Kasumi Iwato: Eisui’s Most Dangerous Player?

Having some writer’s block on next Eisui post, and while I was talking with my friend about it, we discussed their power ranking.

Mine goes like this:  1. Jindai (?)    2. Kasumi   3. Hatsumi   4. Haru    5. Tomoe

Jindai truthfully hasn’t impressed me yet, but she’s supposedly something like Koromo so I’ll hold my judgement until the individuals and give her the tentative number 1 ranking. The stickler on this list though is the Kasumi and Hatsumi rank.

For one, we already got the qualifying players for the individual tournament for Kagoshima and its Jindai, Hatsumi and Rise. No Kasumi on the list. Thus, I was asked if this meant that Hatsumi is stronger than Kasumi?

Not exactly.

We must remember that part of Eisui’s overall strategy is to hide Kasumi’s ability as a hidden ace against their opponents. This of course meant that Kasumi isn’t going to use her ability in the individuals. And while I would like to praise Kasumi’s defensive ability and her ability to retain points. Hatsumi ability to get her wind yakuman if the conditions aligned is going to rake a lot of points even if it only activates every few matches.

If Kasumi used her ability though, I’m pretty sure that she’s going to be on the individual qualifier list. Seriously, her ability is very very good.  Truthfully, the only reason she didn’t dominate the game when she activated her one suit magnet was because Saki is her opponent.

….Saki who managed to hijack Toyone’s ability and can help someone to bypass Kasumi’s abiliy (Kyouko).  Also, unfortunately for Kasumi her one-tile magnet ALSO increases Saki’s chance to get a rinshan kaihou as shown when Saki went into a small streak in the 2nd half of the match.

 A very quick, highly inaccurate statistic calculation should give you something like this:

There is 144 tiles in mahjong.  If we assume that the probability of making a kan is  like 4/136; that meant  you have 2.9411% chance to make it. Now with one suit out its 4/100 or you have a 4% chance to make it. It may not look much but Saki chance to kan have improved by 36%. 

And if you consider that Saki has some quad magnet on her own …..

Yeah. ^^

Still, I digress, this post is to explain why Kasumi’s ability is awesome.

A cursory reading of the manga would show you that this is because Kasumi’s hand are very valuable.  With the ability activated, Kasumi is guaranteed to always have a Chinitsu or Honitsu yaku. Its the primary reason why I put Kasumi above Hatsumi truthfully. Her ability doesn’t really need a precondition to work. And even if its a yakuman battle one wants, I believe Kasumi is also the winner there as well.

The series might not have pointed it out  since the whole match devolved in a battle for speed, but Kasumi’s ability makes very easy to get a yakuman as well. Heck, there are a few instance when Kasumi qualifies for a suu-ankou there if she developed her hand a bit longer. If Kasumi gets the bamboo suit as well, you also trigger the All-Green Yakuman.

Still,  don’t take my word for it. Try playing mahjong with Kasumi’s power in mind. Here is how we did it:

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3p Mahjong – One tile Magnet Edition

1. Shuffle the mahjong tiles. Make sure that they are turned over. (No cheating! ^^)

2. Using the shuffled tiles, randomly take tiles to build the dead wall. This is 14 tiles total; arranged into two stacks.

3. Once, you’ve finished building the dead wall. Turn over the remaining tiles and sort them out according to their suits – bamboo, characters and circles. The honor tiles are divided evenly to each player.

4. Said honor tiles plus one suit are then turned over and shuffled again and made into 3 separate walls.

5. After that start the game!

Below is a sample hand in this type of game….

STARTING HAND

Then have the following draws. It might be best to try to think of this as a puzzle. Once you saw your draw, think of something to discard from the remaining ones. (Highlight below to see the draws)

Turn 1:
Five of Bamboo

Turn 2:
One of Bamboo

Turn 3:
eight of bamboo

Turn 4:
nine of bamboo

Turn 5:
one of bamboo

Turn 6:
seven of bamboo

Turn 7:
East Wind

Turn 8:
Seven of bamboo

Turn 9:
Five of Bamboo

Turn 10:
Four of Bamboo

Turn 11:
Red Dragon

Turn 12:
Nine of Bamboo

…. I’ll stop here. In most of our games, you should really have won already before Turn 12 comes. Or really someone already did.   So how did you do?

PS: If you’re trying for that variation, please ban yakus like “all green yakuman” that gives large advantage to a particular suit. Also increase the points from 25000 to something like 50,000 – 100,000.  ^^

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