Mahjong solitaire vs real mahjong?

I must accept I haven't learned the rules properly myself. All I do is to group tiles into three or four same (except for the obligatory two same tiles), group into three same type number sequences, group them all into pairs or if possible group all from same type. Then never borrow tiles from another player because who knows why I can't do a 'ron' or 'tsumo' most of the times (probably related to the uncovered tiles in the middle) and let the computer do the rest for me. Up until 5 years ago I discarded any character tiles because I had a hard time reading and sorting kanji numbers above four.

As you can see my winning chances are really limited, that's why games like the Idol Janshi Suchie Pie series and its spin off Chuukana Janshi Tenhoo Painyan are my favorite, because you can cheat the already cheating computer. I had a similar problem with hanafuda, but Star Platinum from Custom proved to be a great tutorial when you get to know the card representations.

rom_collector said:

I must accept I haven't learned the rules properly myself. All I do is to group tiles into three or four same (except for the obligatory two same tiles), group into three same type number sequences, group them all into pairs or if possible group all from same type. Then never borrow tiles from another player because who knows why I can't do a 'ron' or 'tsumo' most of the times (probably related to the uncovered tiles in the middle) and let the computer do the rest for me. Up until 5 years ago I discarded any character tiles because I had a hard time reading and sorting kanji numbers above four.

That's literally the game there; the rest is scoring (and thus knowing what hands you should go for) and reading the opponents drops. Japanese Mahjong (as opposed to other rule sets) forbids you from winning at all if you could win off any tile that you have discarded - this is so that it is fair for the other players, so they know what tiles are safe (or probably safe, based on what you've dropped and eaten) to discard. This means that if you could win on 2 or 4 bamboo, you couldn't win on either, until you change what tile your waiting on so that you are no longer in this state of 'furiten'.

This does not affect your ability to get points in the case on an exhaustive draw - you could win, as in your hand was only one tile away from winning, you just were forbidden from winning off that tile. This does not forbid you from winning off a self-drawn tile, however.

The furiten rule is one of the biggest variations between other countries' rulesets, and is the reason that you need to line up the discards and melds in front of you.

You also probably weren't able to win because you didn't have a 'yaku', which is basically the score multiplier you need at least x1 to get points and it only goes up from there.

Indeed, my biggest fault are the Yaku rules, that makes it I've been doing half the game right. I'll need to study the rules but honestly I only half learned Mahjong because I was fan of 2D strip animated ecchi titles. Now it's a forgotten genre like many others and the few that appear are 2D static images with lots of characters without story you may as well browse PIXIV and be done with it. The last decent 3D anime Mahjong game came for PS3 (Mahjong Dream C Club) four years ago. It's a shame because the Taisen Hot Gimmick series were really good.

Unless MAME emulates the Nichibutsu video mahjong titles, it looks this will be something I'll learn for a lot later.

Eh, most of the ecchi mahjong titles are 2-player, and thus not a proper game of mahjong. I'd rather just use an online one, or do the only thing my OG PSP is used for, Mahjong Fight Club. (Since paying to play that at an arcade is madness!)

I only know Chinese mahjong, which is probably different from japanese types

Searchwanted said:

I only know Chinese mahjong, which is probably different from japanese types

As I said before, the core gameplay is the same - get tiles, eat from other players, try to get a complete hand before the wall runs out.

In Japanese though, there's more focus on scoring, the aforementioned furiten rules (and the associated discards lined up in front of you deal), some of the hands score differently to Chinese (I think), and there's no flowers or seasons used.

If you know one, it's not too hard to play the other.

Paracite said:

As I said before, the core gameplay is the same - get tiles, eat from other players, try to get a complete hand before the wall runs out.

In Japanese though, there's more focus on scoring, the aforementioned furiten rules (and the associated discards lined up in front of you deal), some of the hands score differently to Chinese (I think), and there's no flowers or seasons used.

If you know one, it's not too hard to play the other.

Also Japanese mahjong has riichi. This coupled with hand 'inflation' for concealed hands (compared to self-pick inflation in most Chinese and especially Hong Kong mahjong) changes the metagame significantly.

The furiten rule also allows more effective defensive play.

(HK Mahjong is way, waaaay too luck based. Picked by the golden cock, wat.)