Game #4
Konami Mahjong
Fight Club
EX Furinkazan
Shibuya
Abemas
Team Raiden
4th to 1st
May 9, Game 2, E2-3
In E2-3, Takizawa is in 4th place, 4,000 behind 3rd place and 10,000 behind the 1st/2nd tie. With 2,900 in bonus sticks available, any mangan would put him into 1st place.
Takizawa starts out the hand 2-shanten with a secured 3m dora and a red 5m, as well as a ryanmen. To his right is the dealer Rumi, iishanten with her starting hand. By the end of the first row, both Rumi and Takizawa are iishanten with guaranteed good waits if they get to tenpai. At the start of the second row, Rumi is the first to tenpai and she calls riichi on a wide 258p wait.
In the middle of the second row, Takizawa catches up and calls riichi on a 25p ryanmen for mangan minimum. If either Ooi or Kruosawa discard the 2p or 5p, Takizawa would win and Rumi would get headbumped. Two turns later, Takizawa draws the 2p and wins the hand. Flipping one uradora, Takizawa wins with Riichi/Tsumo/Pinfu/Dora 1/Aka 1/Ura 1 for 3,000+300/6,000+300 plus three riichi sticks, easily moving into 1st place.
Headbump
May 9, Game 2, E3-0
In E3-0, Kurosawa is in 4th place, 2,000 behind 3rd place Rumi and 6,000 behind 2nd place Ooi. With just a mangan, she would be able to move up two places.
Kurosawa starts out the hand 4-shanten with three ryanmens and a red 5m. In the first row, Kurosawa quickly gets to iishanten, doing so by turn 4 with one ryanmen to spare. As Kurosawa waits, Rumi gets to tenpai first and calls riichi on a 7s kanchan on turn 5.
After a few turns of drawing and discarding, Kurosawa finally gets to tenpai in the middle of the second row and calls riichi on a 58m ryanmen for mangan minimum.
With a call and a good draw, Takizawa draws a third 7s to choke out Rumi and get to tenpai on a 58m ryanmen. Takizawa is at a disadvantage, however, as Kurosawa is earlier in turn order and would win if either Rumi or Ooi were to discard either tile.
Immediately after, that’s exactly what happened. On Rumi’s next draw, she draws and discards the 8m. Though both Kurosawa and Takizawa called ron, only Kurosawa is allowed to win.
Kurosawa wins the hand with Riichi/Pinfu/Tanyao/Aka 1 for 8,000 plus one riichi stick to move into 2nd place.
Straight Ahead
May 9, Game 2, S1-1
Video: https://abema.tv/video/episode/444-14_s40_p753
In S1-1, Takizawa is the dealer in 1st place and is trying to break the streak of bad luck that he’s been going through this season.
Takizawa starts out the hand with a nice 2-shanten hand with a 7s dora and just a 2s and 9s away from a souzu ittsuu. On turn 2, he draws a 2s to set up a 369s three-sided wait. On turn 4, he draws the red 5m to fill in a kanchan and calls riichi on a 369s wait. If Takizawa wins with the 9s, he would have at least a dealer haneman. With such a wide wait, it was only a matter of time before he draws one of them. After two rows of waiting, Takizawa found the takame 9s at the start of the third row and wins the hand. Flipping one uradora, Takizawa wins the hand with Riichi/Tsumo/Pinfu/Ittsuu/Dora 1/Aka 1/Ura 1 for 8,000+100 all dealer baiman, putting Takizawa over 50,000.
Chasing Riichi Always Wins
May 9, Game 2, S1-2
Video: https://abema.tv/video/episode/444-14_s40_p754
In S1-2, Takizawa has a clear lead, but wants to make his lead even bigger as the dealer.
Takizawa starts out the hand 3-shanten with an ankou of 5s (including the red 5s), a lone south and a 334p block in pinzu. On turn 4, Takizawa makes an ankou of 3p to get to 2-shanten. At the end of the first row, he creates a 58m ryanmen for iishanten. On turn 7, Takizawa draws a red 5p to increase his tile acceptance and his value. In the middle of the second row, Kurosawa is actually the first one to tenpai and she calls riichi on a 14m ryanmen. If she wins on the 1m, she will have sanshoku and at least a mangan.
