Pinfu 平和

What It Is

Pinfu (平和, “peaceful”) asks for four things at once:

• A closed hand. No chi, pon or kan of any kind.
• Four runs. No triplets.
• A pair that earns no fu. Not a dragon, not your seat wind, not the round wind. A guest wind or any number pair is fine.
• A two-sided wait (ryanmen), like 6-7 waiting on 5 or 8. Edge, middle and pair waits don’t count.

What It’s Worth

Pinfu is 1 han, closed only. It sounds small, but it’s the yaku that turns riichi plus a dora into a solid hand, and with tanyao it makes the classic cheap-but-fast closed hand.

On a tsumo, pinfu keeps its yaku but doesn’t take the usual tsumo fu, so menzen tsumo still adds its han on top.

Closed Or Open

Closed only. Any call ends it. Singapore’s Ping Hu is the same shape and lets you claim a Chi; Riichi doesn’t.

Because pinfu earns no fu of its own, a pinfu ron is the cheapest closed hand there is for its han. That’s fine: its job is to be fast and to make riichi worth more, not to score on its own.

How To Build It

Keep middle tiles in two or three suits, and value connected pairs like 4-5 over edges like 1-2 or gaps like 3-5. Throw lone honours early. Choose your pair from numbers or guest winds, and if you end up with a dragon pair, it can still become a yakuhai pon instead.

If your winning tile could finish the hand two ways, say as the middle of 3-5 or the side of 5-6, the scorer keeps the reading worth more, so the hand still counts as pinfu.

What Spoils It

• The pair. A pair of the round wind kills pinfu even though it isn’t a yaku. So does a pair of your seat wind or any dragon.
• The wait. Win on the middle of 6-8, the edge of 1-2 or a lone pair tile and it isn’t pinfu, even if every set is a run.
• One triplet. Three of a kind anywhere, concealed or not, and it’s a different hand.

What It Combines With

Riichi, tanyao, iipeikou, sanshoku and ittsu all fit naturally, since they’re made of runs. Pinfu can never sit with toitoi, sanankou, yakuhai or chiitoitsu.