did not win.

After the tournament, Kojima, Asada, and Gaishou Furukawa (A regular at AIUOE) formed the Mahjong Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi focused on appearing in magazines and newspapers and recruiting mahjong talent. Companies began noticing the popularity of these articles. This paved the way for magazines like Kindai Mahjong and Pro Mahjong.

Sponsored by a mahjong product manufacturer, Kindai Mahjong created a new championship, Kakinuma Ouisen. Kakinuma Ouisen had two classes, A and B. They added a third class in its second year which the public could enter. In the second year, four members of the Shinsengumi reached the final. Asada, Kojima, Furukawa and Mitsuaki Tamura challenged the champion.

In 1974, the Shinsengumi disbanded due to Asada’s health but the three still worked together on projects. Furukawa posted an advert in Kindai Mahjong, he was looking for pupils to study under his wing. Players aspiring to become the next Shinsengumi flocked to Furukawa. He founded a year-long, 100 game league. While the Shinsengumi focused on entertainment, Furukawa’s new initiative focused on competition.

Two years later, Asada is hospitalized. The doctors tell his family they should prepare for the worse. Kindai prints a special memorial issue. To the surprise of his doctors, Asada miraculously recovers. Upon discharge, he plays mahjong for two days straight.

The magazine Pro Mahjong announced a new title, the Asada Tetsuya Cup and Kindai Mahjong announced the Nihon Mahjong Saikouisen. Excitement engulfed the community. Players started founding study groups, hoping to become the next Shinsengumi. One such group was the “Shibuya Lion Battles” which boasted many key players in the pro world, Shigekazu Moriyama, Yousuke Ide, Yuukou Ito, Hirokazu Baba, etc. Meanwhile, Kojima starts planning his next project, a professional mahjong organization.

December 1980, during the final of Kindai Mahjong’s 5th Saikouisen, Masayoshi Ara and Asatarou Nada were accused of match-fixing. Ara had passed on a ron after Nada discarded his winning tile. Tournament official and editor-in-chief at Kindai Mahjong, Kazuhiro Okada was watching. He knew Ara and Nada had a student-master relationship so was highly suspicious. Ara defended his decision, stating he wanted to take points from 1st place, not the 3rd place Nada. Okada consulted with the 5th place player, Takeo Kojima,

“Do you have proof? It’s useless if you don’t catch the act of cheating”.

Okada realized while there was supporting evidence, none of it was strong enough to prove Ara purposely passed on the tile to allow Nada to win. Kojima agreed with Ara’s analysis, he pointed out 1st place would receive 1,000,000 yen and 2nd would only receive 70,000 yen, it was all or nothing,

“There is no victory in 2nd place”

Even so, Okada went to the founder of Takeshobo, Kyouichirou Noguchi, who agreed to ban Ara and Nada from Saikyouisen. In a newspaper column, Asada blamed Okada for hastening the death of mahjong.

March 1981, Kojima announced the creation of the first professional mahjong organization. The Japan Professional Mahjong League had 24 members in its inauguration.  Kindai Mahjong blacklists JPML temporarily due to Ara and Nada being members.

1984, The tournament committee of Saikouisen splits from Takeshobo/Kindai Mahjong. They form Japan Pro Mahjong Saikouisen.

1987, Gaishou Furukawa creates 101 Federation. It uses rules very similar to his year-long league.

A lot of this is from a series of articles by Baba, https://mj-dragon.com/proron/. There will no doubt be mistakes that I've made, if you notice any please correct me.

CyberAgent, Inc. an internet service company, announced the creation of a new professional mahjong league, M League.  Spearheaded by CyberAgent’s CEO, Susumu Fujita, M League aims to promote mahjong as a competitive sport, with the goal of including mahjong in the Olympics. Saburo Kawabuchi, the founder of Japan’s professional football league, J League, will act as an adviser. Here’s what is known so far:

M League’s 1st season will have 7 teams of 3 top professionals from the 5 major professional leagues. Each team will be owned by an external company, and each player will have a minimum salary of 4 million yen (27,316 GBP; 30,597 EUR; 35,892 USD). The winning team will receive 50 million yen (341,451 GBP; 382,465 EUR; 448,650 USD). The first team draft will take place on the 7th of August.

The  7 teams are:

Konami Mahjong Fight Club (Konami Amusement)

Shibuya ABEMAS (CyberAgent)

Sega Sammy Phoenix (Sega Sammy Holdings)

EX Furinkazan (TV Asashi)

TEAM RAIDEN (Dentsu)

Akasaka Drivens (Hakuhodo DY)

U-NEXT PIRATES (U-NEXT)

There's room for more teams, if that happens there will be an M2 League. There are also plans to add a Junior League and Senior League.

