Neighbours and siblings

Class thirteen. Today we learn four patterns that repeat the same shape inside a winning hand. They're called (I'm not making this up) Neighbours, Brothers, Sisters, and Sister Pongs. I didn't name these. The game did. They're family patterns, and almost every hand you ever win will have at least one of them. These are the bonuses that quietly push modest hands over the twenty-tai minimum.

Start with Neighbours. Neighbours means two or more pongs of CONSECUTIVE numbers, all in the same suit. A pong of four-circles and a pong of five-circles sitting next to each other. Those are neighbours. Two neighbours pays five tai. Three neighbours in a row (say a pong of four-bamboo, five-bamboo, and six-bamboo) pays fifteen. Four neighbours is thirty. Five neighbours is sixty. The ladder is steep. You'll almost never see four neighbours in one hand, and five is almost mythical. Two and three are what you actually chase.

Brothers are identical sheungs in the SAME suit. Two sheungs of four-five-six of characters (one exposed, one concealed, whatever) are Brothers, and they pay five tai. Three identical sheungs in the same suit is fifteen. Four (a full set of four identical sheungs in one suit) is thirty. You saw Brothers in the first rigged hand of class nine, if you were paying attention. They sneak up on you. The tiles for a brother sheung often come naturally, because the hand already wants them for the main structure.

Sisters are the mirror of Brothers. Instead of the same sequence in one suit, you have the SAME sequence in DIFFERENT suits. A sheung of two-three-four bamboo and a sheung of two-three-four circle are Sisters. They pay three tai for two suits. If you manage to get all three suits (two-three-four bamboo, two-three-four character, AND two-three-four circle) that's the "full sisters" version, and it pays ten tai flat. Not three plus three plus three. Ten. The game lands on a round number to reward you for the difficulty of getting all three suits lined up.

Sister Pongs are the same idea, just applied to pongs instead of sheungs. Two pongs of the same NUMBER in different suits (a pong of five-bamboo and a pong of five-circle) are Sister Pongs, and they score three tai. Three pongs of the same number across all three suits (five-bamboo, five-character, and five-circle) is ten tai, flat. Same as the Sisters ladder. The values match Sisters exactly because the game treats them as twin rules. One for sheungs, one for pongs.

One last name for you. Some players call the Neighbours rule "Uncle Pongs." Three uncle pongs, four uncle pongs. It's the same rule, same numbers, just different vocabulary. If you hear someone at a table say "I got three uncle pongs," they mean fifteen-tai Neighbours. Both words are correct. Our engine uses "Neighbours" as the official name, but don't be surprised if you hear the other one.

Let's build a hand that catches two of these family rules at once. Watch what happens when Neighbours and Brothers stack in the same round.

Count. Base five. You had two pongs of consecutive bamboo (five-bamboo and six-bamboo): that's Neighbours, five tai. Ten. You had two identical sheungs of one-two-three character, both concealed: that's Brothers, another five tai. Fifteen. Your hand was fully concealed and you won by drawing your own tile, so Self-Draw Concealed fires for ten. Twenty-five. Self-Pick adds one. Twenty-six. Two flowers on the side, two. Twenty-eight. Your pair is a good eye, two more. Thirty. Thirty tai. Ten of those came from family patterns alone. These rules are small on their own, powerful together.

That's class thirteen. You know the four family patterns. You'll see Neighbours and Sisters more often than the others. You'll brag about Brothers when they happen. Class fourteen: terminals and suits. The rules that care about where in the one-through-nine range your tiles live, and how many suits you're actually using.