Akagi Ep 3 for people who can't be bothered to read the rule book

The first two games in this game are abridged.

2:11 Akagi's hand
456m 333p 99p 789s/ 3p

2:27 Akagi's hand
34p 678s 345m 678m 88m/ 5p

Without any additional circumstantial points, these are both very cheap hands.

2:48 Yagi's hand
778888s 145p 267m E

Dora bonus points are whatever the “dora indicator” tile is +1. What Yagi has done is shoved both 7s tiles into the area where the Dora indicator tile will show up. The first 7s means that his quad of 8s will count for 4 points. When he calls the closed quad of 8s, he'll flip the second 7s, which in turn means his 8s quad is worth 8 points. He doesn't even need to work that hard after that. At bare minimum he's betting he'll win on a 9 point hand. 8-10 points pushes his potential pay out to 8k if he self draws, or 16k if someone deals in. If he's super lucky, that quad of 8s will even hand him his winning tile from a dead wall draw.

And because this wasn't in the episode proper notes: Kamicha is the guy whose turn is before yous (left); Shimocha is the guy whose turn is after yours (right). It's clear sunglasses-at-night is coordinating with hawaiian shirt guy somehow if he's managed to deal in three different triplets. As far fetched as it sounds, this whole affair is an elaborate set up to force Akagi to draw the 3p and deal into Yagi's hand. But who is Akagi to call the yakuza out for cheating when he started it?

5:37 Yagi's hand
11s 8888s 2455p 567m /5p

NOW he calls the quad. Keeping the 6p from his dead wall draw wouldn't do much to increase the value of his hand.

7:05 Akagi's hand
122444688m 35p 8s G

With a starting hand like this the fasted way to go for broke is a half- or full flush. An open hand full flush is worth 5 points on its own; closed hand is worth 6 points.

Akagi calls 222m and 678m in quick succession, then 888m around mid game.

After three calls, Yagi assumes that Akagi is faking them out out on that full flush. Akagi only has 4444m in his hand. If he calls the quad now, he's got nothing to work with! The Detective is correct in that a normal person would split the quad into 444m and use the last 4m for a sequence (234/345/456), but as we all know, Akagi is not normal.

Calling 4 times and waiting on a single tile is a very noob level strategy, since you're practically giving your whole hand away. With pretty much all of his tiles exposed, including the one he “accidentally” knocks over, the other three yakuza totally fall for his bluff. They think they have to hoard character (man) tiles so as not to deal into Akagi's hand. That makes anything in the other two suits safe to discard.

And that is the beauty of this episode! The bluff.

Akagi's winning hand
4444m 4s /222m 888m 678m /4s

At 3 han 50 fu he gets 6.4k chips off Yagi! A well earned pay day.

If he didn't bluff and he actually got that full flush he'd have gotten 8k, but that's not what's important here. What's important is fucking with Yagi.

And he absolutely wipes the floor with Yagi in the subsequent 8 games with cheap hands.