Sticky Tiles

Sticky is three ideas that share a name. The first is a one-shanten shape: three melds, one pair, and two floaters. 立直 classrooms call that くっつき. The second is an overlap. Four tiles in a row, or a pair sitting on a taatsu, let one draw advance two parses. Players call that double ukeire, 二度受け, or 二度进张. The third is the strength of one isolated tile before it has stuck. A 3 through 7 touches more sequence kinds than a 2 or an 8, which touches more than a 1 or a 9, which touches more than an honor. That third rank compares floaters inside one hand. The caption prints the hand total.

The frame is tile efficiency. The count is ukeire: kinds that lower shanten, and the copies still left of those kinds. Copies are hand-only, four minus the copies already held. The distance is shanten. On 14 tiles this site sorts a cut by lower shanten, then more ukeire copies, then more ukeire kinds. A tie on all three stays a tie. Scoring, a missing suit, and wait quality sit beside that ladder. This site does not run an expected-value engine, and the analyzer does not return the word sticky.

A floater is an isolated tile. In five-block theory it is not a block until it sticks. A four-tile run is two blocks in that marking and one run in the tile string. The class names for the other one-shanten shapes live on one-shanten. The wait after tenpai lives on wait types.

What the two shapes are

Two 13-tile hands, both shanten 1, show the width before any rule about waits. The first holds two suited floaters whose neighborhoods do not overlap. The second holds two honor floaters.

The blocks are pair 22p, sequence 345s, sequence 678s, and triplet 999s, plus floaters 3m and 8m. Each floater accepts on its own side of the man suit, and 2p is the pair-to-triplet step. Ten kinds is the wide end of this page.

Triplet 222m, sequence 456p, sequence 789s, pair 99s, and floaters West and Green Dragon. West and Green each pair a floater. 9s is the third of the pair, one copy left. 6s is also an accepting kind: a structural reading is that it lets 78999s become a sequence plus a triplet. The caption keeps all four kinds. Eleven copies against 36 is the same shanten and a very different hand.

The overlap, the four-run and the pair-plus-taatsu, is the same family one step later on this page. The isolated rank is how the two floaters are compared. It is the slice of one tile. The heading numbers below are the hand totals 24, 20, 16, and 8.

Floater strength on one skeleton

Hold the body fixed: pair 22p, run 345678s, triplet 999s, and one floater, with South already in the hand on the first three rows. The second tile does not touch the man kinds, so the man slice can match the isolated maximum. The hand total adds 2p×2 and South×3.

An isolated 3–7, with nothing else sharing its kinds, has a private maximum of five kinds and 19 copies. A 2 or an 8 has four kinds and 15. A 1 or a 9 has three kinds and 11. An honor connects only by pairing, three copies of itself. Those four numbers are the slice. On this body the man slice of the first three rows is that maximum, and the caption still prints 24, 20, and 16.

The gaps are 4, then 4, then 8. They match 19 − 15, 15 − 11, and 11 − 3. The caption uses 24, 20, 16, and 8. Adding 19 to another floater's 19 would count a shared kind twice, or count a kind the body already touches. The next section measures that.

On every row, 2s and 6s are improvement tiles. They keep shanten at 1 and raise the kind count. They are absent from the ukeire list. The ukeire page owns that split. The numbers here are the ones this skeleton printed.

Shared kinds

Drop South so the only non-man accept is the pair. Two floaters a suji apart share kinds. Suji here is the distance between the tiles. This page does not teach suji as a defense read.

The disjoint hand above, 3m with 8m, printed 10 kinds and 36 copies. Neighborhoods 1–5 and 6–9 do not meet, so 5m belongs to 3m and 6m belongs to 8m. Thirty-six is what the two slices plus the pair print as, on a pair of floaters that share no man kind.

32 and 28 are smaller than 36 because a kind shared by both floaters is one line. The page does not say that every pair of floaters overlaps. 3m and 8m, on the hand at the top, do not.

A four-run is one line

A four-run is a floater that has already stuck. 5678p is sequence 567 with 8 left over, or sequence 678 with 5 left over, or ryanmen 56 with ryanmen 78. Two parses. The ukeire list still has one row per kind. Counting effective tiles is the one-kind rule. Five-block theory is where 5678 counts as two blocks.

Isolated 3m, the four-run 5678p, sequences 123s and 456s, and pair 99s. Drawing 6p can complete 567 and leave 8, or complete 678 and leave 5. The list shows 6p×3 once. The second parse does not add a second 6p.

