The last turns: formal tenpai and noten payments

Turn 14, three or four draws from the end, and your hand is one tile short of tenpai with no yaku in sight. Those last draws still decide whether you pay or get paid when the wall runs out with no winner. You can collect with a hand that can't win, as long as chasing the payment doesn't cost you a deal-in.

Tenpai at the draw is worth up to 3,000 points

When the wall runs out with no winner, the noten (not tenpai) players pay the tenpai players 3,000 points in all, as How a game works showed.

Others tenpai	You're noten	You're tenpai	Tenpai is worth
0	0	+3,000	3,000
1	−1,000	+1,500	2,500
2	−1,500	+1,000	2,500
3	−3,000	0	3,000

That's more than a cheap win pays: a non-dealer's 2 han 30 fu ron is 2,000 (what one tenpai is worth).

For the dealer, tenpai keeps the deal

A tenpai dealer keeps the deal at a draw (renchan, a dealer repeat), so the next hand is played at dealer prices again: a mangan ron pays 12,000 instead of 8,000. A noten dealer hands the deal on (the dealer's rule). As the dealer, push harder to keep it.

Formal tenpai: no yaku, still paid

Formal tenpai (形式聴牌, keishiki tenpai, or keiten for short) is a tenpai hand with no yaku. It's usually open, since a closed tenpai can always win by tsumo: a closed self-draw is a yaku of its own. A formal tenpai can't win on an ordinary draw or discard. On Tenhou and Mahjong Soul it still counts at the draw like any other tenpai. The glossary card has the short version, and the tenpai guide the rule.

You called chi on the 7m with your 89m. This is the rest of your hand.

It waits on and , 8 tiles, and neither brings a yaku. The 9m in the chi and the 99s pair rule out tanyao, and the call rules out riichi and pinfu. There's no honor set, no straight, and no matching runs across the suits.

In practice it has one way to win: the last tile. A tsumo on the last tile of the wall (haitei) or a ron on the last discard (houtei) is a 1-han yaku, open or closed. The haitei and houtei page scores both.

Call for tenpai in the last rows

That's why players chi or pon late in a hand only to get tenpai. Early on, a closed 1-shanten keeps riichi in reach. Late, with three or four draws left, it may never reach tenpai. The call makes you tenpai now. Unlike in 1-shanten against a riichi, the call needs no yaku.

My rule of thumb: from turn 14, look for a chi or pon that makes you tenpai. With nobody in riichi, take it. Start a turn sooner when the closed 1-shanten is narrow, and wait a turn when it's wide and riichi would make it a mangan. Against a riichi, the call pays only if the tile you cut after it is worth pushing, and the next section prices that.

Settle two things before you call.

• The discard. The tile you throw after the call has to keep you tenpai. When more than one does, throw the safest. A narrow wait collects the same payment as a wide one.
• Your defense. After a call you hold ten tiles, not thirteen. If someone declares riichi next turn, you fold with fewer safe tiles.

Price the tile before you push for the payment

Against a riichi, the payment has a price. A formal tenpai has almost no way to win, so a push buys the payment and nothing else.

The push or fold calculator charts this spot in its Keiten at the draw mode. It assumes a single riichi, the other two players fold, and you'd fold with two genbutsu (tiles the riichi player can't ron). Honors and no-suji 1s and 9s aren't in it. Its columns sort tiles as the safety ladder does, by suji and by number. Push and Fold mean a clear edge, Lean push and Lean fold a small one, and Close call about even.

Below Mahjong Soul's Master rank, the shuhari post has you fold every riichi, so treat the chart's Push and Lean push cells, and the Push drill below, as play you're growing into. The call for tenpai with nobody in riichi holds at every rank.

Discards left	Suji 1 or 9	Suji 2, 3, 7, 8	No suji 2, 3, 7, 8	No suji 4, 5, 6
1	Push	Push	Push	Lean push
2	Push	Push	Push	Close call
3	Push	Push	Lean push	Lean fold
4	Lean push	Lean push	Lean fold	Lean fold
5	Close call	Close call	Lean fold	Fold

Read it as two rules. In your last three discards, push any suji tile and any no-suji 2, 3, 7, or 8, while a no-suji 4, 5, or 6 stays close. With four or five to go, fold the tiles with no suji.

Discards left matter because the payment comes once, at the draw, and every unsafe tile you cut before it is a fresh chance to deal in. On the safety ladder, a 4, 5, or 6 with no read is in about 8% of riichi waits. Push four of them and the chance that one deals in is 28%. Late in a long riichi, a tile with no read is worse than that, as Reading discards counted. And a deal-in costs far more than the 2,500 at stake: in Houou, Tenhou's top room, a non-dealer riichi from turn 8 (counted from zero) averaged 5,869 on a ron (what folding costs).

The seat moves the line both ways.

• You're the dealer. The deal rides on it too. The chart pushes every tile class in your last two discards, and a no-suji 4, 5, or 6 is still a lean push with three left.
• The dealer declared. A deal-in costs more: a dealer's riichi averaged 8,179 on a ron in the same logs. A no-suji 4, 5, or 6 is a fold even on your last discard, and a no-suji 2, 3, 7, or 8 is a close call in your last two.

Make sure it counts: karaten and furiten

This looks like tenpai on a single wait: 234s and 777s are sets, and the fourth 7s waits for its pair. But you hold all four 7s, so the winning tile doesn't exist. That's karaten (空聴), and neither Tenhou nor Mahjong Soul counts it as tenpai at the draw. The hand analyzer flags it. Fix it on your next draw: cut a 7s and keep the new tile as a single wait.

The other kind of karaten still counts. A wait whose last copies are all visible, in the rivers, in calls, or as the dora indicator, can't win, but it's tenpai at the draw (the tenpai guide).

Furiten blocks ron, never tenpai. A hand with one of its winning tiles in its own discards still collects at the draw (the tenpai guide). A formal tenpai can't ron an ordinary discard anyway, so a furiten wait costs it almost nothing.