Folding Order

When an opponent’s riichi declaration comes in, do you immediately select your next safe discard?

Are you delighted you can avoid Ippatsu (Unbroken) and buy yourself some time to work out what to do next?

But perhaps you have some options… This is where you have a chance to refine your discard order and future-proof your hand against other opponent aggressions.

Early riichi from Mildred. With Frank’s South discard, you have got an easy first discard. Online, you linger the cursor over the South in anticipation of their turn so they can immediately click with confidence and without further thought. In real life, you move the South to the end of your hand so you can draw and discard with a fluid movement and not even a glance at the new joiner.

This is an error.

It’s not clear yet whether Frank, the dealer, is folding or has something to push. They’re East after all and it would not be unusual for them to be working out how to push against Mildred’s riichi.

Here the better choice is to throw the Green Dragon and keep the South a little longer. The next three discards or your draw may create new safe tiles for you allowing you to hold South just a little longer. Then, if East also declares riichi soon after, you’ll have an escape route from both with the South wind.

Look at every draw. Don’t fixate on your route. It’s easy to get lost in folding against a riichi in the here and now that you lose sight of the dangers that the future may hold.

It may only be a minor optimization but that’s how we get the edge.