Akagi Ep 2 for people who can't be bothered to read the rule book

25 seconds in and Ryuuzaki calls “uno” (riichi) again. That seems to be his primary strategy, which is also recommended to noobs to JP mahjong: Shut the fuck up and let the tiles come to you. This is technically a circumstantial hand. Ryuuzaki places a 1000 chip bet that the hand his have is good enough to win without any additional changes. The bet itself is a guaranteed 1 point hand; if he win, he gets access to two types of circumstantial points.

What's ballsy here is his discard pile. The primary assumption of any player defending against a riichi is player who just called “uno” has at least two tiles they can win on. Therefore, in order not to deal into that hand, one can assume anything the player tossed already is 100% safe due to the soft lock rule (furiten). The next assumption is more of a rule of thumb: anything that's +/-3 from the discard pile is reasonably “safe” to throw out.

We saw this in ep 1 when Nangou was struggling to decide whether to discard 2p or 5p on his first hand—which is why shitty hawaiian shirt guy's strat was so good.
Ryuuzaki had already tossed a 2p, and hawaiian shirt guy had the other two 2p, so when the last 2p finally showed up, it'd be in hawaiian shirt guy's interest to wait for it, as there's a good chance that when one tile is discarded, other copies of it will also be discarded in late game. What's driving Nangou and the Detective Yasuoka nuts here is that Akagi is throwing the +/-3 assumption to the wind. With both 1p and 6p in the discard pile, 234578p are all unsafe to discard.

1 minute in and we're in South 1.

Akagi does it again with a 4p. By the guesstimate of +/-3, 6p is risky to discard. YET AKAGI DOES IT ANYWAYS.

Akagi's current hand:

2333m 34567p 2345s

And he just drew 8p, which he wants to keep. He has three potential discards: 2m, 2s, 5s.

EITHER he can toss the 2m to make full use of the 333m triplet, and then wait on either 2s or 5s for the pair— which is what the detective would do — OR he can break up the 2345s block, and split the 333m block into 33m for the required pair and make 23m a two-sided wait for either 1m or 4m.

Tossing the 5s is risky because a) Ryuuzaki has a 6s in his discard pile, and b) the Dora indicator tile is (4s), making the Dora tile for this round 5s. A Dora is +1 bonus points on whatever your winning hand is. Conventional wisdom is to hoard those money tiles unless you realllllly have to let one go. It'd be a no brainer to assume that any of these three gangsters is waiting on a 5s to complete their hand. For someone as deep in the hole as Nangou, you want every last yen you can get off these bastards, so, from his perspective, discarding a money tile is like lighting a hundred dollar bill on fire. (In internet mahjong, discarding unusable Dora tiles is actually not uncommon. Nangou's making a mountain out of a small boulder, even though this random seventh grader has cleaned up most of his gambling debts.)

There are also 148m in the discard pile, so tossing the 2m would be very risky.

Also, let it be said that Akagi's hand at this point is garbage.

If he were able to win with his hand, and still tossed the 5s, it'd only be worth 1 point, (1 han, 30 fu) total, as it currently stands. If he kept the 5s AND he riichi'ed on this hand, he could have bumped the payment up to 3 points before taking other contingencies into account. If he was able to call his winning tile within 1 turn of calling riichi, or he had any of the hidden Dora tiles in his hand, he could theoretically bump this hand up a couple points further.

1 point pays out 300 chips from non-dealer/500 from dealer, or 1k on self draw. Payouts double* with every point up to 5 points.

*Note: ok not quite but I'm not getting into that. __________________

5 mins in is the most important lesson of the entire story.

Q: What would you discard?

1379s 677p 2348m S W/6s

A: either S or W.

Q: What would you discard?

13789s 677p 2348m /2s

A: 8m.

Q: What would you discard?

123789s 677p 234m /6s

A: 7p.

Q: What's the difference between the 7p and the 8m?

A: The 8m was discarded because it was a lone tile with nothing else in the hand to work with. The 7p is waiting on a third tile. And then there are red herrings.

Now let's review Ryuuzaki's discard pile

S R 6s 8m 9p 1m
4m 1s 4p

Anything in row 1 goes into the first category. No friends. Anything in row 2 is the second category. It's neighbor already has friends. And that last tile is the red herring.

With 6s in the first row, the possibilities of Ryuuzaki utilizing any tile +/-2 of 6s are pretty low, as he'd soft lock himself if he tried to course correct. The 1s in the second row confirms that he at least doesn't have 123s in his hand, so the odds of him using 45s are also pretty low.
ON THE OTHER HAND, he threw out both a 1m and a 4m close to each other, so the likelihood of having some part of the 234m sequence in his hand is pretty high. Conventional wisdom around riichi anticipates a two-sided wait, so having tossed a 1m indicates it's unlikely to be 123m in his hand, since 1's and 9's can only stack on one side.

Now let's rewind to 2:56

Ryuuzaki's winning hand was:

"34m" 678m 234p 345p 88p /2m

Technically you don't have to line your tiles up in any order, but it usually looks like this, which is why Ryuuzaki's “tell” was so damning.

__________

8:30 Enter the yakuza's representative player, Yagi Keiji.