A second 13 with the same headline count uses a different overlap. The sou run 123456789 contributes 3s, 6s, and 9s once each.

Forty-five belongs to the hands that printed 45. A four-run plus an honor floater is a different total.

Sequence 678m, sequence 123p, pair 99p, four-run 2345s, and Red Dragon. Exporting 45 onto this hand would invent a count. The cut that shows the four-run beating the isolated tile is later, on 14 tiles.

A middle bulge can have fewer copies

A middle bulge is a clump such as 3445m: the tile has stuck, and the copies of 3m, 4m, and 5m are already partly held. Set it beside an isolated 4m on the same body: sequence 123p, sequence 456s, pair 99s, and Red Dragon.

Same kind count. The bulge has fewer copies because 3m, 4m, and 5m are already in the hand. Given these two 13s as alternate cuts, the sort takes 24 over 21. A 立直 reading may still prefer the bulge, because more of its accepts tend to leave a ryanmen. This page does not score that tendency. It prints 7 kinds and 21 copies for the bulge, and 7 kinds and 24 copies for the isolated 4m.

Headless beside a sticky hand

Headless means melds and taatsu, and no pair yet. The name is 立直. The one-shanten page owns the four class names and the warning that a classroom ranking is pedagogy. The counts below are shared. They do not make くっつき ≥ headless a law.

Triplet 222m, sequence 456m, triplet of East, ryanmen 34p, ryanmen 67s. No pair. Each ryanmen contributes four tiles: the two completions and the two tiles inside the taatsu that would make a pair. This is headless, not two floaters.

The honor sticky above is 4 kinds and 11 copies. The disjoint middle floaters are 10 kinds and 36. Headless, at 8 kinds and 28, beats the honor sticky and loses to the two middle floaters. Swap the honors and the narrow sticky stays at 11.

A connected taatsu is its own shape. 23m is a ryanmen, not 2m and 3m floating apart.

Same kind count as the honor sticky, three more copies, and the man accepts are 1m and 4m.

A pair glued to a taatsu can still be shanten 1. 6678m is pair 66 plus ryanmen 78, and it is also ryanmen 67 plus a pair on 8. That is the overlap, one step before tenpai.

Placed in one line: honor sticky 11 copies, this pair-plus-taatsu 25, headless 28, disjoint middle floaters 36. The order swaps. The tenpai version of the pair-plus-taatsu is in the keep-or-break section. This 13 has no measured 14-tile follow-up on this page.

The wide count and the wait you get

The sort reads shanten, then copies, then kinds. It does not read tanki, kanchan, or ryanmen. Draw 2p into the 36-copy hand and the pair becomes a triplet.

Throwing the tile you just drew does not return the widest one-shanten row. It returns the original 36. The 42-copy row is a different one-shanten: it breaks 345s.

The sort takes either tanki. Three copies at shanten 0 outrank 42 copies at shanten 1.

A ryanmen and a kanchan on the same sou skeleton, without promoting the pair, show the same ladder. Both beat 36.

Eight copies and four copies both outrank 36. The connected side of 4m is the same pattern.

A second skeleton keeps the lesson from collapsing into one tile string. Here the pins are 678p, and the sous are 234789999s. The widest one-shanten row is 39 copies, not 42.

立直 teaching, once the raw count is around 30, compares the accepts that leave a good wait, and treats a gap of about one tile as noise. Declining a bad-wait tenpai can be the player's choice. The sort on this page does the other thing: tanki 3, kanchan 4, and ryanmen 8 all outrank a 36-copy one-shanten. This page does not count how many of those 36 copies lead to a ryanmen. The pinfu reading of these tenpai 13s is in the 立直 section. Every one of them still holds triplet 999s.

Cuts that keep the shape

Keep the stronger floater

Three man floaters, the same pair, and the same sou body. The weak tiles are the terminals. The strong tile is 5m.

The two best 13s tie on copies and on kinds. The kind tie-break does not separate them. What remains is discard strategy. A 立直 tanyao plan also wants a terminal gone. It does not pick a unique winner between 1m and 9m on this table.

Cutting the pair jumps to shanten 2. The sort rejects that row even though 48 is larger than 28.

Keep the four-run

Add South to the 45-copy four-run. The honor is the tile outside the overlap.

Keeping the run and cutting the honor beats cutting the isolated 3m, and it beats breaking the run. The 45-copy 13 is the four-run already shown. The two narrower 13s are these.

