The game says this hand is 1 tile away from tenpai but I just don’t see it.
Thanks to your explanation I see my issue now. To find my 5 blocks I prioritize open waits, so I tend to see those kinds of 4 tiles shapes as 1 block + 1 useless tile. But if in the process I had to split a completed block into 1 open wait + 1 pair, my shanten goes back…
Splitting a completed block this way is very useful when I don’t have a pair yet, because the pair itself is a completed block so I essentially get a free open wait. But in this case I already had plenty of pairs so I just split a completed block into 2 uncompleted blocks, which I should do only when my hand doesn’t even have 5 blocks to begin with
I personally wouldn’t prioritize saving the head over completing a 3 block because I’ve won plenty of games where I was tenpai waiting for the head and I’m able to adjust what I’m waiting on to something others are more likely to discard. Of course I wouldn’t intentionally aim for tenpai waiting for the head but if it plays out like that at least I can mess with people by waiting on a tile in a riichied player’s discard.
Edit: JPML’s play like a pro episode 3 explicitly teaches against committing to a head instead of just completing the block. Episode 5 further expands the idea by not even having a pair at tenpai in their second example.
Thanks I didn’t know about this video series, very interesting! Now that I think about it Riichi Book 1 also mentions a rule of having optimally no more than 2 pairs, and even without any, that there’s no need to worry too much about securing a pair.
Apparently favoring the shuntsu over the pair is so obvious that in the below example Chiba doesn’t even consider discarding the 5pin holy shit…
