These are the most basic of strats – things you’ll learn in playing for first dozen games, just typed up here in case you missed anything.

LEVEL ONE STRAT FOR SUPERNOOBS: Go for Tanyao or Yakuhai.

- discard 1s and 9s.

- discard Winds that aren’t worth a Yaku.

- if you are out of 1s, 9s, and crap Winds, and don’t have a pair of Dragons or good Winds yet, forget Yakuhai, go for Tanyao.

- call anything that includes all 2s through 8s.

- Win.

LEVEL TWO STRAT FOR KINDANOOBS: Go for Reach.

- don’t call open Kan, Pon or Chi.

- Hey. HEY. Don’t call.

- Throw away tiles in the following order – individual honors, suit tiles that are more than two away from other tiles, one tile out of pairs when you have like three pairs.

- Focus on making three groups of three (triple or straight), and a pair, and your fourth set needing one tile to become a group of three. Have a 568? ditch the 8. have a 12 in onee suit and a 45 in another, and need to pick one to keep? ditch the 12, because only one tile completes that (the 3), the other has 2 (3 and 6).

- Reach when you can.

LEVEL THREE STRAT FOR JUST-STARTING-NOT-TO-NOOB:
(Requirements: Know your Yaku)

OFFENSIVE STRAT
Okay. First off, don’t open your hand if you don’t have a good reason. The only hands that you should open are big hands (7000+ pts), or fast hands (hands that are one away from Tenpai with lots of waits). NOTE: DO NOT OPEN BIG AND FAST HANDS. Only ‘or’. Not ‘and’. ‘And’ hands are rare, don’t lessen their impact. Remember that Reach doubles the point value of small hands.

That being said, let’s begin.
Look at your hand. Find in it the parts that will become your four groups, and your pair. Build towards a Reachable hand. Drop poor waits for great waits. Here’s an example: follow along.

Okay. Look at your hand as what it could become, Not what it is:

M334-something is either (234,345,or 333). then either P456 or P678 (4_6_8 is 456/678),
then 2345 is (_23_ + _45_) which is two group, then one more for your pair. If other things come together, ther the 33 wil be your pair, but no reason to mess with that stuff now. So, first things first, the 7M, the 9S, and the white are failtiles – they don’t connect to things. Discard them from the worst to the best.
HOW TO TELL HOW GOOD OR BAD A TILE IS
Count the number of tiles that ‘make it better’. Like the White – there’s only three tiles in the deck that make it any better (the other White dragons). Now, the 9S – there are 3 9s (that pair it up), 4 8s (that make it an 89 waiting on a 7), and 4 7s (making it a 7_9). so, 11. The 7M needs a 5,6,7,8,9 – 19.
So, out goes the White. Time passes, and you are down to this:

Now, you only have one pair – breaking up a pair is a Bad Idea if you don’t have a backup, as pairs are hard to get on purpose, especially when you only have a few tiles that are free to make it. So, this hand is:

Pair of 3M, 67M waiting on 5/8, that 468P waiting on a 5 (ditch the 8) or a 7 (ditch the 4), and then the glorious 23456, which wiats on a 1, 4, or 7.
The 4M isn’t helping, because if you draw a 2M, and you ditch the 3, now you are up one sequence, but down your pair.
These are redundant waits. Think of this: 568. you are like “ooh, i get a 7, that’s 678″, but you don’t need the 8 for that – you’ve got 567. so you don’t need that 8 – pitch it, keep the 56, and get a tile that might help somewhere else. Same as if you’ve got, like, 56 89. If you get a 7, you still need to fill that 56 in – so, if you’ve got another 2-part sequence you can work on, pitch the 89.