Inside out or outside in

One of those common practices that you may have observed in professional level games but is ill explained to beginners is discarding an inner tile of an unfinished sequence.

If you’re already aware of block theory, you know that if you have too many ‘blocks’, you will need to discard one block entirely. Hence you will likely need to discard two tiles of an unfinished sequence.

If we consider this, the 13s and 13p may seem equal but when you consider the 567p, the 4p would potentially give us a very advantageous three-side wait (34567). Therefore we discard the 13s, starting with the 1s. The reason to hold that 3s just a little longer is that if you do draw a 4s, you lock in a two-sided wait so you would change direction by throwing the 13p.

So what situations mean you should throw from the inner tile rather than the terminal?

Holding the 2s to discard the 1s here would not create an advantageous two-side wait because the 3s draw would land you in furiten on your 1s discard. You’re fairly committed to discarding the block entirely so you throw the 2s first. The ‘theory’ being that it’s naturally a more flexible tile and therefore more dangerous the longer you keep it.

You could argue that the difference between a 1s and 2s is not all that great. I don’t think it would be such a disaster if you threw the 1s first. But let’s consider the next example…

A 3s is significantly more flexible and likely more desirable to your opponents. The rest of the hand is shaping up so holding it is unlikely to bring you more benefits. Here is a much clearer case that you should throw the 3s out earlier in the game when it is less likely to be called. Throwing 1s and keeping a significantly more dangerous tile for longer than necessary would be an error.

The initial first discards of a game we tend to throw from the terminals in toward the centre of the suits; keeping the most useful tiles and cutting those with less flexibility. However, once you know the direction of your hand and you have identified a block that is no longer useful, you need to be confident in that and discard those 'flexible’ tiles before the inflexible ones.

Professionals do some weird and wonderful tricks in their discard pools but maybe this helps clear the fog of mystery a little!