M-League 2020: Coach and Staff Matches

Table A

Link to match: https://abema.tv/video/episode/444-7_s80_p1

Battle of the Tenpai

At the start of E2-0, Morii’s haipai looks valuable, with two pairs of dragons and a hand geared towards honitsu. Morii quickly calls pon on one of the dragons bringing his hand closer to a mangan. Takayanagi’s and Ishida’s hand both develop just as fast, with the three of them getting to iishanten near the end of the 1st row. With Morii calling a second time to get to haneman tenpai waiting on the 1s/7z shanpon, the others get into full gear. Fujisawa calls the 7m to get a 689s wait. Ishida calls riichi on the 8s kanchan. The three of them, all tenpai, just waiting for their winning tile. Unfortunately for Morii, he draws Fujisawa’s winning 6s, losing his haneman tenpai to a 1000 point Yakuhai hand. Fujisawa also wins the riichi stick from Ishida’s riichi, giving Fujisawa 2000 for the hand.

Riichi! Riichi! Riichi!

In E4-1, everyone’s hand was 3-shanten or worse. Even with dora in hand, none of the hands were callable, making the hands even slower. When the players reached iishanten, none of them were able to get to tenpai quickly. The first one to do so, Takayanagi, stayed dama to take everyone by surprise with his Pinfu/Tanyao/Dora 2/Aka 1 mangan hand. When Morii reached tenpai, he called riichi, waiting with a good 147m sanmenchan wait. With Fujisawa getting to tenpai right after the riichi, he calls riichi, waiting on the 3p penchan wait. With two riichi calls already on the table, Takayanagi calls riichi himself to upgrade the hand to a haneman, waiting on the 47p kanchan. The better wait prevails in the end, with expensive hand Takayanagi dealing the 1m to Morii for Riichi/Pinfu/Aka 1 for 3900+300, with Morii taking the two other riichi sticks with him.

One Last Try

In S4-1, Takayanagi is deep in 4th place and 27800 points behind 2nd place Morii. He would need a direct hit baiman or a sanbaiman tsumo to advance to the next table. Takayanagi’s haipai starts out with 9 unique terminals and honours, almost telling him to go for kokushi. For his first 10, he had no luck, unable to pick up tiles to advance his hand. Then for two straight turns, he picks up some of his missing orphans, now being iishanten waiting for the 1p and 1m. As watchers, we could see three 1p and three 1m discarded or used up. As Morii draws the last 1p, the kokushi dream is dead. Takayanagi’s only reaches as far as iishanten, with the hand ending in ryuukyoku and nobody in tenpai.

Final Scores

	Player	Score	Final Score
1st	Fujisawa Harunobu	49700	+69.7
2nd	Morii Takumi	28700	+8.7
3rd	Ishida Shinya	20700	-19.3
4th	Takayanagi Tomoya	900	-59.1

Standings

Both Fujiwara and Morii advance to the final table, waiting for the next table to see who the other two opponents will be.

Page 1: Intro
Page 2: Table A
Page 3: Table B
Page 4: Final Table