The 8p row is also shanten 1 with 24 copies. Its 13 was not measured as its own call, so this page does not name that 13's kinds. 45, then 29, then 24, all at shanten 1: keep the four-run.

Keep the pair plus the taatsu

2234s is pair 22 plus ryanmen 34. Draw 2s and one 2 joins 34 to make 234, with the other two 2s as the pair. Draw 5s and 345 is a sequence, with 22 still the pair. Both finishes are ryanmen. 2s is not a tanki.

Add White Dragon. The sort keeps the overlap because 6 is greater than 3 at the same shanten.

Six against three is the keep-versus-break. The overlap stays.

Sticky shape before one-shanten

The floaters are already the accept list at shanten 2. This 13 has three man floaters, the pair, and 34567899s. The sou triplet is not closed: only two 9s are held.

Thirty-seven copies at shanten 2 is a different hand from the 36-copy one-shanten. There is no chain from this 37 to the 3m-and-8m hand. The improvement rows keep shanten at 2 and raise the kind count. 2s, 7s, 4s, and 5s are the whole list.

Improvement is a second list

Ukeire lowers shanten. An improvement draw does not. This site lists a tile when shanten stays the same and the kind count rises. A draw that only adds copies of a kind you already accept is invisible. Tenpai has an empty list. The 国标 name 改良进张 is the wider idea of a draw that leaves the distance unchanged and improves the wait. The list here is the narrower test.

The 5m ladder hand has 7 ukeire kinds and 24 copies. It also has 21 improvement kinds. The first two rows are 2s and 6s, each moving the kind count to 15, and 11 further kinds sit in the tail. Those tiles are outside the ukeire list. The phrase in the analyzer, that the effective-tile count becomes 15 kinds, is the kind count after the draw, still at shanten 1.

The honor sticky has 25 improvement kinds. Its first rows are 3p and 7p, each to 11 kinds, with 15 further kinds in the tail. The shanten-2 hand above has exactly four, and every one of them was printed. Define the split once. The ukeire page owns the general rule.

立直: a ryanmen can still fail pinfu

立直. The sort in the earlier sections already ran. This section is the filter a riichi player may apply afterwards. Good-wait comparisons, tanyao, pinfu, furiten, and dora are that filter. The analyzer did not return those words.

Pinfu, in this ruleset, wants a closed hand, four sequences, a valueless pair, and a ryanmen completion. The fu sheet, +0 on a ryanmen and +2 on a tanki, a kanchan, or a penchan, lives on wait types and fu. This page does not recompute it.

On the skeleton with triplet 999s, the tanki, the 23m ryanmen, the 13m kanchan, and the 34m ryanmen each still hold that triplet. A pinfu reading fails. Tanyao fails on 999s, and the 23m wait includes 1m. Ryanmen and pinfu are different tests. The sort already took 3, 4, and 8 copies over 36. Refusing the tanki, once the raw count is around 30, is the player's choice. This site keeps the tenpai.

A different 14 agrees with pinfu. Terminals remain, so tanyao still fails.

The sort and the pinfu reading pick the same cut. Eight copies at tenpai against 24 at one-shanten.

Headless can reach a ryanmen and still fail pinfu, because a triplet remains. Draw 2p into the headless 13.

Both best 13s are ryanmen. Both fail pinfu. The tie is 8 copies and 2 kinds, so discard strategy is where a player chooses between them. The 3-copy rows stay unnamed.

Tanyao can agree with a tie and still leave it a tie. On the three-floater 14, both best cuts remove a terminal. The sort already ties 1m and 9m at 28 copies and 8 kinds. There is no third terminal that is "more tanyao."

Genbutsu, furiten, dora, and the pond are outside the sort. The one-shanten page owns the genbutsu example. Riichi Mahjong is the rules page. Double ukeire also shows up in defense writing as a shape opponents treat as live. That is not an efficiency result, and this page does not teach a deal-in read.

An edge wait on an honor-floater 14 is a cut table only. The 13s were not re-measured.

国标: the structural list, then the plan

国标. Chi exists. Sequence accepts stay in the structural list at four minus the copies held. This sidebar does not apply a 川麻 "no chi" discount, and it does not multiply a sequence by a weighting factor. 实质进张 is the subset of the structural list that advances the fan you chose. A wait that is structural tenpai and misses the minimum fan is a plan question. This page does not stamp a fan total on any sample. 平和 in the World Mahjong text is a different yaku from 立直 pinfu. The wait page owns that sentence.

