Akagi vs Sora - DUEL!

[Moritzva]

Just days ago, a young gambler had been called into a world of games. And you know what this young man realized? He could literally gamble his way into control of the entire world.

"I challenge you... for the entirety of Humanity!"

"Imanity."

"Right."

———

Would of used Shiro but this seems more fitting as they parallel better.

Shigeru Akagi:

Sora (No Game No Life):

D'Arby takes both of their souls:

Akagi has challenged Sora to a game, and they decided on poker. As Akagi will obviously know the game better, Sora has one day to prepare and learn the game, with help from Shiro (at learning the game only). Both contenders can use this one day to strategize and plan for any... tricks. Additionally, they have five minutes before the battle starts to talk and get to know each other.

Getting caught cheating results in an automatic loss. Battle takes place in a massive arena holding tens of thousands of people. Shiro can't help, but will cheer him on from the sidelines with lots of love.

 

[Moritzva]

I don't know how this ended up in General Discussion the first time.

Good thing I can correct that, now.

 

[Promestein]

Judging by how Akagi prepared for Washizu Mahjong, some or more of the time he has on hand will be spent figuring out what kind of person Sora is. He'll research him and make a psychological profile of sorts, and then will refine this as they play. Even with little time to prepare to fight Washizu, his profile ended up being pretty accurate.

I dunno how good Sora's poker face is, but Akagi has an incredible one, and against a player as good as Sora, he'll do everything he can to avoid giving away any information on how he plays, as he did against Urabe.

 

[Moritzva]

Sora and Akagi are both plentifully psychological fighters, it seems. Heck, it's why I gave them a moment to talk to each other before the match. Both are definitely going to be trying to bait and trick the other verbally.

Should we go over their gaming skills?

 

[Promestein]

Alright, some Akagi skill feats, off the top of my head:

• Right after learning to play mahjong, he was more skilled than Ichikawa, who is probably the second-most skilled player in Akagi. Ichikawa's like 70 years old, he's a professional mahjong player, he's blind but is able to play and cheat better than 99% of people anyways, so on so on.
  • His final big brain play against Ichikawa is really good but I barely remember how it went. Ichikawa was cheating to keep certain tiles away from Akagi, but Akagi knew this and used it to his advantage, while also disguising his hand by making bad discards. Because of this, he ended up putting Ichikawa in a situation where no matter what he did to cheat, Akagi would've won.
• His memory is as good as or better than Hirayama's. Hirayama can take an entire set of mahjong tiles, flip them all facedown, and then make hands suggested to him by his audience by picking certain tiles and flipping them all over when he's got all 14.
  • Hirayama can also accurately calculate probabilities while playing. Akagi is at least as good as him in this, probably better, but he's more concerned with psychology than probability when he plays.
• When playing with Urabe, Akagi (who started at a disadvantage) first got Osamu to play for him to see how Urabe would respond to an unknown player. Then, Akagi swapped in and began playing super weirdly and inconsistently for a while, constantly throwing off Urabe and preventing him from figuring out anything about how he played.
  • Meanwhile, Akagi had perfectly figured him out, and left the game with a single unrevealed tile in his hand, waiting on another one of that specific tile. He predicted that Urabe would deal this winning tile, and left. Urabe dealt it from his hand, because he had it the entire time, and by judging Urabe's discards and how he approached the game, Akagi figured this out.
• Pretty much instantly realized that a random game of mahjong he got invited to by some dickweed was a 1v3. He then learned the subtle signs they were sending each other to communicate and organize their gameplay, and exploited it. When they changed the signs to throw him off, he figured it out again.
• In the epilogue, Akagi accurately judges the results of a Tehonbiki game. This is a game where a dealer takes 6 cards, and shuffles one to the top under a cloth. The game is guessing what card's on the top.
  • Akagi is able to consistently accurately guess what card is on top with bets on a single card, because he judged the dealer's personality and simply concluded that he was historically most likely to pick cards that he had picked less in the past to balance out the numbers. This guy was trying to pick randomly, but that's not how the human brain works, so he ended up subconsciously doing so. He completely figured out how he approached the game.
  • He has a similar feat where he was able to repeatedly accurately guess whether or not dice rolls that hadn't even happened yet would be odd or even. I have no idea if this is his big brain or his otherworldly luck (which... is a thing).

This is all off the top of my head. I don't remember all his plays, but I think these are some of his best.

Akagi is unlikely to cheat unprompted. He's really good at it, but he rarely does so; he only did it when he entered the games with Urabe and Ichikawa at a disadvantage, and later to pressure Ichikawa into accepting an offer of his (and to bait him into cheating).

 

[Moritzva]

Seems like neither of them will be cheating, then. Sora is more of a "Play by the rules in the way that benefits me the most" kinda guy.

I'll be able to post more later.

 

[Ogbunabali]

His final big brain play against Ichikawa is really good but I barely remember how it went. Ichikawa was cheating to keep certain tiles away from Akagi, but Akagi knew this and used it to his advantage, while also disguising his hand by making bad discards. Because of this, he ended up putting Ichikawa in a situation where no matter what he did to cheat, Akagi would've won.

This was one of the most insane feats in Akagi. It's hard to describe if you don't know mahjong (hell even I don't fully know the game). But essentially he made Ichikawa believe that he had the upper hand and that Akagi had a certain hand in which only 1 tile could've won it. Which then forced Ichikawa to cheat by replacing one of his tiles with in set with his winning one.

While actually this was all orchestrated by Akagi since the beginning of the game which made Ichikawa follow this same thought process and when Ichikawa replaced the tile in the end, he instead replaced his own tile with Akagi's Dora Dora winning tile while Ichikawa drew his own losing one.

I know it sounds pretty confusing, I recommend watching the episode to see it in action.