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.

Honiisou
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).

Detection

A player's discard pile may lack one particular suit. This may be an indicator of a honitsu hand being developed.

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
HON                                                  

Most yaku which allow one suit of tiles are compatible with honitsu. This excludes sanshoku and sanshoku doukou, which require use of all three suits. 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. The hand value decreases by 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) without 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