Honitsu and Chinitsu - Riichi Mahjong Guide

[@enecofan888]

Do you maybe know any tips for learning to recognize some complicated chinitsu (or sometimes honitsu as well) wait patterns? In an online game it's no problem of course but physically I tend to need a lot of time to recognize the winning tiles or overlook some. I'm scared of ending up in furiten or passing up a win by accident.

[@LightGrunty]

For complicated shapes, it can take a lot of practice, but I do have a few tips I can share. First, consider whether any of your ankou can instead be treated as your pair (plus the third tile to form a sequence with nearby tiles). If so, then you need to parse the resulting shape to figure out any extra waits. You would have to do this for each ankou, figuring out the waits when you would treat it as a triplet, then figuring out the waits you would treat it as the pair. It might also help to remove two complete blocks from the hand and then evaluate the remaining 7-tile shape. When you do this, you might have to switch around the blocks you remove to make sure you catch every possible wait pattern. This method would be quicker if you can memorize the common 7-tile shapes. If your hand has no ankou, then the waits would only be able to cover more than one suji in the case of a shanpon with an extended iipeikou shape, like 1122334467899, which would be waiting on 1, 4, and 9. And just in case, if your hand is waiting on a suji like 2-5, then check to see if the other end of the suji, in this case 8, would be a possible wait. Things like that can sometimes be easy to overlook.

[@enecofan888]

@@LightGrunty @Light Grunty Thanks so much for the answer, it's really helpful. I started with this game last year and thanks to your great videos I've learned a lot and am starting to feel more confident about the more complicated parts of the game. With 7-tile shapes you mean something like the "double nobetan" you showed in this video and something like an Entotsu e.g. 34555p EastEast?

[@LightGrunty]

Thanks for the kind words; I'm glad you found these videos helpful. As for the 7-tile shapes, those would be a couple of them, but there are other more complex ones. You can find examples of more complex waits here: arcturus.su/wiki/Complex_waits

[@Adjustablesidetable]

For honitsu, does it lose Han if any part of the hand is open or just the number tile part?

[@LightGrunty]

Any part. If you have made a chii, pon, or daiminkan (open kan), then your hand is open and honitsu loses 1 han.

[@hamzahussain7794]

Is it honitsu if I have all one suit tiles and just a pair of honor tiles or do I need a triplet of honors as well and if only a pair of honor can work can I use the non-yakuhai tiles to make the pair?

[@LightGrunty]

Yes, the honor tiles do not need to be a triplet and they do not need to be yakuhai.

[@EnvySubs]

Greeting, I have a question regarding honitsu. Is it has to be in ordered number or I can jump/skip them like 123, 555, 789?

[@LightGrunty]

For honitsu, your entire hand just has to be made up of one suit and honor tiles. You don't have to include every number in that suit.

[@EnvySubs]

Oh! thanks for the quick answer. Im still confused with the ‘half’ term in this yaku’s name. Based on your example video, if I replace one of those sou set and turn them into another honor sets ( let say the 678 to three pieces of 中) will it still count as ‘half’ flush? Cus I’ll only has six piece of sou at this point.

[@LightGrunty]

Yeah, it would. I used the most common English names of the yaku when making these videos, but to be quite honest, the English "translations" are lacking; they only provide a vague description as to what the yaku actually means. Honitsu actually translates more closely to "mixed one suit," whereas chinitsu would be "pure one suit."