Honiisou
Honiisou 「混一色」 (often called honitsu 「混一」) is a standard yaku. Normally translated as a "half flush", this yaku features a hand composed only of honor tiles and tiles of a single suit. If the hand contains no honor tiles, then the chinitsu yaku is counted instead.
| Type | Yaku |
|---|---|
| Kanji | 混一色 |
| English | Half flush |
| Value |
3 han 2 han (open) |
| Speed | Fast |
| Difficulty | Easy |
Tile pattern
Agari: or
Formation
Naturally, it is easier to form honitsu when your hand starts with many tiles of the same suit. It is often unwise to break up a completed group of a different suit to force honitsu (though if you really need points, it's possible).
Discard characteristics
When a player's discard pile lacks one particular suit, honitsu is likely. This is especially true when discarding middle tiles and/or dora of the other suits early on.
After a player discards a tile of the same suit of their suspected honitsu (e.g. discaring souzu after discarding only manzu/pinzu), it is likely that they are tenpai or at least iishanten.
Compatibility
^ Ippatsu requires riichi to be of any use.
| RCH | DRI | IPP | SMO | TAN | PFU | IPK | ITT | YAK | SDJ | SDO | TOI | SNA | SNK | CHA | JUN | RPK | SSG | HRO | HON | CHN | CHI | RIN | HAI | HOU | CHK | |
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Most yaku which allow one suit of tiles are compatible with honitsu. Sanshoku and sanshoku doukou require use of all three suits, and are thus excluded. Honitsu is not compatible with chinitsu, because every chinitsu hand is honitsu. Honitsu combined with tanyao or junchan would actually imply chinitsu instead, since there would be no honours.
Honitsu is commonly paired with with yakuhai (calling pon for honor tiles helps speed the hand), ittsu (which already has 9 tiles of the same suit), and shousangen (which already has 8 honor tiles).
Value
This yaku is affected by kuisagari, meaning this yaku loses 1 han when open. Honitsu can still be used for open hands, though. When combined with other yaku and/or dora, the speed increase can be well worth the -1 han. For example, honitsu + yakuhai + dora 1 is worth ~7700 (4 han 30 fu), and the +1 han from closed only brings it up to 8000 (5 han) before calling riichi.
Bakahon
Bakahon 「バカホン」 is a slang term for a honitsu-only hand with open calls and no dora. This hand only scores 2000 points, which is not worth the amount of effort required for honitsu. (Since every 1 han doubles the score until 8000, even something like open honitsu + 1 dora is worthwhile.)
External links
- Honiisou in Japanese Wikipedia