Yup, genshin's music is on another level

Maybe could have thrown the 5s instead of the 8s, to hit ssk upon pairing up my 3m or 4m. Looking back, considering that the score gap between me and 3rd was quite big, maybe I should have greeded for ssk value (aim for riichi+tanyao+ssk). But I also can't say for certain what the right answer is

In hindsight, it's debatable. Usually it's not wrong to fold there. My thought process in the game was: 1) my hand has only 1 safe tile at that point, so it's quite likely I will run out of safe tiles if I decide to fold 2) when kamicha declared riichi, 8m has a 1 in 12 chance of dealing in. Plus it's still early in the game. I decided to take my chances 3) at the point where I oikake riichi, 7s deal in was around 1 in 11 chance. Discarding a 10% danger tile to oikake riichi gives an expected point loss of -1600 while betaori (folding) gives an expected point loss of -1700. The difference is 100 points in favour of oikake riichi (and would be larger considering the 7s is more like 9.1%), but I think both arguments for oikake and betaori are reasonable here. If I had a comfortable score lead, the correct decision there is definitely to betaori though. It's difficult to calculate all the numbers on the spot in a 5+20 second game, so I just went with whatever felt right to me. Riichi mahjong strategy by Fukuchi Makoto and Statistical Mahjong Strategy by Miinin are good books. The second book is where I got the above numbers from

Putting it on hiatus for now, since it's much easier for me to stream games and narrate my thought process there! Also prevents people from thinking that I "cherry-pick" games too, which is a common feedback I've received from this series

Yeah that's true, looking back there was a merit to chii that 4s