Sushi Go! Wasabi and Chopsticks: When to Take Them

Wasabi and chopsticks score nothing on their own. That is what makes them interesting. Each one asks you to give up a pick now for a bigger pick later. Taken at the right time, they produce the best turns of the round. Taken at the wrong time, they are an empty plate. This lesson covers the timing, using the real counts in the deck.

How wasabi pays

From the rules: when you take a nigiri and already have a wasabi in front of you, the nigiri goes on top and scores triple. Squid becomes 9, salmon 6, egg 3. Each wasabi holds one nigiri, and an empty wasabi scores nothing.

So a wasabi adds 2, 4, or 6 points, depending on which nigiri lands on it, and only if one does. Over two cards, wasabi plus squid is 9 points, or 4.5 per card, the best rate in the game. Wasabi plus egg is 3 points for two cards, worse than most other picks.

What is in the deck for wasabi

The deck has 6 wasabi and 20 nigiri: 10 salmon, 5 squid, 5 egg. Half of all nigiri are salmon, so the most likely payoff is a 6-point salmon, not the 9-point squid.

How often is a nigiri in a hand you see? Here is the chance that a freshly dealt hand holds at least one nigiri, worked out from the deck counts:

• 2 players, 10 cards: about 88 percent
• 3 players, 9 cards: about 85 percent
• 4 players, 8 cards: about 82 percent
• 5 players, 7 cards: about 77 percent

Squid alone is much rarer. With 5 squid in 108 cards, a fresh 8-card hand has at least one squid only about 32 percent of the time.

Those are fresh hands. Every turn, other players pick nigiri too, and hands shrink. A wasabi taken on turn one has the whole round to find a nigiri. A wasabi taken with three cards left often finds none.

When to take wasabi

• Early in the round. Every hand you will see still has its nigiri.
• When you can see a nigiri coming. If the hand you just passed held a salmon or squid, it will come back around after the hand travels the table, if no one takes it first. Lesson 6 shows how to track this.
• When nobody else has an empty wasabi. If your left neighbor has an empty wasabi, they want the same nigiri you do, and they pick before you on every hand you pass them.

How chopsticks pay

Once chopsticks are face up in front of you, on a later turn you pick a card, say “Sushi Go!”, and take a second card. Then the chopsticks go back into your hand and get passed left.

Here is the trade in plain terms: you spend one pick on chopsticks, a zero-point card, and later you get one extra pick from a single hand. You end the round with the same number of cards. Chopsticks pay off when one hand holds two cards that are each worth more than what you would have taken instead.

When chopsticks pay best

• A hand with two finishers. A sashimi to finish your set and a squid for your wasabi. Taking both in one turn means neither gets taken by someone else.
• Completing a set in one go. Two tempura in the same hand is 5 points from one turn.
• Denying a neighbor. If the hand you are about to pass has two cards your left neighbor needs, taking both protects you.

The hidden cost of chopsticks

After you use them, the chopsticks go to your left neighbor in the hand you pass. They might use them right back. With 4 chopsticks in the deck, they are scarce, and handing one on is a small gift. It is usually worth it, but notice it.

Chopsticks also lose value fast. Taken with two cards left in the round, there may be no turn left to use them.

The timing rule

Both cards are worth the most on the first turns of a round and almost nothing on the last. A simple cutoff for a four-player game, where hands start at 8: take them on turns 1 to 4 if they fit your plan, think hard on turns 5 and 6, and skip them on turns 7 and 8 unless you can see the exact card they would set up. Count back from the hand size for other player counts.

One case to check

The rules do not spell out whether you can use chopsticks to take a wasabi and a nigiri on the same turn and put the nigiri on that new wasabi. Agree on a ruling before you play.

Used early and on purpose, wasabi and chopsticks turn ordinary hands into big rounds. Used late, they are the most common empty plates at the table.