I am happy to announce that, my ID 小可愛智智 have been qualified to play in the 3-player Phoenix table (鳳凰卓), the table with the highest level, on Tenhou.

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I created this ID 3 months ago, after my previous one 小智智 got qualified for the Advanced table (特上卓), to prove that I actually had the skill to reach that level. My current ID 小可愛智智 reached 4-dan at R1904 in 191 East-South games, upgraded to 5-dan in 22 games, afterwards I was stuck at 5-dan for 201 games before I reached 6-dan, and a further 80 games there to upgrade to 7-dan, a total of 494 games. By then my rate climbed to R2139. I then paid the membership fee to gain entry to the Phoenix table (the requirements are 7-dan, R2000, and paid membership) and started playing in the Phoenix table.

Unfortunately I lost my first game there, resulting in 135 pt lost. Starting now, I’ll post game reviews here as blog articles, similar to reviews of my Swimming and orienteering competitions.

Here is the game log.

East 1

I started as the dealer. This isn’t a bad start, with one set already completed and one two-sided protoset. Moreover, the 5-6-7-8 of bamboo are also a good shape as well, so speed is essential here and the aim is to riichi as fast as possible, by discarding all the honour tiles first regardless that one of them is a dora.

Unfortunately, by the time I got rid of all the honours, I was still 1-away and South called riichi.

The only safe tile was 7 bamboo. If I played it at this point, it would disintegrate my hand and it would still be unlikely for me to have further safe times to fold completely. Also, my 1-away hand was in the perfect shape, with potential for a 4-fan hand composed of riichi, pinfu, pure straight and 1 dora tile, so I ignored the riichi declaration and continued to attack fully by playing 2 circles. South won by self-draw immediately with a 6-fan hand: riichi, ippatsu, fully concealed, pinfu, 2 dora tiles. As the dealer I lost 6000 points as the result.

East 2

The starting hand consisted of one set and one proto-set containing terminals, 5 lone terminal and honour tiles, and 1 lone middle tile. I would say that it was too far away for an outside hand, so I again started playing the lone terminals and honours.

After getting rid of the lone tiles, my hand was still 2-away in bad shape. At this point I played 2 bamboo, keeping the possibility of both a regular hand and a 7-pair hand.

My hand entered tenpai, with a choice between a closed wait of 8 circles or a dual-pair wait of 7 circles and 1 bamboo, both bad waits. However, as my hand would have 3 fan, and it was still in the early rounds, the only sensible thing to do was to insta-riichi. Unfortunately, the dealer called riichi afterwards and won on my discard in the first turn, making me lose 18000 points (riichi, ippatsu, 4 dora tiles).

East 2 (1 counter)

Losing such a big hand basically meant I was doomed.

I would aim for half flush on the bamboo suit, but unfortunately South was so fast that I was too far away for any plausible attack, and I lost again to his self-draw win.

East 3

With 2 white, 2 green, and 1 red dragons, I would definitely hope for drawing 1 more red dragon and pung all of them to form big three dragons.

Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, and East’s meld of a guest wind and his early discard of middle circle tiles, followed by a bamboo tile, suggested that his half flush hand on bamboo was ready, so I had to disassemble my circles to avoid losing to him on discard, and eventually he won on self -draw again.

East 3 (1 counter)

With only 3900 points left I was in danger of getting knocked out. With a starting hand like this, going for a big hand was out of consideration so I went for a fast hand, aiming to end East’s dealership as soon as possible. I won 2000 + 1200 points from a 2 fan hand, consisting of seat wind and red dragon only.

South 1

I became the dealer again. It was vital to grab as many points as possible as the dealer here by continuing the dealership, as once my dealership was lost, it would be nearly impossible to avoid getting the last place, with such a large difference in points. I went for the fastest way and insta-riichi’d despite having a bad wait with a yaku, aiming to stop the progress of the opponents, and to increase my hand value.

However, unfortunately I couldn’t stop West from winning. My dealership was lost.

South 2

There were only 2 deals left with a hopeless difference in points. Even winning a yakuman by self-draw wouldn’t make me avoid the last place. With this starting hand, the largest possibility of a yakuman was 4 concealed pungs, even if I only had 1 in the beginning.

I eventually entered tenpai but without yaku and with only 2 dora tiles only. Even winning a mangan or haneman here would make my situation worse as there would only be 1 deal left, so I didn’t riichi and hoped for a continuation of the dealership, which eventually happened.

South 2 (1 counter)

Again, with such a starting hand I would hope for 4 concealed pungs again, but winning on discard with a combination of half flush / full flush and some other yakus wouldn’t be too bad.

Eventually I entered tenpai which would get me 4 concealed pungs if winning on self draw only, with only 5 fans in case of winning by discard, so I insta-riichi’d to stop the opponents’ progress and hoped for a self-draw win, but it didn’t happen and ended up with an exhaustive draw.

Luckily, East was in tenpai so the dealership continued.

South 2 (2 counters)

With this starting hand, all yakuman yakus were out of consideration, so I tried to make a circle hand. However, South ended up winning with a concealed hand without riichi before my hand was in place.

South 3

It was meaningless to play this as there was no hope I could avoid losing now. I kept the north wind just in case I drew some south winds to complete four winds.

I eventually got knocked out with -1400 points at the end.