Too many blocks or too few

The five-block method finds your discard when the hand holds exactly five blocks. Plenty of hands hold six, with no slot for the last one, or four, with loose tiles everywhere. The count still settles the cut: with six, a whole block goes once nothing is loose, and with four, the loose tile that can grow stays.

Count your blocks before you count tiles

A standard winning hand is five blocks, four sets and a pair, as the five-block method showed. A block is a set, a partial set, or a pair. A loose (isolated) tile belongs to none of them: nothing sits within two of it in its suit, or it's an honor with no partner.

What a loose tile is worth depends on how many blocks you already hold. A draw that joins it starts a new block, and a new block only helps when the hand has a slot for it.

Blocks	A draw that joins a loose tile	What you cut
Four	Makes your fifth block: it's acceptance	Loose tiles from the outside in. A value honor outlasts a 1 or 9
Five	Makes a sixth block: no help	Loose tiles, in the same order
Six	Makes a seventh block: no help	Loose tiles and spares, then the weakest partial set, whole

Your head is one block, and a second pair is another: a partial set waiting on its third copy.

Six blocks: drop the weakest one whole

Six blocks means one partial set has no slot. Japanese players have a name for that, taatsu over (ターツオーバー): more partial sets than the hand can use. Once every tile belongs to a block and no spare is left over, the surplus block is your cut, and it goes whole. Don't pull a tile out of a better block to keep it.

The 8s finishes 678s. You now hold two sets (345p and 678s), the 22s head, and three partial sets: the ryanmen ryanmen (two-sided), the kanchan kanchan (middle), and the penchan penchan (edge). Two sets and a head leave room for two partial sets, so one of the three goes.

• Break the 89p: 12 tiles, the 1m, 4m, and 7m.
• Break the 68m: 12 tiles, the 1m, 4m, and 7p.
• Break the 23m: 8 tiles.

The ryanmen stays. The two one-sided shapes tie, so ask what each can still become. A 5m turns the 68m into 568m, which holds the two-sided 56m. No single draw does that for the 89p, as the partial-sets lesson showed. Drop the penchan.

Three questions find the weakest block

The first two settle most hands, in that order. The third can overrule both.

1. How many tiles finish it? Count the copies you haven't seen, as Tile acceptance showed. A third pair is the cheapest block of all, at 2 tiles, as the pairs lesson counted.
2. Can it grow? A ryanmen beats an inner kanchan (35, 46, 57), which beats an outer one (13, 24, 68, 79), which beats a penchan.
3. Is it worth something? A block holding a red five or the dora, or the one your yaku needs, can be worth keeping over a wider one. Speed or value covers when.

The first question overrules the second. Say two 7m already sit in the discards. The 68m has 2 tiles left and the 89p still has 4, so break the kanchan instead: 12 tiles against 10. The hand analyzer opens this hand with those two 7m entered.

Cut the outside tile first

A block leaves one tile at a time. Cut the tile nearer the edge first: the 9p of the 89p, or the 8m of the 68m. Both keep the same count now. What differs is the tile left behind. With the 8p left, a 7p draw makes the two-sided 78p, the 68m becomes the block to drop, and you climb to 16 tiles. A leftover 9p can't make a ryanmen with any draw. If nothing joins the leftover, it's your next cut.

Four blocks: keep the tile that can grow

With four blocks, one of them your head, the hand is a partial set short. A draw that joins a loose tile fills the gap and moves you a step closer to tenpai. So every loose tile carries acceptance, and the counts from What to discard first rank them: an honor joins with 3 tiles, a 1 or 9 with 11, a 2 or 8 with 15, and a 3 to 7 with 19. The honor order from the same lesson makes one exception: a dragon or a value wind usually outlasts a loose 1 or 9.

You're South in East 1, so the North is a guest wind.

Four blocks: 234p, the 77p head, the 34s ryanmen, and the 79s kanchan. Five loose tiles: the 1m, 5m, 9m, North, and Green.

• Cut the North or the Green: 50 tiles.
• Cut the 1m or the 9m: 46.
• Cut the 5m: 42.
• Break any block: you fall to 4-shanten.

The honor order cuts the North first. By count the Green would go next, 50 tiles against 46, but the order cuts the 1m and 9m first: one Green pon gives you a set and a yaku together, and a terminal grows at best into a kanchan or penchan. The 5m stays longest, the hand's best chance at a fifth block.

Being short never makes a block cheap: break one, even a penchan, and you lose a step. It does make spares valuable. With five blocks, the 6m of 3456m is a spare, a tile hanging off a finished set, and it adds nothing. When you're a block short, every manzu from the 1m to the 8m turns 3456m into a set plus a partial set, the 28 tiles Shapes worth keeping counted.

The same tile, opposite answers

Go back to the four-block hand, where the 5m was the last loose tile to go. Swap the North and the Green for a 2m and an 8m. The 1m and the 9m become two penchans, and the count jumps to six.

The 5m didn't change. The count around it did: with four blocks, keeping it over the North was worth 8 tiles, and with six it adds none. Both hands follow one rule, loose tiles before blocks. With four, cut the loose tile with the fewest partners, value honors aside. With six, cutting a loose tile costs no tiles, so cut them in the usual order. Once they're gone, the weakest block goes whole.

Practice

Count the blocks before you pick a tile.

The efficiency trainer on Normal and Hard deals 2- and 3-shanten hands with no loose tile, and six blocks are common there. Name the surplus block before you tap, then check the ranking. The daily problem never makes a loose tile the answer either. For four-block hands, paste a deal from your own games into the hand analyzer.