ezyang’s blog

the arc of software bends towards understanding

April, 2014

Calculating Shanten in Mahjong

Move aside, poker! While the probabilities of various poker hands are well understood and tabulated, the Chinese game of chance Mahjong [1] enjoys a far more intricate structure of expected values and probabilities. [2] This is largely due in part to the much larger variety of tiles available (136 tiles, as opposed to the standard […]

  • April 1, 2014