User blog:TheWickedWizardOfOz/Match for 5th Vice-Captain's Match Predictions

Given that there's going to be a 2 month break, I figure it's a good time to make another prediction/analysis on where the match is going to go.

So, obviously, I believe in and want Mairu to completely dominate the match; I believe that on her own, Mairu could 100% take first place all by herself, even in just 1 hanchan. Given her start, I don't think we're too far off from having that happen either. I'm just concerned if this match ends up like the Vanguard's match: we get to Mairu's first dealer turn, and she wins a couple of good hands, then the others step up and in the second half she doesn't do anything, except maybe complete one more cheap reservation.

I think this is a likely way the match will turn because it means that in the Captain's match, Shindouji doesn't have a yakuman to fall back on in the last round to scoop up a lot of points with - eg, more suspense, better story-telling, etc. It's not necessarily a bad way for the match to turn out - I just wish that if it does, it didn't line up so much with the vanguard's match, it'd just be too repetitive.

That said, I'm excited for where this is going. I am 50/50 on Mairu completing the reservation with her chinitsu. On one hand, she did exactly that in the semifinals (I guess it was a honitsu but still), without calling tiles for 9 han, so I fully believe in her ability to win an open 6-han hand. However, that'd just be too convenient. A baiman and sanbaiman combined are already 40,000 points, considering neither are won as the dealer (maximum is 52,000 points if the sanbaiman is won as the dealer). Not even including the rest of Mairu's winnings, and even if she broke even, they'd still win with just these two wins. So I think that the others will block Mairu's haneman somehow. I don't think that Yukiko will break out her ability without being the dealer and having a good hand, so it's up to Kinue and Hiroko.

Mairu has only failed 1 reservation so far, so I don't think it'd look any worse on her if she didn't complete this one, mahjong is just that type of game. When your starting hand looks really good and is only a few tiles away from tenpai, more often than not it feels like you don't complete these types of hands compared to hands that are farther away from winning but end up turning out really good, either through dora or managing to get some yaku together or something like that. Himeko even highlights this "As your hand gets closer and closer to completion, the number of helpful tiles decrease." Either way, Hiroko is lucky they just passed her dealer turn, if she were the dealer right now and Mairu tsumo'd for a haneman, Mairu would be just under 2000 points away from first two hands into the match, if Mairu tsumos there's about a 5000 point buffer, which is still pretty bad, but Mairu's not gonna win that in one hand most likely since she likes scoring between 2-3 han.

Plus, both Hiroko and Kinue have had pretty good showings so far, Hiroko maintaining complete positive scores on the national stage (even against Mairu!) while Kinue was beaten by Davin but did well against Uzusumi (with Sae's help). They might pull off some collaboration in order to take away Mairu's win; however, unlike other players shown thus far, Hiroko (the player to Mairu's right) hasn't shown the ability to play disruption and ruin hands like this, and Kinue hasn't shown this ability, and in fact seems to rely on other players to help her make it through the rounds when facing stronger opponents. I think Kinue might win here since it's her dealer turn, and it's harder to pull off reservations in bonus turns because you can't guarantee they'll be in the Captain's match. But, I'd love it if Hiroko won.

I focus more on Hiroko because I think that she'll want to regain the points she lost playing into Mairu's damaten. I'm actually surprised that Hiroko played into it, having played against her in the semifinal and probably going through her play records, I expected Hiroko to have a better defensive game. Yes, Mairu's play records probably show nothing supernatural or exploitable, but c'mon Hiroko, you know she's fast, even without calling. Mairu is by and far the best player at that table, yeah, she reached tenpai in 6 turns, but looking at her discards (South -> 3-wan -> 1-sou -> 7-Wan -> Chun -> 3-pin), it honestly seems like she's close to tenpai anyways if not already there, having discarded 3 middle tiles  as well as 4  tsumogiri, when the dora is 9-pin,  and then Hiroko discards a dangerous tile after Mairu changed her hand for the second time (but also hindsight bias I guess.)

Beyond the first two hands, I expect Mairu to continue to win until she's satisfied, especially if she doesn't win the haneman. I think Yukiko will string together a couple of wins, probably all tsumo in order for Ritz to keep the point difference between the top three more manageable; I imagine she'll win another dealer baiman though, the point difference would be too big if it were a haneman but too small if it were a sanbaiman. She managed to win 23,000 points in the semifinal, which sounds impressive on paper, but she also won a dealer's baiman so she actually would have had a negative point gain without it.

I can't make heads or tails out of Kinue though. She won a baiman off of Megan, and then immediately lost the points she worked so hard for back to Megan. Which I suppose is also part of her character. She also had a pretty good win streak in the quarterfinals, but still had a pretty minimal point gain after Uzusumi's yakuman. She's always worrying about something, I think she gets that from Kyuoko, but she never acts accordingly.

I wouldn't be surprised if Hiroko and Kinue don't win a single hand - but Ritz has been avoiding that so far in the 5th place match. I imagine they'll win one or two, and the rest will go to Mairu and Yukiko. Given that people complained that the Side-A and especially the Side-B semifinals didn't move in terms of standings, I wouldn't be surprised if Mairu took first and Himeko extended that with two keys before they got brought down by the other captains. I'm 100% not interested in the standings staying the same, but they might!

What do you think will happen?