This will be a short post, but it merely concludes what I was discussing last week. Last week we learned how to determine your own Shan Ten. This is a useful technique to learn in order to adjust your play style accordingly.
Now I discuss how to predict your opponent's Shan Ten. Since you cannot see your opponent's hand, the best guess at their Shan Ten range is through their discards. Think about it logically; someone who discards many tiles either has a very low Shan Ten (Close to winning, so they are only looking for one or two specific tiles) or a very high Shan Ten (Less likely, although this may be a sign that they are going for a special hand, i.e. 7 Pairs or 13 Orphans).
Granted, when playing computer opponents, you don't actually get to see them remove a tile from their own hand, which is an easy sign of decreasing Shan Ten (Remember that if you replace one of your potential discards to form a meld, you subtract 1 Shan Ten). Still, let's look at the situation from last week again:
Here we see South player declaring Riichi after their fourth discard. From this, we can ascertain that their Shan Ten count was between 1 and 5. It would be very rare (Probably never) for a computer to not declare Riichi if possible, so then we narrow down to between 2 and 5. The most probable number is either 2 or 3, depending on how you interpret the discards.
Their first discard is 2 Pin. Since it isn't a terminal or honor, we can assume that the computer isn't going for a half or full flush of Pin, and we can also assume that they do not hold 1, 2, or 3 Pin.
The alternate assumption is that they drew that tile during their turn, and discarded as it did not decrease their Shan Ten number. This latter assumption is more likely, but again since we cannot physically see which tile they discard, it is only an assumption. In real life, the former assumption would hold if they kept their draw and discarded the 2 Pin from their own hand.
The next two discards are both honors. Therefore, we can easily assume that these were their draws, and that they are not going for a hand that utilizes honors. Alternatively, these were in their hand from the start, but that would mean they kept drawing tiles that lowered their Shan Ten count. It becomes less probable that they keep drawing necessary tiles when the Shan Ten count is close to 2 or 1.
Finally, their Riichi discard is 4 Man, so they reached Tenpai as of the fourth draw. Then they win by Tsumo on their sixth draw.
I'll end by repeating that against computer opponents, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to know their Shan Ten count just by their discards. Their discards can give you an idea as to what kind of hand they are building. In addition, any melds they form by taking a tile from the pool essentially lowers their potential Shan Ten count by 3 (As a meld is a sequence of 3 tiles, and since the meld is visible, the highest possible Shan Ten is therefore 11, however low a probability that may be).
The next topic will probably be reading hands based on the discard pool; a very important technique to learn if you don't want to deal into someone.
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