In last round's 15th turn, 1st place decides to hard fold upon picking a 6man by dealing a 8sou, which breaks his tenpai.
Folding at this point is understandable. What I don't understand is why he did this with a 8sou upon receiving a 6man. After all, both the 8sou and the 6man were safe against me, and neither was safe against the two other players. There wasn't even any suji for those!
So that's my question, why did he discard the 6man and not the 8sou? Was it because the 8sou was safer against the two other players, and if so why?
I can't see the game link at the moment, and I'm not sure from what you'vre written if they discarded the 6 or the 8, but I think you meant the 8. My guess i the 6 is accepted into more sequences than the 8. 8 can only be in a 789 or 678, the 6 can be in 456,567,678 which makes it more dangerous.
If you don't have information on safe tiles or possible suji reads then throw terminals or honors, if you have none of those either throw 2's or 8's. If the wall keeps feeding you red 5's and doras it's not your game 😁. Losing is fun!
I see, I understand that 8 has statistically less chances to be a wait due to this. So if I had to choose between the 6man and the 8sou and all the other factors were equal, that alone would make 8sou the better choice.
However, in that case choosing the 8sou meant breaking tenpai. The gap between 1st and 2nd place is very small so if it were me, maintaining tenpai would take priority over this slight statistical advantage. Because it would not only allow a small chance to secure the victory with a win but also to avoid losing the 1st place due to noten penalty.
In summary in that situation I would prioritize my actions as such:
folding with a tile safe against many players (and losing tenpai)
discarding a tile safe against 1 player (and keeping tenpai)
folding with a tile safe against 1 player (and losing tenpai)
To me it feels like he chose 3rd option even though 2nd was available. Which makes me believe it was actually 1st option and I just didn't see how
The player across from them hasn’t thrown a single character tile, they could be on a half flush, full flush, pure flush, who knows. They haven’t called riichi, but they are against three open hands so maybe they’re in damaten.
The player to the right hasn’t thrown anything above 2m. They could have the red dragons and be going for a half flush too and have a dora. That’s 5 han, could be a mangan, especially if you add the extra mini points you get from a kan.
The 6m is adjacent to the new Dora, either player could have a 7778. Now it might be 8 han.
The player has a two han hand and it’s not worth pushing for and risking dealing in to some hidden monster hand. All the 9s’s are gone, they can see all the 8s’s, there’s only one live 7s. And even if they do deal in with the 8s it’s not going to be into a flush hand of some sort, maybe 2 or three han?