Standings

The top team these past six games is Team Raiden. What a semifinals run Team Raiden is having. On Thursday, Honda and Setokuma both finished their games above 30,000 to be the top-performing team of the day. On Monday, Hagiwara returned after being hospitalized to make his first semifinals appearance this season. he avoided dealing in all game and ended with a respectable 2nd place. With a shortcut to haneman in the second game, Kurosawa capped off this fifth with a 1st place. After starting the playoffs in 5th place, they have fought hard and are now in 1st place overall.With how well they are doing, they are getting close to their first-ever finals.

Next is the Shibuya Abemas. Despite a difficult 4th from Ooi to start off, Hinata and Shiratori made sure that the team was in good shape. Both of them were able to get South 4 wins and both of them won their games. With an extra 2nd place for Shiratori on Monday, the team is now within striking range of top spot. If they keep their gap against 5th place in mind and play within it, they can keep their finals streak alive.

The last gaining team is the U-Next Pirates. The rebound continues for the U-Next Pirates. After a rough Thursday and close fight for Nakabayashi, he came out again on Friday to redeem himself. After a fairly quiet start, Nakabayashi exploded in his south dealership with two limit hands in a row to double his score and finish in 1st. With an extra push from Yu, the team was able to push themselves into the positives for the first time in these semifinals. The team will need to put in a bit more work, but they definitely have a chance to make the finals.

Going into the droppers, we have the EX Furinkazan. On both their games on Thursday, both Matsugase and Katsumata were unable to sustain any big wins and both ended up getting 3rds. On Friday, Aki ended up dealing in in three hands and finished 4th. Katsumata was able to recover a lot of the points with a 1st place afterwards, but the team still ended up down. The team is still second, but they have to be careful. One wrong move can be the difference between making and missing the playoffs.

5th in the performance rankings is the Konami Mahjong Fight Club. They avoided 4th, but they were unable to get 1st. On the second game on Monday, Date called riichi in more than half of the rounds, but ended up 3rd and extremely close to 4th. With three 3rds in their past four games, they are slowly bleeding points. As they bleed points, they also bleed placement. After being 1st at the start of Thursday, they are now down to 3rd place. They will be facing the other three teams in the top 4 in six more games in the semifinals, giving them more opportunities to target and more experience against them should they make the finals.

And finally, coming in last in the performance rankings, we have the Kadokawa Sakura Knights. This is one of the worst times to have bad luck. Despite a whole-team effort, none of them were able to finish a game above 20,000. The closest to a 1st place came from Hori in the very last hand of his game, but he couldn’t find any tiles of his 4-sided wait and ended up in last place because of the riichi stick. The team falls into the negatives and down into 6th place in the finals with this result. However, the semifinals are not over. If they can make the same strong push that they did in last year’s semifinals, they may have a chance to defend their title.

This Fifth’s M-League Stats

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We are more than halfway through the semifinals! Team Raiden, EX Furinkazan, Konami Mahjong Fight Club are all fighting for the top, while the U-Next Pirates and Kadokawa Sakura Knights can still come in and steal a spot. Who will take that top spot? Will we see more flushes? Will we see more Hagiwara? As always we’ll just have to wait and see!

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