Not taking my own advice...

Remember when I said a couple of days ago that is easy to overlook a potential yaku? Maybe at the very start of a hand, you’re confident that you can see all the options presented by a draw. However, it can become surprisingly easy to overlook one in the excitement of a hand.

Look at that 8m discard… I’ve somehow forgotten about my favourite yaku, sanshoku/three colour run. Perhaps there is a potential argument that the 8m is safer but I’m not seeing it. The 5m is in the dealer’s discard pool and although it might be potentially more dangerous for the other two players, in all honesty I was on auto pilot and I missed it.

It didn’t take long to be punished for my choice. I riichi on the 5m and it is fine. It’s a great example of why you need to keep that focus. Mahjong is more than just a game of strategy, it’s having the stamina to stay aware of a constantly moving board and apply that strategy over the course of a whole game or set of games.

If you can’t keep that focus, you’re losing those points. Sometimes only small points but here I missed 2 han or 4,000 points. Looking at the scores, those were points I could ill afford to lose.

Gotta keep those options open…