The lobby music faded. Four avatars shuffled in. East round, seat one. I was East. My hands were—I’ll be honest—slightly sweaty.
This is the log of my first real Hanchan on Mahjong Soul: a messy, instructive, occasionally glorious 90 minutes that I fully intend to learn from.
The Opening: East 1
I drew into a promising start. Nine tiles in, my hand looked like this:
[1m2m3m 5m6m7m 2p3p 4s5s6s 9p9p]
Clean. Fast. Two-sided wait on 1-4p, with tanyao nearly locked in if I dropped the 9p pair and drew well. I reached tenpai by turn 8.
Then the player to my left discarded 3p. I called ron. My first win ever online.
The feeling of typing ‘ron’ for the first time is something I will carry with me. It is small and large at the same time.
Score: +3900. Uma adjusted. I exhaled.
The Disaster: East 3
Here’s where I get honest with you.
I was building toward what I thought was a riichi hand:
| [2m3m4m 6p7p8p 2s3s4s 5z5z | 1p2p] |
Waiting on 3p, a tile I naively believed was safe because nobody had called it. I was wrong. The dealer had a complete closed hand — honitsu, riichi, ippatsu — and my discarded 3m opened a 7700 point wound in my stack.
This is called a deal-in on dealer riichi, and it is among the more expensive mistakes a beginner can make. I made it twice.
Lessons I wrote in my notes that night:
- Check the pond before discarding into a riichi.
- Tiles that haven’t appeared aren’t safe, they’re unknown.
- The difference between “this tile seems safe” and “this tile is safe” is a 7700 point gap.
The Moment: South 3, Dealer Repeat
By South 3 I was down, defensive, and frankly demoralized. Then I drew into something beautiful.
Starting tiles after the deal:
| [1p1p2p3p4p5p6p7p8p9p 3z3z | 3z] |
I stared at this for a long time. I had chiitoitsu possible, but something else was humming: this was tsuuiisou territory if I could build around the 3z pair — no, wait. I had the complete pinzu run 1–9p, plus a pair. This was chinroutou adjacent thinking except these weren’t terminals, they were—
breathe—
I had chiitoi + tanyao if I rearranged my thinking:
| [2p2p 4p4p 6p6p 8p8p | + draws…] |
I discarded the terminals and chased. Six tiles later:
[2p2p 4p4p 6p6p 8p8p 1z1z 3z3z 7p7p]
Chiitoitsu. Dealer. Tsumo.
[2p2p 4p4p 6p6p 8p8p 1z1z 3z3z 7p7p] — tsumo on 7p
The hand paid 4000/8000. Not enough to win the hanchan. But in the moment, drawing that final tile, I understood something about this game: the beauty exists regardless of the result.
Hand Review: What I’d Do Differently
Mistake 1 — East 3, The 3m Discard
The hand: [3m4m5m 6p7p8p 2s3s4s 5z5z | 1p2p]
I was in tenpai for 3p. But I should have recognized:
- The dealer’s discard pile had zero manzu tiles — anomalous.
- They declared riichi on turn 4 — very early, suggesting a strong or locked hand.
- 3m (which I was holding as a kanchan candidate) was the correct safe tile here.
Correct play: fold. Discard toward the pond, minimize damage.
What went well — South 3
The chiitoitsu read was correct once I stopped panicking. The key decision was recognizing that my hand had shape, not just tiles — the six pairs were already implied in what I’d drawn, I just had to commit to reading them.
Yaku Breakdown
| Hand | Yaku | Points |
|---|---|---|
| East 1 Ron | Tanyao, Pinfu | 3900 |
| East 3 Tsumo | Menzen Tsumo, Tanyao | 2000 all |
| South 3 Tsumo | Chiitoitsu, Dealer | 4000/8000 |
Final Thoughts
Third place. -18600. Statistically, this is an ordinary result — in a 4-player game, someone always loses, and often badly.
But I won two hands, I built my first chiitoitsu, and I learned that the game’s vocabulary lives in the discard pile as much as in your own hand.
Next session goal: halve the deal-in rate. Watch the pond. Breathe before discarding.
The parlor will be here. I’ll be back.
🀄
Tags: riichi, chiitoitsu, tanyao, beginner log, hanchan