League season will run from October to March. Each team will play 80 east-south games, with red dora. M League wants to also remove the image of mahjong being played by salarymen in suits, hence players will wear sports uniforms.

Fans will be able to buy tickets to watch the games live. Susumu Fujita mentioned there will be a big demonstration board, much like in Shogi and Go.

To promote clean, competitive mahjong, M League will impose a strict zero gambling policy. Players will be immediately dismissed if they breach this policy.  

The announcement has obviously caused excitement in the mahjong community. Actor Hagiwara Masato, who also voiced Akagi and Kaiji, announced he will be joining JPML in order to have the chance of being picked for M League. Famous tenhou player and former professional, ZERO commented that although he has declared he will always be an amateur, he feels jealous that pros now have this opportunity.

M.League's official site
Mahjong Watch's news article

*ABEMAS, Drivens and PIRATES all picked Tarou as their 3rd pick. Drivens won the lotto.

Not so common, more like silly mistakes.

1.In a recently played match, I had the following tenpai:

Nothing special, it's a tenpai waiting on 78m.

Then I drew 4m.

It's either 4666m with 45m wait or 6668 with 78m wait. Better discard 4m since waiting on 78m should be a little bit easier to win on...

Wait, what...

I failed to realize that had I discarded 8m, I would have waited on 145m!

2.In another recent match, I had the following tenpai:

Haneman tenpai. Opposite player declared riichi, but naturally I wanted to play this hand to the end.

On the third to last turn, I drew 1p.

What do I do now? One 1p and one 2p was on the table. Since 1p is one-chance, it should be safer. Let's go.

Uh..........

Not again..........

Should have gone with 2p to get the 145p wait! In his last turn, the riichi player drew 1p to put salt in the wound.

****************************************

If I was given the 1234666p shape, I would realize right away that this shape is waiting on 145p. But somehow, in these two different situations leading to that shape, I managed to make two different mistakes in similar fashion. Wow...

It's so easy to make careless mistakes. That's why it's important to pay attention to every detail. Or you could make the mistakes several times and then eventually remember it. Like me.

I really hate myself sometimes.

Since 2013, bps, author of the definitive (at the time) English Tenhou Documentation (http://arcturus.su/tenhou/) has hosted the Japanese Mahjong Wiki however, due to their life getting busier they were looking for someone to take over as webmaster so I volunteered and have now taken over.  This handover meant that the wiki has had to change URL from arcturus.su/wiki/ to https://riichi.wiki, everything should redirect automatically but I recommend changing to the new URL if you've linked to arcturus.su in your content.

In addition to updating software and making it more mobile-friendly, I've taken the liberty of installing cargo https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Cargo/, I think there are many possibilities to make some cool things with this. If you're able to help or have any suggestions feel free to post on my own talk page on the wiki: https://riichi.wiki/User_talk:Osamu or contact me via the usual methods (discord/email/twitter)

Yostar has announced that the popular online mahjong game Mahjong Soul will hold a collaboration event with Nobuyuki Fukumoto's hit mahjong manga/anime series Akagi.  This will be Mahjong Soul's fourth collaboration, previous collabs were with Linovel, Saki and Kakegurui.

Details are scarce but will be posted here when more information is released.

Yostar has revealed details about the upcoming Akagi collaboration in a special live stream. The live stream was hosted by VTuber Airi, and twitch streamer Tipzntrix. It started with a brief introduction to Mahjong Soul and the Akagi series (as well as Ten), viewers were then shown a trailer featuring Mahjong Soul characters playing Vs. Akagi and Washizu. They then announced the collaboration will have two characters, Akagi and Washizu. There was a  short video clip from their anime voice actors, Hagiwara and Tsukayama, confirming that they will be returning to their roles for this collaboration. After this, they announced this event will feature two new game modes, Battle of Clairvoyance and Battle of Darkness. Clairvoyance is a mode with Washizu mahjong, while Darkness is Yami Mahjong from Ten's sequel, Yamima no Mamiya.  Finally, they revealed the event will start on 27th October, and end on 11th November.

• Two characters
  • Shigeru Akagi (CV: Masato Hagiwara)
  • Iwao Washizu (CV: Masane Tsukayama)
• Five decorations
  • Riichi Bet - Life on the Line (blood needle)
  • Riichi - Flames of Underworld
  • Winning - Whispers from hell (zawa zawa)
  • Tile Back - Crest of Two Vultures
  • Tablecloth - Night of Legends
• Two game modes
  • Battle of Clairvoyance (Washizu Mahjong)
  • Battle of Darkness (Yami Mahjong)

It's been there for a while but I've done a mass upload of photos from mahjong tournaments across the world, it can accessed at https://osamuko.com/photos