d after the first few draws and
discards form a general plan of what he is going to try and fill in his
hand and decide on how high a score he will have a good chance of
making. This will be decided by:

1. The condition of his own hand.

2. The discards of the other three players.

If he has an exceptionally strong hand in any one suit he will play for
that suit regardless of the other players. If he has a well-divided
hand, by watching the other players' discards, he will be able to form a
fairly good opinion of what they are doing with their hand.

After judging his hand, visualizing the sort of hand that he is to try
to fill, he should use his own judgment in drawing and discarding,
constantly watching his own hand for opportunities and his opponents'
discards for disclosures, and upon the slightest suspicion that one of
these opponents is nearing the completion of his hand, should
immediately forego any thoughts of a higher hand himself and seek to
complete his own hand as quickly as possible.

Summing this up; a player should plan and play to win at all times with
as high a hand as possible, then as the wall grows shorter and the
probability of one of the opponents completing his hand grows larger,
the player should reconsider, and

1. If he has at that stage an exceptionally good hand which will win
back for him from the other two players that which he loses to the
winner, should go on improving his hand and take the chance of another
player winning.

2. If he has just an ordinarily good hand he should stop playing to
improve his hand and start to complete it as quickly as possible, i.e.,
form sequences and mix suits, in order to win before the other players
and save himself.

3. If his hand has not improved at all or very little since the
beginning of the game and he has small chance of completing his hand in
any way before some other player does, his only plan is to hold the
tiles which he thinks would help the other players and discard only
those which he is sure they will not pung. These tiles can be
ascertained by carefully searching the discards in the center of the
table and the sets already exposed by the other players. By playing this
way he may be able to cause the game to be a draw.

There are a few other points which are taken up in the last four layouts
in Part I.

USE OF THE MANDARINS

(Flowers and Seasons)

The _Mandarins_, also called _Flowers_ and _Seasons_, are eight in