Green Green Grass and the Return of Dora Galora

This post should have been published sooner but I haven't really had time to write it until now. This was mainly due to the amount of lectures, Mahjong and Street Fighter IV these last few days. There have been some amazing games of Mahjong though, and the two games that I'm going to be writing about in this post are no exception.

The first game was played on Wednesday evening. It started it off quite normally with KC winning a couple of rounds with some small Reach hands. Although KC had won the first two rounds, they were only for a few thousand points so everything was still fairly even. However, things went a bit crazy after the East Third round. I got quite lucky and won a round with a Baiman Tsumo consisting of: All Sets, Three Closed Sets and Four Dora. After this I thought that perhaps the momentum of the game was now with me. But, although I managed to keep my dealership going for three rounds, I didn't really make much of a gain in points. And then suddenly, from nowhere, Scud started making a massive comeback in South First round. He managed to get a couple of Mangans and clawed his way into the lead by over 5,000 points. By this point he had also managed to get three dealer repeat chips. That's when everything got a bit mental.

After breaking the wall and drawing our starting tiles, I found myself staring at nine Sou tiles and four honour tiles. My plan was to go for the Half-Flush and maybe attempt a Full-Flush if the opportunity arose. I had some good fortune and kept drawing tiles that I needed, but it looked like that my good starting hand might not amount to anything due to the constant Pons from everyone else. However, it got towards the end of the round and no one had managed to win yet. By that point I realised that there was a possibility of an All Green limit hand. I already had two 8-Sou at the start, and managed to amass two 2-Sou, three 3-Sou, three 6-Sou and two 4-Sou. KC played a 4-Sou and I decided to Pon it. I was now one tile away and waiting for a 2-Sou or an 8-Sou to win. I was having an nervous breakdown inside, hoping to hell that the last tile would come out. And it did! It was KC who played the 8-Sou, allowing me to Ron him for an All Green limit hand. Not only that, it was All Sets and a Full-Flush with Three Dora; bringing the total to twenty-three Han! Needless to say, I bankrupted Kevin and won the game.

The next day we had another game of Mahjong. Everyone thought that perhaps my luck had been totally spent after getting that All Green limit hand but how wrong they were. I started winning a few of the first rounds but had my lead wiped out by a few drawn games and a Tsumo. Then lionintown pulled off a Mangan Tsumo and went into the lead. I was in second place, Scud in third, and Taurinensis in last, and this was how it remained until South Fourth round. I was over 6,000 points behind lionintown so I knew that I'd have to go for a pretty big hand in order to win.

My hand consisted of quite a few Manzi tiles plus a couple of South Wind tiles. I also had three 7-Manzi tiles that I later turned into a Kan. Taurinensis later made a Kan of White Dragon tiles, bringing the Dora total to three. Luck was still on my side and I kept drawing Doras. I managed to manoeuvre myself into Tenpai near the end of the round and was waiting on a 5-Sou (one of the Doras) to complete the hand. It got down to the last four tiles and I really didn't think I would get that last 5-Sou. But when I took my last draw, there it was in my hand! I'd won the game on the last round with a Sanbaiman Tsumo consisting of: All Sets, Seat Wind and Table Wind plus five Dora. Now that was a good day!