Asymmetrical Tile Trick
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Asymmetrical Tile Trick | ||||||||
Trick information
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The Asymmetrical Tile Trick is a Trick in the Ten manga series. It is played by Hiroyuki Igawa on the rep player Muraishi in chapter 4.
Context
Sawada, who is considering Hiroyuki as a rep player for his yakuza gang, organizes a match between him and one of their current players, Muraishi, in order to test Hiroyuki's skill and see how he plays. On the South 4 round, Muraishi, who has already made 3 calls on the souzu suit, seems to consider calling again on the 4-sou tile that Sawada discards. However, he lets it pass, instead drawing a tile and discarding a 9-sou. Hiroyuki, who knows that Muraishi is probably going for a chinitsu (flush) of souzu, draws a 5-sou, which will advance his hand as long as he instead discards his current 4-sou tile. Hiroyuki needs to decide which tile to discard.
Summary
Hiroyuki deduces that, before drawing a tile and discarding the 9-sou, Muraishi's hand had been 5-6-8-9 sou:
- There are four 4-sou in total and Hiroyuki could see three of them: one in his hand, one on the table, and the one Sawada discarded. Therefore, at the time he considered calling on Sawada's 4-sou, Muraishi could not have been aiming for a pon (triplet).
- The call could also not be any chii (sequence) with the 3-sou, because one had been discarded by Muraishi and the other three were in Hiroyuki's hand. Consequently, the only remaining possibility was a 4-5-6 chii, meaning that Muraishi had the 5-sou and 6-sou in his hand.
- The remaining tile had been between the 6-sou and 9-sou in Muraishi's hand, therefore it had to be one of 6-, 7-, 8- or 9-sou.
- It couldn't be a 9-sou, because then Muraishi would have called the 4-5-6 chii and won, win the two 9-sou forming the remaining pair.
- It couldn't be a 6-sou, because three turns earlier Muraishi had discarded a 3-sou. If his hand at that point had been 3-5-6-6-9, discarding the 3-sou would have meant breaking up a tenpai, which he had no reason to do.
- It couldn't be a 7-sou, because then Muraishi wouldn't have considered calling on Sawada's 4-sou. He would already have been in tenpai with a 5-6-7 sequence, with the possibility of turning his single wait into a double wait if he drew an 8-sou. He wouldn't have any reason to trade this for the more restrictive 4-5-6 chii.
- Therefore, it had to be an 8-sou, making his hand 5-6-8-9.
At this point, Hiroyuki reasons that Muraishi's discard of the 9-sou meant that the tile he had just drawn was one of two options: either a 7-sou, making his wait 5- or 8-sou, or an 8-sou, making his wait 4- or 7-sou. However, Hiroyuki had already noticed that Muraishi had a habit of arranging his tiles pointed in the proper direction. When Muraishi drew his most recent tile, he had rotated it before adding it to his hand, making sure that it was pointing up. Since the 8-sou tile is symmetrical, meaning it looks the same no matter its orientation, Hiroyuki is able to conclude that Muraishi's draw must have been the 7-sou, and therefore the 4-sou was his winning tile, while the 5-sou was safe. Hiroyuki then is able to safely discard the 5-sou and then win by drawing his winning tile soon after.
