Erik's Mahjong Ramblings #4: Aka Nashi

While most online and parlor players are accustomed to playing mahjong aka ari (with red fives), leagues and tournaments often utilize an aka nashi (no red fives) ruleset. Below are my top three tips for how to modify your gameplay when playing without red fives.

1) Pursue hand yaku

With less dora, hand yaku goes up in importance. Playing with red fives pushes more hands towards tanyao and middle tiles. Without red fives, chances for yaku such as chanta, junchan, toitoi, and honitsu should be kept in mind. Often, the first person who can put a mangan together will have a good advantage. The dora can dictate what is viable in a round. If the dora is an edge tile, the round tends to be less tanyao centric as there are no dora useable for tanyao. If the dora is a middle tile, then you might find your approach towards a hand is much more similar to aka ari. 

2) Read value accurately

Red fives introduce an element of unpredictability as they can be used in many hands due to how efficient a 5 is for making blocks and open yaku. In aka nashi, there are only 4 dora to worry about (ignoring ura which can’t be predicted in either ruleset), so you can often get more accurate reads on a player’s hand value. For example, if the dora was 9s and a player opened with 234s, 555p, then there is a high chance that their hand is only a 1 han tanyao, or maybe 2 with sanshoku. It is possible that they could have a dora pair & sanshoku, but edge cases aside, the second call usually reveals something about the value of a hand if the discards didn’t already. In situations where you see most of the dora, or can deduce the opponent’s hand is cheap, your incentive to push will increase. Remember, there are no guarantees against a riichi even if you can see the value, and you need to have a reason to push even when you read a player’s hand as weak.  Don’t get blindsided by the other two people at the table just because one person has a cheap hand.

3) Point inflation

Since it is harder to make higher scoring hands, the value of 1,000 points increases! Even cheap hands have more of a reason to push forward. Do not think that this means you should just pursue the fastest hand possible though, as cheap hands do not offer positional security unless you already have a lead. Being tenpai at the end of the round and collecting riichi bets is also more important if you do not want to bleed out. If you remember from our section on reading value, there is often a little more leeway to push in aka nashi. Use this to your advantage to determine when it is safe to take keiten and save yourself those 3000 or 4000 point swings. Additionally, this inflation means incentive to keep your dealership increases. The threat of a runaway dealer can hugely impact the game! The rate of dama will also somewhat increase. A mangan is a significant swing in aka nashi, so securing winrate rather than fishing for non guaranteed value is a common tactic. Be vigilant in rounds where you cannot see the dora in the midgame or players have scary looking discards: these are often signs of a round where one or more players have a hand that can stay silent and smack for big swing. Every hand is worth more than it would be in aka ari. When you are distanced at the top, defending will rarely lose you the game thanks to the increased difficulty in overcoming point gaps.