Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad to have won the first mahjong tournament of the new year. The only thing is, in the very first hand, I missed out on an opportunity for a monster hand, Three Identical Sequences (一色三同順).
Waiting on 2/5 Characters, my next draw was the 5 Character and so I was able to go out and win 15 points from everyone with All Sequences (平和) + Two Identical Sequences (一般高).
However, look at the emphasized tiles in the discard! A few turns back, I drew a 9 Dot, which meant I had two choices: either discard the 9 Dot and keep waiting on my 15 point hand, or keep the 9 Dot, break the 34 Characters, and go for Three Identical Sequences. I decided against that, because A. it was already quite late in the game (24 tiles left in the wall at that time), B. it’s the first game of the match, so I’m not behind in the score or anything, and C. I’m already waiting for the win and with a completely live two-sided wait to boot! Alas, the very low probability event I didn’t want to see, happened before my very own eyes! Irina discarded the 7 Dot I could have Chowed, and Marissa discarded the 8 Dot I could have won on! I could have upgraded my 10 points from Two Identical Sequences, into 120 points from Three Identical Sequences! 125 points from everyone (well, strictly speaking, 315 points from Marissa and 30 points from the other two players) would have almost certainly sealed my victory for the match right from the very first game!
So I felt absolutely awful for the first half of that match, but as luck would have it, I would go on to win another big hand, which was good enough to win the match and tournament! As the hackneyed saying goes, all is well that ends well.
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