One hand from deal to tenpai

Every turn asks you to throw one tile, but not every turn asks the same question. Far from tenpai you're clearing out tiles with no job, and the best cuts often tie. At 1-shanten every tile counts, and the tidy-looking cut can throw away a fifth of your tenpai tiles. Here's one hand played from the deal to a riichi, stage by stage, and then a second hand for you to play.

Name the stage, then ask its question

Your shanten, the count from the shanten lesson, names your stage, and each stage has its own question.

Stage	Ask	Then
3-shanten or farther	Which tiles have no job?	Cut them in the discard order
2-shanten	Which block is weakest?	If cuts tie or nearly tie, compare the 1-shanten each one leads to
1-shanten	How many tiles make tenpai?	If cuts tie, count the ones that end two-sided
Tenpai	Which tiles win?	Check your own discards, then declare riichi

The questions change because the counts shrink. In the hand below, the best cut keeps 32 tiles at 3-shanten, 28 at 2-shanten, 20 at 1-shanten, and 8 at tenpai. A 4-tile gap is an eighth of the first list and a fifth of the third.

One rule sits above the table: a tile with no job goes before any block, at every stage. Usually that's a loose (isolated) tile, with nothing within two of it in its suit, or an honor with no partner. Sometimes it's a spare, like a second copy hanging off a finished set. From the middle turns, a safe tile can outrank this, as Defense before the riichi shows later in the course.

Far from tenpai: cut the tiles with no job

You're West in East 1, so the North is a guest wind: it gives you no yaku. Here's your deal.

Five blocks: the 23m, 45p, and 34s ryanmen (two-sided shapes), the 68m kanchan (middle shape), and the 77p head. That's 3-shanten. The 1p, the 9s, and the North have no job.

Turn 1: you draw the 3s. It makes 334s, a ryanmen sharing a tile with a pair, from Shapes worth keeping. Keep it. Cut a 3s and you keep 28 tiles, while the 1p, the 9s, and the North each keep 32. With five blocks, none of the three loose tiles adds a tile, so the count ties and the order from What to discard first decides. Guest winds go first, so the North goes.

Turn 2: you draw the 7m. It finishes 678m, and you're 2-shanten. The stage changed, but the rule above the table comes first: the 1p and the 9s still have no job, and either keeps 28. Every 3p that would join the 1p finishes your 45p instead, while nothing covers the 9s, so the 1p goes next.

The tie holds because you have five blocks. With four, each loose tile can still make your fifth block, so keep the one with the most partners, as Too many blocks or too few showed.

2-shanten: drop the weakest block, then look one step ahead

Turn 3: you draw the 8s. It lands beside the 9s and makes an 89s penchan (edge shape). Nothing is loose now, and you hold six blocks for five places.

Start with the table's question: which block is weakest? The 89s penchan. It waits on one kind, the 7s, and no single draw turns it two-sided. The count backs that but can't settle it: four cuts keep 28 tiles, the 9s, the 8s, the 3s, and the 4p. So look one step ahead at the 1-shanten each cut leads to.

• Cut the 9s or the 8s. You drop the penchan and keep 334s and 77p. Sixteen of the 28 tiles, the 1m, 4m, 3p, and 6p, give you the complete 1-shanten from 1-shanten: the step where hands are won: 20 tenpai tiles, all two-sided. The other 12 give you 16, all two-sided.
• Cut a 3s. You keep the penchan one more turn. Every draw then leaves 16 tenpai tiles, never 20.
• Cut the 4p. Only the 7s, 4 of the 28 tiles, reaches 20 tenpai tiles. The other 24 leave 12 or 16 tenpai tiles, and in each only 4 end two-sided.

Drop the penchan and every partial set you keep is a ryanmen or a pair, so every 1-shanten it leads to is all two-sided. Cut the 9s first, from the outside: the 8s stays one more turn, and if no draw gives it a job, it's your next cut. The hand analyzer shows the four-way tie but doesn't look ahead. At 2-shanten that's your job.

Here the better shape is free. When it isn't, my rule of thumb: at 2-shanten, give up one kind, 4 tiles, for a 1-shanten with clearly more two-sided tenpai tiles. Give up more only when that 1-shanten also keeps about as many tenpai tiles as the wider cut's. Headless and floating-tile 1-shanten weighed the same kind of trade at 1-shanten.

1-shanten: count every tenpai tile

Turn 4: you draw the 1m. It finishes 123m, and you're 1-shanten.

The 8s has no job, so it goes, and you hold the complete shape: two ryanmen (45p and 34s) and two pairs (77p and 33s). That's 20 tenpai tiles, all two-sided. The count shows what breaking the rule costs: the tidy cut, a 3s out of 334s, keeps 16. A 4s keeps 12, and only 4 of those end two-sided.

Turn 5: you draw the 2p. Most draws at 1-shanten miss, and a miss asks one question: does the new tile add tenpai tiles? The 2p doesn't. Cut it and you keep all 20.

Tenpai: list the waits, check your discards, declare

Turn 6: you draw the 6p. It finishes 456p, and two cuts make tenpai.

• Cut a 3s. The 34s waits on the 2s and the 5s, with the 77p as your head: 8 tiles.
• Cut the 4s. The 33s and the 77p make a shanpon (pair wait) on the 3s and the 7p, 2 copies each: 4 tiles.

Take the 8-tile wait. Then check the waits against your own discards, as the tenpai and furiten lesson showed. Yours are the North, the 1p, the 9s, the 8s, and the 2p. No 2s and no 5s, so you can ron either one.

The hand is closed, you have the 1,000 points for the stick, and plenty of wall is left. Declare riichi. When to riichi, later in the course, covers the few hands where you'd stay quiet.

Turn	Draw	Cut	Stage	The lesson it uses
1			3-shanten	What to discard first
2			2-shanten	The five-block method
3			2-shanten	Too many blocks or too few
4			1-shanten	1-shanten
5			1-shanten	Tile acceptance
6			Tenpai	Mahjong waits

Practice: a second hand, turn by turn

Each problem is your next turn, after the right answer to the one before. This wall is kind: every draw improves the hand, which real hands rarely allow. Name your stage before you tap.

The efficiency trainer deals 1-, 2-, and 3-shanten hands for the same drill, and the hand analyzer takes the hands from your own games.