5-01

You have nothing? Search for Knitted Tiles and Honors

Figure 1

In Figure 1, you have all single tiles. No possible melds. No pairs. But this hand scores for Lesser Honors and Knitted Tiles (12 pts.).

Figure 2

In Figure 2, you have singles of all 7 honors. This combination is called Greater Knitted Tiles and Honors and scores 24 points.

After learning these combinations, you will be tempted to build them anytime that you start out with a hand that has many single honors. However, in order to build the Knitted Tiles and Honors combinations, the number of single honors should not determine your course. As point in case, compare the hands shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Which is closer to a Knitted Tiles and Honors combination? The first hand has 5 honors, and might appear at first glance to be well on its way to completion. But the second example is in fact far closer to making ready. It's more important to count the number of tiles needed to make ready rather than simply the number of honors. Normally, you will want to aim for this combination when you are 3 tiles away from making ready. The problem with the first example in Figure 3 is that the ,andare all in the same knitted series. As a result, andare all useless tiles. This hand is, in fact, fully 4 tiles away from making ready. But in the second example, although you may be tempted to make use of the completed chow in dots, you have a nice collection of knitted tiles that are in different series: ,, and . In fact, you are just 2 tiles away from making ready. You should immediately discard .

Are you wondering what your best hope is with the first example, a rather anemic starting hand? Discard and go for Outside Hand, Half Flush, or Thirteen Orphans.