Potential Reasons to Send a Card

Here’s a list of potential reasons you may want to send a specific card to the opponent! (Written by me, but inspired by a message on the Discord server.)

Note: These are NOT necessarily recommendations—as always, please consider the merits of each before using them. I’ve written some personal thoughts on each below them as well, to help gauge them. Generally speaking, offensive karuta is favored by most experienced players, so offensive-minded card-sending will be favored.

Offensive-minded card-sending:

• You are very good at a card and want to attack it so you can send another card
  • Allows you to continue attacking and snowball. Well-favored.
• Your opponent is very good at a card and you want to make your defense easier, make them feel pressured to defend it, or deal mental damage by taking it despite the fact that they are good at it
  • Can also be partially defensive as stated, depending on your intentions. Requires knowledge or a guess on your opponent.
• Your opponent isn’t very good at a card and you want to make them feel pressured to defend it, or just give yourself a good opportunity at taking the card.
  • Again, requires knowledge on your opponent, or a guess (e.g. if they seem weak at other cards with the same kimariji).
• To split tomofuda
  • Fairly common/well-favored; helps keep kimariji longer.
• To apply pressure based on the likely row placement of the card. (Means you have to predict where said card will go, e.g. to a row that already has a lot of cards, and be confident that sending it will make them uncomfortable.)
  • A brainier offensive-minded play. Can potentially be subverted by the opponent’s defense

Defensive-minded card-sending:

• You aren’t good at a card and want to “give it up” (instead of losing it on your side and being sent yet another card you might not want)
  • Uncommon/not favored because you aren’t giving yourself strong chances to attack and finish a game, and are avoiding your weakness instead of improving on it.
• To group up tomofuda
  • Less common/favored; can make kimariji shorter. Whether it makes it easier for you to attack it or easier for them to defend it depends on a number of factors.
• To make your own placement less “cluttered” or imbalanced, e.g. because you have too many of a specific kind of card.
  • May be a legitimate way to deal with poor luck, but may also be the result of an inherent issue/weakness in one’s teiichi, or a countermeasure to your opponent having sent you cards to purposely cause an imbalance.
• To decrease the opponent’s attention on your side of the field by sending a card they are either targeting or likely to target soon.
  • I regard this as a more instinctive and defensive-minded play, but don’t know how good of an idea it is generally regarded as.

Other reasons to send cards:

• It’s hard to take a card on your side specifically without moving it to an uncomfortable position, so you feel it’d be easier to take on the opponent’s side.
  • Kind of a mix of offense/defense logic in my opinion.
• To add diversity to the kimariji length of your opponents’ field (e.g. sending a longer syllable card to the opponent when they don’t have any)
  • Not sure about this, but I’d guess it’s uncommon.
• To confuse their memorization, e.g. sending a card that was just moved, or had been sent to you earlier.
  • However, this is obviously risky and can of course backfire by confusing your own memorization, and so I think it is somewhat less favored (but still happens).
• To prepare for a late-game situation, e.g. sending cards that are likely to have multiple syllables even as the total card count is less than 10, or even to prepare for an unmei-sen.
  • This is something I do, but I don’t know how common or favored it is; it seems like there are a bunch of different ideas on how to play the late-game, and it’s very situational/context-dependent.

Hope this helps!