All Last: know your number before you discard

All Last is the one hand where the scoreboard tells you exactly which wins change your place. Leave the arithmetic until tenpai and you find out too late that your hand passes nobody. Do it before your first discard, one player at a time: the same hand can pass the dealer by tsumo and fall short when the dealer deals in.

Three numbers for every player you can pass

Start with the gaps: how far you sit behind each player above you and ahead of each player below. Then, for each player above, price the three ways a win moves that gap, as Play for placement laid them out.

• A ron off someone else. Your rival's score doesn't move, so the win has to cover the whole gap.
• A ron off that player. This is a direct hit (chokugeki). You gain what they lose, so the win only has to cover half the gap.
• A tsumo. Your rival pays a share of it, so the gap closes by everything you collect plus that share. A non-dealer's tsumo takes a quarter from each non-dealer and half from the dealer, as What a hand pays showed.

Here's a board. All Last, no honba (repeat counters), no riichi sticks. East, the dealer, has 34,000. West has 29,600, you (North) have 26,400, and South has 10,000.

To pass	Gap	Ron off another player	Ron off them	Tsumo
East (1st, dealer)	7,600	7,700	3,900	1,300/2,600
West (2nd)	3,200	3,900	2,000	700/1,300

Read the West row. A 3,900 ron off East or South covers the 3,200. A 3,200 hand would only tie, and West wins ties against you (more below). A 2,000 ron off West lifts you 2,000 and drops West 2,000, a 4,000 swing. A 700/1,300 tsumo collects 2,700, and 700 of it comes from West: 3,400. The East row works the same way, except that East pays 2,600 of its 1,300/2,600 tsumo, so it closes 7,800.

Then look down. South is 16,400 behind and needs a haneman off you or a baiman tsumo to pass you. This board is about climbing.

Add one line for the draw. When the wall runs out, a tenpai player gains 4,000 on a noten one if one or three players are tenpai, and 3,000 if two are (the draw payments). Here, a draw with you tenpai and West noten passes West, unless exactly one other player is tenpai too.

The tsumo numbers to know by heart

A ron is quick to check: the whole gap, or half of it off your rival. A tsumo takes a second step: what you collect plus your rival's share. Work out the common ones once and keep them as a lookup from your gap.

Behind a non-dealer by less than	Behind the dealer by less than	This tsumo passes them
3,400	4,000	700/1,300
5,000	6,000	1,000/2,000
6,500	7,800	1,300/2,600
10,000	12,000	2,000/4,000 (mangan)

An exact match ends level, and the tie rule below decides it.

Learn three rows cold: 1,000/2,000 closes 5,000 (6,000 on the dealer), 1,300/2,600 closes 6,500 (7,800), and a mangan tsumo closes 10,000 (12,000). All Last math leans on the same three.

Honba, sticks, and ties move the line

Sticks on the table make every win bigger. How a game works introduced both kinds, and the scoring guide works the payments.

• Each riichi stick goes to the winner: 1,000 more on any win, ron or tsumo.
• Each honba adds 300 to a ron, so 600 to a direct hit, where your rival pays it. On a tsumo each player pays 100 more: you collect 300 more, and the gap to your rival closes 400 more.
• Your own riichi costs 1,000 and comes back when you win, so your win numbers stay the same. At a draw the stick stays on the table. On the first board, that turns a tenpai draw that passes West into a 200-point miss. Your riichi also hands 1,000 to anyone else who wins, which matters in All Last decisions.

Now put one honba and one riichi stick on the first board. The stick is South's, so South sits on 9,000. West's row drops from 3,900, 2,000, and 700/1,300 to 2,000, any win, and 400/700. A 2,000 ron collects 3,300. A 1,000 ron off West collects 2,300 and costs West 1,300, a 3,600 swing. A 400/700 tsumo pays 500/800 with the honba, collects 2,800 with the stick, and costs West 500: 3,300.

Ties go by seat order

On Tenhou and Mahjong Soul, a tie goes to the player who sat closer to East 1's dealer (How a game works). In All Last that order reads off the seat winds: South, West, North, then the dealer, who loses every tie.

On the first board, West comes before you, which is why a 3,200 ron off East or South, such as riichi seven pairs (3 han 25 fu), leaves you 3rd.

When the dealer is in the hand

On Tenhou and Mahjong Soul, an All Last dealer who wins, or is tenpai when the wall runs out, deals again: South 4, 1 honba. That's renchan (a dealer repeat). The exception is a dealer who comes out of the hand in 1st with 30,000 or more. That ends the game: agari-yame after a win, tenpai-yame after a draw.

• You're the dealer. You don't have to pass anyone in one hand. Any win, or tenpai at the draw, buys another hand, and you redo the numbers with one more honba. Your tsumo takes the same from all three players, so it closes a gap by a third more than it collects: 1,000 all closes 4,000, 2,000 all closes 8,000, and a 4,000 all mangan closes 16,000.
• The dealer is below you. Their one-hand number may be a mangan, but a cheap dealer win or a dealer tenpai at the draw buys them another try.
• The dealer leads with 30,000 or more. A dealer win or dealer tenpai ends the game, so don't count on another hand. On the first board, East has 34,000: plan on this hand being the last.

One more check when the scores are low. If a hand would end the game with nobody at 30,000, Tenhou and Mahjong Soul play on into a West round, so the win that passes your rival isn't always the end.

Let the calculator check your number

The All Last calculator runs this arithmetic for any board. Type the four scores by seat, in tie order: seat 1 dealt East 1 and sits South in All Last, and seat 4 is the dealer. Add the honba and sticks, pick your seat, and it prints the smallest ron off each player and the smallest tsumo for each place, plus what a draw does. Here's the first board.

Sometimes it names a rare hand that pays between the common prices. On the one-honba board, its tsumo for 1st reads 1,200/2,300 (2 han 70 fu). The everyday hand to plan for is the next one up, 1,300/2,600. Use the tool to check your number, not to replace it.

For how often 3rd falls to 4th and how often 4th climbs out, by seat and gap, see the All Last 4th-place odds from Tenhou's top room (Houou). All Last decisions puts your number to work: riichi or dama, push or fold, by place.