Using Kabe

I’m very passionate about optimizing waits. Discard reading is more than just working out safe tiles, it’s also a great way to optimize.

It came up while playing last night… It’s not the BEST example but it gives you an idea of my thought process.

This is a novice table so pon and kan are king… But what they’ve done is provide me with the privileged information that not only is there a kabe on the 八 but also on the 五. If all goes well, I’m going to try and build my wait for the 七. It’s likely to be an outside wait so not great, but it has some benefits. There are two reasons for this:

(1) I do not want to throw a 七 into this. There are none out and South and East are likely going for a toitoi tanyao.

(2) If they’re not using 七 in a pon, they’re unlikely to be able to use it for a two-side wait, forcing them to throw it or fold. North will also have to throw or fold and may even elect that it is a safer tile because of the pon of 五 and 八.

As I said, this isn’t the greatest example, but it’s the one that presented itself this week. Plus this is a novice table and I don’t think we can anticipate they’re thinking THIS far. But theory is theory.

It did work out for me in the end as well, I managed to build my hand with the edge wait and North dropped it.

I’ll try and think of things that aren’t kabe next week…