JPML A rules removes the ura dora. This might seem insane to those of you constantly searching for your next ura flip hit, but even if it doesn’t become your regular rule variant, I strongly recommend you train in it.
Why? Because without the siren call of ura dora, Riichi becomes less prevalent. That means you need to keep your eyes trained to the discard pools for any potential dama-ten (being tempai without calling riichi). That is a great skill to hone.
How do you spot a dama-ten? It’s not such a dark art as you may think. You will very rarely be able to 100% say that someone is tempai, but there are somethings you can keep an eye out for…
Dora throw. If you are at a table with players of a fairly decent level, dora throws should ring huge alarm bells for you. They’ve either gotten into tempai or are close enough and invested in their hand.
In a fairly regular discard pile, you start to see multiple suit tiles in the 3-7 range. One could be just a useless tile. Two or three and alarm bells need to start ringing.
Suddenly a ridiculously safe tile comes out of the hand (not the tile just drawn). This is only going to help you if your opponent is defensive and has some experience under their belt. They’ve likely hoarded a safe tile to fold their hand but now they’re giving up the option to fold. They’re live and dangerous!