Situational analysis

When performing situational analysis, a player accounts for the game round and each players' current score to determine their decisions.

In Japanese mahjong, a player's final placement (1st/2nd/etc.) is often important. Due to the oka and uma systems, there are huge bonuses or penalties for changing place. In competitive environments, placement can be important for gaining rating points. Therefore, players should act differently as the overall point conditions change. For example, when given the exact same hand, a player with a huge lead might not want to riichi, but a player far behind may be desperate to riichi. Therefore, it is not only important to look at the hand, but each players' current points as well.

Hand values

Main articles: Scoring table and Gyakuten

Players should know the potential hand values in order to accurately access a point difference. Knowing the score table is important when determining when to riichi and when to open the hand. For instance, if it is the last round, there is no need to riichi when 2000 points behind 1st place with a 2 han hand.

Relative goals

Especially in the last hand, players may need to address the different goals of the other players. Players in last generally have a win-at-all-cost mentality. Players in either second or third may seek to improvement their placement. Point leaders may simply want the game to end and/or protect their position. The point differences between players indicate any sort of possibility for these scenarios.

Fourth Place Avoidance

In the online clients tenhou.net and Majsoul (before Celestial rank), there is a huge penalty for 4th place for players that are of a high rank.

• Tenhou.net: If a 6-dan player plays, they get 75/30/0/-120 points for placing 1st through 4th, respectively.
• Majsoul: If a Saint 1 player plays in Jade Room, they get 125/60/-5/-255 rank points for placing 1st through 4th, respectively (counting uma).

Say a Saint 1 plays in Majsoul. When in 3rd place, and an action has a 50% chance to net 2nd, but a 50% chance to net 4th, it has terrible value. If successful, it nets only +65 points, but a failure results in a significant -255 points. Even with a 50% chance for 1st, and a 25% chance for 4th, it is still a net negative.

It is important to restate that huge 4th place penalties only apply to high ranked players. If higher ranked, do what is possible to avoid being last - try not to take risks late in the game, even if there is no immediate threat of being 4th. At lower levels, it is best to improve on average placement (including fundamentals like tile efficiency and defense) rather than focus on avoiding 4th specifically.

The reason the 4th-place penalties is so high to punish players for leaving early. When playing with physical tiles, the point distribution is more even (they tend to favor 1st place, due to the oka system). Of course, no matter where you play: if you are currently in 4th place, you should obviously do what you can to escape.