全带幺, also called 带幺九, wants 1 and 9 in the groups. On that plan the 立直 floater rank, 3–7 ahead of 1 and 9, is the wrong default. On the ladder above, the 9m row is 16 copies and the 5m row is 24. The 全带幺 plan keeps the 9m row and gives up the 5m row. 断幺 is the opposite plan. Name the plan. No fan total was computed. See Chinese Official Mahjong.

The structural 13 below is pung-shaped blocks plus two floaters. The sequence tiles around 4m and around 6p are in the list. A 碰碰和 plan does not count those sequence kinds as 实质进张. East×2 is the pair's third, and it is in the list.

Three draws, three different agreements. The agreement is about which tile came in.

Draw 3m, the tile that completes a sequence with 4m. The sort takes the ryanmen. 碰碰和 does not want that wait.

Draw the pair's third. The sort takes a tanki on the remaining floater. The pung plan wants that tanki.

Draw a second 4m. The sort and the 碰碰和 plan pick the same cut: throw 6p and wait in shanpon, both waits completing a pung.

The analyzer did not learn 碰碰和. On the 3m draw the plan and the sort disagree. On the East draw the measured tanki is the pung wait, and the other best cut is the mirror at 3 copies. On the second 4m they agree. Say which tile came in.

川麻: 定缺 can reject the widest cut

川麻, in the 血战到底 style these examples follow. House rules differ on 血流, tile exchange, seven pairs, and the score cap. The claims here are 定缺, no chi, and 查叫. Honors are not tiles. Every example in this section is number tiles only. See Sichuan Mahjong.

定缺: while a tile of the missing suit remains, it is the discard. A tenpai that still holds that suit is not a legal win. There is no chi, so a sequence kind is not doubled, and the 国标 weighting is not applied. Opening teaching in Sichuan ranks a pair ahead of a ryanmen, then a kanchan, then a penchan, because a live pair can be punged. That rank is not the ukeire number. 查叫 at exhaustive draw pays tenpai against a hand that is not tenpai. It does not pay a wider one-shanten. Seven pairs are omitted here. Count them only on tables that score them.

定缺 disagrees with the tie. The sort wants to keep 5m.

The sort's preferred rows are the illegal ones while 万 is missing. The legal cut is the 29-copy one-shanten.

定缺 can also agree, and the result is a penchan. The only man tile is 2m, and it is already the best cut.

Where the count stops

The sort does not know yaku, a minimum fan, 定缺, 查叫, pinfu, tanyao, furiten, or dora. It does not know the pond or the dead wall. Copies are four minus the copies in the hand. It does not know wait quality: a tanki, a kanchan, a penchan, and a ryanmen can share a shanten, and the copies then decide. It does not return a shape name. Block boundaries are a marking you draw. 5678 is two blocks in five-block theory and one run in the string.

One kind stays one line. On the 45-copy four-run, 6p is ×3 and it is one row, even though two parses use it. On 4m with 7m, 5m is one row and 6m is one row. The ukeire page is the general statement.

The discard drill is discard training. One suit, 8, 11, or 14 tiles, thirty seconds. It scores the cut with the largest remaining winning-tile count, and a cut that is not tenpai scores 0. It does not grade a good wait, a yaku, or 定缺. The how-to on that drill is discard strategy.

The analyzer on a mixed 14 uses the ladder on this page: lower shanten, then more copies, then more kinds. The drill is where you practice a one-suit cut. When a wide one-shanten and a narrow tenpai are both available, the analyzer takes the tenpai. The drill takes the tenpai too, because the non-tenpai cut scores 0 there as well. Neither one refuses a tanki in favor of a sticky one-shanten. Open the 14-tile examples above and follow the analyzer link when the hand is mixed. Use the drill when the deal is one suit.

1. The distance, in how to count shanten.
2. Kinds, once each, and hand-only copies, in counting effective tiles.
3. The four one-shanten class names, in one-shanten. The ranking is pedagogy. The swap on this page is the evidence.
4. What counts as a block, in five-block theory. A floater is not a block until it sticks.
5. A tie on shanten, copies, and kinds, in discard strategy.
6. The wait at shanten 0, in wait types, including the fu on a ryanmen.
7. The table. Riichi Mahjong, Chinese Official Mahjong, or Sichuan Mahjong. A sentence travels only into the ruleset it names.