Editing Mahjong (section)

===Actual Basic Strategy===
This will get you started and hopefully good enough to understand the books that explain why most of the tips below are bad/outright wrong in actual mid-to-high level play. Don't take it as gospel.

*Keep your hand closed. The longer your hand is closed, the longer you keep your opponents guessing about what you need to win.
*For dragons and winds, if you have a pair, keep the pair otherwise start your hand by unloading any winds and dragons. Do not kick yourself if you draw a wind or dragon just after discarding one, it happens, but the probability of drawing the wind or dragon you want is too low for you to build a strategy around.
*Once you're out of winds and dragons, assess where you are on characters, bams, and coins.
*If your ruleset allows open tanyao (it almost certainly does) and you're not drowning in terminals after discarding all honors, you can try for that. It lets you call to speed things up just like a wind/dragon triplet does, and 1s and 9s are hard to use anyway.
*Pairs are good; remember you need at least one pair to complete a hand, although your likelihood of getting 3 of a kind off drawing alone is low.
*Sequences are better (in a closed hand anyway).
*You're more likely to get the outsides of a straight than the middle, that's simple math.
*Example: Say you have the 2 of coins, 4 of coins, another 4 of coins, and the 5 of coins. If you have to dump one of them, dump the 2. Why? Because the 2 is only useful if you get the 3, but if you get the 3 then you already have a meld on the 4 and 5, which you can also get from the 6. If you get the 3 or the 6, then you can dump the other 4.
*If you start with five pairs, you can chance going for a seven pairs win. Going for it with four pairs probably won't work but with 5 pairs you're only looking for the sixth and then you're in tenpai and can ron to get the last one on a discard.