Standings

The top-performing team these past six games is the U-Next Pirates. The MVP for this fifth is definitely Nakabayashi. On Friday, took an early lead and was able to just barely hold on at the very end to get a 1st and bring the team above +400.0pts. On Monday, he took advantage of his south round dealership and kept winning taking the game to S1-9 and winning 9 hands by the end (tying the M-League record for most hands won in a single game) for a 1st place. With a 2/1/1/0 record and a +116.7pts gain, the team now has more points than they started the semifinals with.

Next is the EX Furinkazan. The positive streak continues for the team that started the semifinals below the cutoff. On Monday, Matsugase got a very timely ura 3 in S4-0 in order to sneak into 1st place. If we track back from the regular season, the EX Furinkazan is now 17 games without a 4th place. Gaining +50.6pts and going 1/2/1/0 this fifth, the team has now gained a total of 276.9pts over 12 games.

The last gaining team is the Akasaka Drivens. After Taro had an close 4th place, Sonoda was sent to recover the points. In the very first hand, he won a haneman and maintained his 1st place ranking until the end. With two 2nds on Monday (including a 2nd place tie involving Futoshi), the team gained +28.1pts with a record of 1/2/0/1.

Going into the droppers, we have the Kadokawa Sakura Knights. They avoided 4th place, but they were also unable to get any 1sts. Thursday had back-to-back 3rds and Monday had back-to-back 2nds. Despite the less than ideal results, they got the best results possible considering some runaway games by their opponents. With a 0/2/2/0 record, they lost just -8.9pts and remain in 3rd place.

The Konami Mahjong Fight Club is next. Friday had hope with a 1st place by Takamiya and giving the team a net-positive day. Unfortunately, Monday came. Hisato wasn’t able to win a single hand and ended the game with -1,000. For Takizawa, he only dealt in 1 time over 22 hands and still ended the game in 4th place with -1,000. With their 1/0/1/2 record and -93.0pts loss, the fall deeper in 5th place. In their last 8 games, they will be facing both the Kadokawa Sakura Knights and the Shibuya Abemas 6 times, giving them a chance to get some good direct hits to move into a playoff spot.

Finally, we have the Shibuya Abemas. Another tough week for the team while they are in a bad position. Ooi started off with a good 1st place on Thursday but ended up almost erasing the gain in the second game with a 4th place. On Friday, the ShoMatsu pair had back-to-back 4ths. In their past 8 games, they have gotten 4th place 6 times. This fifth, they lost -93.5pts with a 1/0/0/3 record. They have 8 games left to play and will face the 5th place Konami Mahjong Fight Club in 6 games.

This Fifth’s M-League Stats

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And that’s all for this fifth! We are more than halfway through the semifinals and only 12 games remain. Will any team catch up to the U-Next Pirates? Can the Konami Mahjong Fight Club and Shibuya Abemas turn things around to snag a spot? Will we have more multi-honba games? As always, we’ll just have to wait and see!

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