The comparison & result
The test compared a player taking every available pung and chow with a player keeping the hand closed. It explored what happens when calls are made without preserving a route to the three-faan minimum.
Across 100,000 hands, the report counted roughly 186,000 blocked win attempts and the eager caller taking roughly one win in six. Blocked attempts can occur more than once in a hand; they are not a count of separate games. The result concerns these two policies. For your own call, check the value and winning route that remain.
At your table
- Claim pongs that BRING faan: dragons, your seat wind, the round wind
- NOT the third random bamboo just because it's there — ask what the call does to your route to three
Check your table’s scoring rules before applying the finding. Read the Hong Kong reference.
How it was tested
Tested in the Hé Fēn Lab: 100,000 hands played by the same engine that scores your games — eager callers against closed hands, seats swapped so the deal is fair.
The players were software policies, not human participants. This report describes the published experiment; it does not establish the best move for every possible hand or opponent.
Results without a published uncertainty interval should be read as point estimates. Similar results do not prove two choices are equivalent.
Read the Lab’s method and limitationsPublished by Hé Fēn Mahjong. Ask about this finding or suggest a correction.