Right after, Takizawa draws a 6p to create a 456p sequence and calls riichi on a 58m ryanmen. On the ippatsu turn, Kurosawa draws and discards the 8m and deals into Takizawa. Takizawa wins the hand with Riichi/Ippatsu/Aka 2 for 12,000+600 plus one riichi stick, putting Takizawa above 70,000 and Kurosawa into the negatives.
Sanankou
May 9, Game 2, S2-1
Video: https://abema.tv/video/episode/444-14_s70_p757
In S2-1, Kurosawa is in the negatives and 16,800 behind 3rd place. If she wants to pose a bigger threat to the other teams, she will need to win at least a limit hand to get within striking range.
Kurosawa starts out the hand by drawing an ankou of 9m to get to 4-shanten with a dora 4s. On turn 2, Kurosawa draws a third 3p to advance her hand. On her next draw, she gets a 5s to create a 455s block. As things seemed to go smoothly for Kurosawa, Rumi the dealer disrupts the table by getting to tenpai and calling riichi on a 3p kanchan on turn 4.
With some stray honours in hand and nothing else being safer, Kurosawa discards the honours first to see what direction the wall would take her hand. After getting rid of all her honours, Kurosawa is iishanten with a 3455s block and a 56p block. In the middle of the second row, she adds another 4s dora to wider her tile acceptance. Drawing a third 4s at the start of the third row, Kurosawa gets to tenpai on a 47p ryanmen for haneman minimum. Kurosawa stays dama, hoping not to scare the table and to have the change to upgrade to a suuankou or suuankou tanki. She draws a 9m a turn later, allowing her to call kan. The kandora and rinshan miss, but the kandora increases Rumi’s hand by two han. In the middle of the third row, on Kurosawa’s second-last draw, she finds the 4p and wins the hand. Kurosawa wins with Tsumo/Sanankou/Dora 3/Aka 1 for 3,000/6,000 plus one riichi stick, just enough to move Kurosawa 600 ahead of Ooi.
Houtei
May 9, Game 2, S3-0
In S3-0, Takizawa is in 1st place and ahead of 2nd by 57,000. But, bigger is better.
Takizawa starts out the hand by drawing a red 5p to go along with his red 5s and isolated north dora. Since the north dora is isolated and slow, Takizawa discards it early on turn 2. On turn 6, Takizawa draws the red 5m to have all the reds. In the middle of the second row, Takizawa gets to iishanten and discards the red 5p, hoping to avoid dealing it in later. As Takizawa waits, Kurosawa gets to tenpai and calls riichi on a 69s ryanmen.
During the ippatsu round, Takizawa manages to get to tenpai. Despite the risk, Takizawa throws the red 5m and calls riichi on a 14m ryanmen. During the wait to see who would win, Ooi gets to a 14p ryanmen tenpai. However, after drawing the dangerous 4m and after a lot of thinking, Ooi folds. With the tiles dwindling down, it looked like the hand was going to go to a draw. Then, on the very last tile, Kurosawa draws and discards the 4m and deals into Takizawa. Takizawa wins the hand with Riichi/Tanyao/Houtei/Aka 1 for 8,000 plus a riichi stick to bring Takizawa’s score up to 79,100.
Final Scores
Video: https://abema.tv/video/episode/444-15_s10_p222
Twitter: https://twitter.com/m_league_jikkyo/status/1655945747664371719
Standings
With Takizawa’s big win, Takizawa may have just saved the team and possibly even Hisato’s relationship. With the big win, the team is the biggest winner of the day with a gain of +39.5 on the day. The Shibuya Abemas lost the most points on the day, but they only lost a small -29.4pts.
And with two days done, we are a quarter of the way through the finals! We are off on Wednesday, the we’re back at it on Thursday. Coming in for guest commentary are U-Next Pirates members Nakabayashi Kei and Suzuki Yu. How will the UK duo do in the commentary booth? Will any of the teams start to pull away? could we even see a yakuman chance? As always, we’ll just have to wait and see!
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