The legendary three

Last class. Three hands you may play your whole life and never see. They're called the legendary three: Earthly, Heavenly, and Human Hand. They fire automatically when the engine sees the right shape. You don't declare them. You don't aim for them. The deck just hands you one and the game says "oh, here's ninety tai, you're done." I'm teaching you the names so you know what someone means when they say "I drew a heavenly" — and so YOU know to look up and grin if it ever happens to you.

Heavenly Hand. One hundred tai. East is dealt sixteen tiles, then draws their seventeenth opening tile — and that seventeenth tile completes a valid winning shape. Pure luck. The dealer plays no turns; they're handed mahjong by the wall. The hand is automatically called and the round ends before the first discard. I've seen it once. The whole table burst out laughing. It is the closest mahjong gets to a lottery ticket.

Earthly Hand. Ninety tai. Non-dealer wins on East's FIRST discard. Engine catches it: if a non-dealer's sixteen-tile hand plus East's first discarded tile makes a valid winner, they call mahjong before any other turns are played. Same flavour as Heavenly — pure luck, no draws, just the deal. Slightly more common because three of the four seats have a shot at it on every round.

Human Hand. Eighty tai. The "almost legendary" cousin. Won within your first FOUR draws — meaning four turns into the round, your hand becomes a valid winner. Not the very first discard like Earthly, but close. Still mostly luck — four turns isn't enough for a real strategic build — but the engine watches for it and stamps it on the score modal when it lands. Some books call this "Won Within Four"; the engine internally tags it human_hand_4.

That's the appendix. Eat soy with noodles. The seven-rung ladder. The legendary three. Three short classes, three sharper edges on the mahjong you already know. Next time someone at the table says "I almost got an earthly" — you'll know what they mean. Class twenty complete. The course, for real this time, is done.

Class twenty complete. The legendary three — Earthly, Heavenly, Human Hand — named and timed.