When to break seven pairs

The worst situation! It could be seven pairs (chitoi), it could be all triplets (toitoi). It’s the Sophie’s choice of mahjong.

Which way are you going to go? It’s a common problem. Here are some tips to help you make that judgement call.

1) Are at least two of your pairs value tiles? If you have more than two pairs of seat wind/round wind/dragons, just start calling, You’ve got value enough to get to three han plus with a toitoi hand and that easily beats a basic chitoi hand in terms of points.

2) Do you see flush potential? Flush and toitoi takes you to four han and is far superior to the points you would get from chitoi. The negative of this is that flushes are fairly easy to identify in discard pools and defend against compared with a chitoi or even an already open toitoi. However, it’s a good way to grab some value back if that’s what you need.

3) Are the pairs you have easy to pon? As you’re going to open you hand, you need to be sure you can call all the way through and you won’t stall. This is a difficult one but all things being equal at the start of a hand, you can assume honour tiles and outer tiles of suits are easier than doras and inner tiles of suits.

4) Yakuman. If you have three pairs of dragons, just run at it. I don’t think I need to tell you that.

One point that can cause some real head scratching is the presence of a pair or dora. This is where you really need to know the points differences and your objective on the table. Further, imagine you’re playing a red five game and you have three dora already. If a player threw a regular dora early on that I could call for a triplet, I would be very likely to call it even if I were tempai/ready on chitoi. Deconstructing that chitoi to a haneman toitoi is a huge points boost.

Any situations you think I’ve missed and you’d head for seven pairs?