/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>21530251
The riichi book linked in OP goes into it quite well. The short answer is just practice though, it almost becomes like the Tetris thing where you'll play for a while and close your eyes and see yourself reading mahjong hands and optimizing groups and discards.

Really what you're doing is identifying 5 potential groups in your hand and discarding whatever tile is the most distanced or useless from them. Generally those 5 groups won't be apparent right away unless you get really nice starting tiles, but after a few discards it generally becomes quite clear and once you have a feel for what patterns are ideal and which ones aren't you can start to do it pretty quickly.