Archived from groups: rec.games.mahjong (
More info?)
Hello Cofa,
First, this is great help and thanks for taking the time to do this.
I'm sorry if the explainations are not clear.
First, the applet is not really a game. Rather, it shows snapshots of a
game.
To make it easier, think you are playing a real Mah-Jong game.
The melds displayed then belong to the player on your right. The
discards are all the discards he has done from the start of the deal.
Now it is your time to discard a tile, and you need to know which tiles
are the other players waiting for (dangerous discards), and which ones
are safe to discard.
This is this exact situation your are in when using the applet, but you
need only consider the player on your right (whose melds and discards
are shown), although my final Mah-Jong player will consider all players.
So the question is: In this situation, if I was to discard, say, a
'North Wind' tile, what are the chances that the player on my rght will
use it?
If you can deduce from his/her discards and melds that it is very safe,
you can rate it so. Otherwise, it might look like s/he could well use
this tile, and in this case, the tile NW could be rated as 'Dangerous'.
For most of the tiles, you probably won't be able to tell, but you
probably will for other tiles.
As an example, say the player on your right has just discarded a 8
Circle, and has a Pung of 7 Circle . Then you might deduce that
discarding a 8 Circle is 'very safe', and discarding a 9 circle is 'safe'.
What I try to capture is the 'intuition' experienced players have when
seeing a snap shot of a game like this. I wouldn't know what to discard
myself, as I only know the basics of the game.
I hope this is clearer for you now, please tell me if not
Thank you very much for your help,
Nico
>
> Hello Nico,
>
> I tried playing with your applet and the following are my comments:
>
> 1. On your intro page I have difficulty understanding your exact meaning and
> I am not sure if my understanding is correct. On your intro page you wrote:
>
> "The applet shows you all the discards and melds a player has made up to a
> given point of a mah jong game. Your mission, if you accept it, it to guess
> which tiles the player might be waiting for, and which ones would be safe
> discards with respect to this player.
>
> The Mah-Jong program will use this data to guess which tiles each player
> is/isn't waiting for, so as to discard the least dangerous tile. However,
> this is only one part of the program, as it also relies on other criteria,
> such as which tiles have been exposed so far."
>
> I am not quite sure what is my (the one writing this message) position in
> your applet game...
>
> (a) Am I the one holding the melds? If so, are you asking me to pick only
> one from the melds to discard and determine it with a rating (of five)? OR,
> are you asking me to rate ALL pieces in the melds? Further, do I rate the
> piece(s) based on the pieces already discarded (see also last paragraph of
> this message)?
>
> (b) Does the "player" of your applet game hold those melds? If so, what
> exactly should I (the one writing this message) do? How do I pick a piece to
> discard? Where do I pick from?
>
> 2. I started from the intro page to the applet without problem (I'm using
> Windows 98, IE 6.0.2800.1106). Minor problem is sometimes my cursor is
> disappeared.
>
> 3. On a sample page, underneath the "Melds" pieces, you ask "Which tiles
> would be Very Safe,...?" If you could give more precise instructions would
> be better (see 1 above). Example is: "You hold this hand. Which piece would
> you discard? How do you rate it: Very Safe, ..., or Very Dangerous?"
>
> 4. Also underneath the "Melds" is another section that one can pick those
> pieces of an entire mahjong set. Don't understand what to do with this. Lack
> of instructions.
>
> I noted that you have specified your program to be based on the Chinese
> Classical. I still want to try it if the above are clear.
>
> Other than the issues as outlined above, I am not sure what good your Neural
> Networks would learn from the inputs. The discards are based on the hand one
> is holding - Whether a discard is safe or dangerous largely depend on
> whether it will be captured by others. Anyway, this is just my thought.
>
> Hope this to be of help!
>
> Cofa Tsui
> www.iMahjong.com
>
>
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