Let's Learn Mahjong - Part 5

For beginners, I personally recommend not calling 'chi', 'pon', or 'kan' (i.e., not melding) and maintaining a closed hand (menzen) with ready calls (riichi). Once you meld, you not only reduce the number of possible scoring hands (yaku), but you also can't see the dora in the dead wall if you win. Kans, in particular, have a limit. If there are 4 kans in a single game, the hand becomes void. Sometimes, people who don't know this will unnecessarily call kan while winning, making the hand void. If one person calls 4 kans, they can form the hand 'sukkangz' (a yakuman, or highest scoring hand). The probability of forming this hand is a whopping 0.000024%. It's an incredibly high probability, so you could bet your life on it. However, it's something most people never achieve even after a lifetime, so it's best to avoid calling kan unless absolutely necessary. For reference, there's also a 1-han hand called 'chankan'. This occurs when someone has already called 'pon' (making a set of 3 identical tiles from another player's discard), and then another player discards a tile that allows the first player to change their 'pon' into a 'kan' (called 'gakan'), and that discarded tile is your winning tile (the tile you need to complete your hand when you're in tenpai). The probability is 0.046%.