
Time for the first official Troll Challenge, and it was a Live Challenge already, as Prim and I spent another lovely day at my place. 
We know that COVID tests in our area will soon cost money, and neither of us plans to get vaccinated, so our options for public activities will be severely limited by next month. For that reason, and because Prim is still recovering from some tennis injuries, my initial idea was miniature golf (sometimes known as crazy golf, though any golf would be crazy golf with the two of us), but I was not able to find an open course in the vicinity, the ones I remember from my youth don't seem to exist anymore.
We also wanted to combine it with a nice Chinese buffet, which we would have had at a certain restaurant in the same area, but I had an idea: Let's just get that Chinese food anyway, and while we're at it, do a Troll Challenge with the same theme at home:

Live Challenge No. 01 - Chinese Games Gauntlet
Too bad we couldn't include Go, which is one of the quintessential Chinese board games and possibly the oldest board game still being played in the world, but while I'm sure that I have some old cheapo Go set at home somewhere, I couldn't find it. We still had plenty to work with and decided to play a "best of five" series of several classic Chinese card and board games.
Round One: Two Player Mahjong (Hong Kong rules)
Mahjong (not to be confused with the widespread solitaire version) is a four player game, but is technically possible to be played with less players if you don't mind playing a non-standard game. My online mahjong network even offers some heads-up games, though they don't have any traffic, and for a good reason - with just two players racing to complete their hand, the game depends almost entirely on the deal with little room to get a strategic edge. It's pretty pointless to play for money since both players could expect to lose to rake, but it can still make for a nice way to pass some time.
It's what we did, using standard Hong Kong rules. Prim has recently learned the much, much more complicated Japanese version by playing it with me online, so this one should be a breeze for her.

My original plan was to play four hands, but we realized that the game setup takes some time, so we stopped after two. The first one was won by me with a cheap hand, the second one was won by Prim, though she turned out to have a value-less hand which technically shouldn't even count, so... this round goes to Harrier! 1-0.
Round Two: Xiangqi (Chinese Chess)

Neither of us trolls are very big chess players, though there will almost certainly be a chess challenge somewhere down the line, since it should be pretty easy to do online. Not having played Xiangqi in a long time, I took a quick look last night to make sure I remember all the rules, but made sure not to look too deep into strategy to make sure it won't be too unfair towards Prim, who went in completely blind.
It's a lot like Western chess and has the same goal, to capture the opponent's king. Special things include a palace which the king and two guard pieces can't leave, a river in the middle which can't be crossed by certain pieces and which changes the behavior of any pawn that crosses it, and two cannon pieces which move like rooks but can only capture if there is exactly one piece between them and their target, friend or foe.
Understandably, Prim was struggling a bit with the symbols, and I could tell that she wasn't having a great time with this rather intimidating game. It didn't last long until Harrier won by what I'm pretty sure is a checkmate, making it 2-0... despite some protests by Prim over whether this game should count. Don't worry, Prim, we'll play Pot Limit Omaha eventually. 

Round Three: Chinese Poker

Followers of my blog may be familiar with the open face version. We played the standard version first: You get 13 cards in your hand, and have to arrange them into two standard five card poker hands at the bottom and in the middle, as well as an additional three card hand on top, for which straights and flushes don't count. Your bottom five card hand must beat your middle five card hand, and your middle five card hand must beat your top three card hand. Standard poker hand rankings apply. Players compare bottom vs bottom, middle vs middle and top vs top. There is a three point bonus for "scooping" by winning all three hands.
We played five hands, and Prim had a great start with a scoop hand shown below. We traded one point wins back and forth for the other four hands, but Harrier couldn't recover from the scoop. Prim wins, score is 2-1.

Round Four: Open Face Chinese Poker (Pineapple version)

Same as the above game, except that you get an initial deal of five cards, which you arrange open faced, followed by deals of three cards each, of which you use two and discard one. Players gradually build their hand face up until they are done. Making a disqualifying hand is now a real possibility, so the game requires some risk-management.
It is said that this game originated from Finland, but whatever - it's based on Chinese poker.
We played three hands, of which I won the first relatively narrowly, won the second by a big margin, and then Prim won the third hand by an even bigger margin, which however wasn't big enough to catch up with the points deficit from both previous hands combined. This makes the series 3-1, giving Harrier the win!
Due to Prim's protests about Xiangqi, I considered sticking around for "2-7 Open Face Chinese Poker", which would have been the tie-breaking fifth game, but both of us realized that it was getting late, and we didn't want to spend all day playing cards.
So this wraps up our first ever Troll Challenge with a win for Harrier... HOWEVER:
I didn't realize it until we were about to leave, but thinking about Prim's "value-less" mahjong hand again...

Her hand had indeed no points thanks to the unfitting flower tile next to her hand (not the first time she's getting trolled by a flower, you know...), BUT: she drew the winning tile herself, and winning by self-draw is automatically considered one point under Hong Kong rules!
Therefore, her hand should have counted by exactly as many points as my previous hand, the mahjong round should have been a tie, and Prim should have had a chance to catch up with one more game...
We already closed the Troll Challenge by that point, though, and Prim had to catch her train, so there was no more time anyway, even if we wanted. She officially accepted my win, but still, I'm not sure if we can let that controversial result stand.
For the time being, though...