Ryuuzaki calls a White dragon triplet on the first turn.

Meanwhile on Akagi's side:

33577m 468p 1468s R /R

As noted in the ep 1 write up, RRR is a worth 1 point on its own, (as is WhWhWh or GGG,) but Akagi tosses R on his first and second turns to screw Ryuuzaki over. Wind and Dragon tiles are almost always the first tiles to go, as they can only stack with themselves. By tossing two Red Dragons this early, it devalues the remaining two Red Dragons whenever they show up later.

Ryuuzaki's hand on turn 3:

1355p 1377s G R/ WhWhWh /1p

And on turn 4

11355p 1377s G / WhWhWh /R

And on turn 5

11355p 1377s G / WhWhWh /G

IF RYUUZAKI KEPT THE RR HE COULD HAVE GOTTEN THREE SMALL DRAGONS, WHICH HAS A GUARANTEED BASE VALUE OF 4 POINTS, LIKELY TO PUSH 5 POINTS. AKAGI JUST SCREWED RYUUZAKI OUT OF A BIG MONEY HAND.

The detective is somewhat incorrectly assuming that Ryuuzaki was going for broke calling that White Dragon triplet on the first move, and that Akagi was trying to screw him out of THREE BIG DRAGONS, the hand Akagi cheated his way into when the police showed up in ep 1. There is no way Akagi would have known where the Green dragons were. But now, after having called both the White and Green Dragon triplets, the Reds would have been extremely dangerous to get rid of later in the game.

In a later frame, we can see that Ryuuzaki has also called a triplet of 111p. After three calls, it's safe to assume that Ryuuzaki's ready to win.

I had to do some more math here, but his hand is worth at least 4 han 40 fu, which bumps it up to 5 points = 12k chips payout.

Meanwhile, back on Akagi's side of the table

233m 34p 678p 234s 22s

He's going for a tricolor identical sequences which is worth 2 points with a closed hand + All Simples. If he opens his hand, the tricolor devalues to 1 point.

For a grand total of 4 points = 2k chips (3.9k if dealer; 7.7k for self draw). If these gangsters are using the “rounded up mangan” at 4 han 30 fu, or if Akagi manages to pull that final tile himself, a closed hand self draw pushes this hand up to 5 points = 8k chips.

He just needs to get rid of a 3m to set himself up for victory. AND HE BREAKS IT. Akagi puts the pedal to the metal, and beats Ryuuzaki to the finish line, throwing both tricolor and pinfu to the wind by opening his hand for a measly 2 point hand (All Simples + 1 Dora) with a 1k payout off the dealer!!

33m "34p" 678p 222s /345s /5p

__________ 12 minutes in, and I'm not going to explain the part about the 8s. The discard pile has 239s in it. Hawaiian shirt guy has riichi'ed and he's waiting on 8s; middle waits are really annoying. Akagi's making an educated guess about hawaiian shirt guy's hand having a higher end bamboo (sou) tiles in it, but not lower or middle tiles.

34m 44566p 567s 888s /4p

He riichi's with a 6p. Conventional wisdom would have been to throw away the 5p and keep the 66p because upgrading the 4p triplet to a 4p quad. Quads allow you to flip another Dora tile for additional bonus points for everyone—and additional hidden bonus points (where applicable)— as well as make a dead wall draw. Winning on a dead wall draw is worth 1 point on its own merit. However, with the current formation, he is forcibly splitting the 4p triplet into 44p pair and 456p sequence, hypothetically devaluing his hand and closing the door on the possibility of using the quad if the opportunity presents itself. In the end the value of either discard does not affect the overall base value of the hand. What Yagi is getting caught up on is entirely circumstantial. In either formation, the final value of his hand is 2 han 40 fu = 1.3k chip payout off the dealer.

Yagi incorrectly assumes that Akagi doesn't know how quads work—which is going to bite him in the ass next episode. When you riichi, you are making a bet that your hand is good enough AS IS, and no additional changes can be made. HOWEVER, calling a closed quad while in riichi does NOT count as a change to the hand, nor does it change the status of your hand to open.

____________

16 minutes in

Yagi's hand:

345m 234p 345s 68s 88p

waiting on 7s.

As I said already, this is a less than ideal bet to make. There's only one tile that Yagi can win with in this scenario. A two-sided wait gives you more options.

He's only looking at a 1k (2k if dealer, 3.9k if self draw) payout, which is pretty pathetic.

YAGI THROWS OUT HIS OWN WINNING TILE. HE JUST SOFT LOCKED HIMSELF OUT OF WINNING BY ANYTHING OTHER THAN SELF DRAW. HE JUST FLUSHED 3900 CHIPS DOWN THE TOILET.

Meanwhile, Akagi's hand:

566m 345p 45p 789s 99s /6p

And based on Yagi having discarded a 7m earlier, breaking the 566m into 56m waiting on 4m or 7m is the more ideal final tile formation to wait on. On the next turn he closes the door on that possibility. Several turns later

33445p 778899s 66s

THIS IS A 5 POINT, 12K PAYOUT HAND AND HE SOFT LOCKS HIMSELF TOO!