42, also known as Texas 42, is a trick-taking game

Trick-taking game

A trick-taking game is a card game or tile-based game in which play centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks. The object of such games then may be closely tied to the number of tricks taken, as in plain-trick games such as Whist, Contract Bridge, Napoleon, Rowboat, and...

 played with a standard set of double six dominoes

Dominoes

Dominoes generally refers to the collective gaming pieces making up a domino set or to the subcategory of tile games played with domino pieces. In the area of mathematical tilings and polyominoes, the word domino often refers to any rectangle formed from joining two congruent squares edge to edge...

. 42 is often referred to as the "national game of Texas", and continues to be very popular in much of the state. Tournaments are held in many towns, and the State Championship tournament is held annually in Hallettsville, Texas

Hallettsville, Texas

Hallettsville is a city in Lavaca County, Texas, United States. The population was 2,345 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Lavaca County. The town is home to the Texas Championship Domino Hall of Fame and also hosts a dominoes tournament every year in January...

 on the first Saturday of March. In 2011 it was designated the official State Domino Game of Texas.

Object

The game is played by four people, in teams of two each, who sit facing each other across the table. The object of the game is to be the first team to reach seven "marks" (points). The game consists of a number of hands, each of which is worth one or more marks, depending on the bid. However, it is important to note that 42, much like any other game, has in many cases been modified by particular groups or families, resulting in innumerable variations on the original game according to particular preference, habit, or family lore and legend.

The Bid

Before commencing play, each player will bid the number of points they are going to try to win by catching tricks (see scoring, below). The bidder determines what to bid by estimating how many tricks will be lost along with the number of count dominoes (see below) that will be lost. The minimum bid is 30. A player may also pass (make no bid). If all players pass, the dealer is either forced to bid or the dominoes are reshuffled by the next dealer. As there are 42 points in the game (one point for each of the 7 tricks, plus 35 points from the 6-4, 5-5, 3-2, 4-1, and 5-0 dominoes), the maximum bid possible is 42, with one exception: a player may bid 84, which means (like 42) that the player must catch all tricks, and the results of the tricks will be stacked atop another as they are played, so as to prevent the players from seeing what has already been introduced into play. The benefit of bidding "84" versus only "42" is that if successful, the bidder wins two marks for the game instead of only one. As the trump is declared by the winner of the bid, one strategy is to bid high if one has most of the dominoes in one particular suit.

The Hand

The winning bidder then designates his trump, which can consist of calling a particular suit trumps; doubles as trumps, or "follow me" (also known as "no trump," in which there is no trump suit). Play then proceeds to the left of the person who played. Each player must follow suit, if possible. When led, each domino is considered to belong to the suit of its higher end, unless that domino contains the number of the trump suit, in which case it is considered a member of the trump suit. The double of any suit is the highest-ranking member of that suit, followed by the highest number on the non-suit side. The highest number of the leading suit wins, unless a trump is played, in which case the highest trump wins. The winner of the trick takes the dominoes into their possession and leads on the next trick. Play continues until the bidding team has made their contract, or else is "set" (denied the possibility of winning) by the non-bidding team. At that time, the appropriate team is awarded one or more marks.

Scoring

Each trick is worth one point. There are five "count" pieces (those whose spots total five or ten) that are worth that number of points: the 0-5, 1-4 and 2-3 are worth five points each; the 5-5 and 6-4 are each worth ten. The total of all the count pieces (35) plus the seven tricks equals 42, which is the number of points in a hand, hence the name of the game.

A game is typically played for seven marks, as seven marks on paper can form the capital letters ALL.

Special Contracts

84: The bidder's team must win all the tricks. Dominoes are played trick atop trick to avoid revealing what has been played thus far in the hand. If the bidder's team succeeds in catching all the tricks, the team earns two marks.

42: The bidder's team must win all the tricks. The hand is played as per usual.

30: The minimum bid. Successive bids must be higher than this bid, or the player must pass (make no bid).

The highest bid wins the auction and that player has the right to name the trump suit and lead.

Terminology

There are a number of special terms in the game of 42:

• dominoes: rocks, bones
• shuffle: shake, wash, stir
• suit: number on one end of the domino
• points: marks
• 1s: aces
• 2s: deuces (or "ducks")
• 3s: treys
• the one-blank: roach
• the six-three: the devil
• the two-one: domination dominoe
• low: nello
• to not follow suit when appropriate: renege
• one who reneges: renegger
• the verb meaning to play a trump on a non-trump: trump
• the double of any trump suit: the "bull" or "big kahuna"
• the trump immediately below the double: the "cow" or "moo-moo"
• count which adds up to 5: a nickel
• count which adds up to 10: a dime

Splash

The bidder bids three marks, and their partner calls trump without discussion with the bidder. The bidder must have three doubles to do this.
Some variants have a "Splash" worth two marks.

Plunge (or Crash)

Exactly like Splash, except four (or in some variants, three) marks are bid and the bidder must have four doubles.

Jump bids are allowed for Splash and Plunge.

Nello

There is an optional house rule that allows players to bid "nello" (also known as nillo, nil, low, or low-boy). All players must agree to allow nello bidding before the game begins.

A player may choose to bid nello, instead of bidding a number or passing, if they have particularly low dominoes in a hand (the -blanks and -ones of several suits). This means they intend to win the hand by not catching any tricks at all. Their partner then turns their dominoes face down, and does not participate in that hand. The opposing team will play their lowest dominoes, trying to force the nello bidder into catching a trick.

The nello bidder's team scores a mark if they catch no tricks. If the nello bidder catches even one trick, the hand is immediately over, and the opposing team scores a mark.

Other variations of nello treat doubles in a special way. Doubles may be weighted either as the high of their suit, as a suit of their own, or least commonly as the low of their suit. If any of these variants are used, a declaration is required and all players must agree to allow them before play begins.

Nello rules may also be used in the domino game "Shoot the Moon."

Sevens

Another, less common, rule is to allow a player to bid Sevens. Instead of the highest domino winning each trick, the domino whose sum is closest to seven wins. Dominoes are classified as "sevens" (the 4-3, 5-2, and 6-1), "one away" (dominoes adding to six or eight), "two away" (adding to five or nine), etc. When more than one domino of the same distance from seven is played, the first domino played is considered the winner. A player must bid at least 42 (one mark) to go in sevens, and losing even one trick will set the bidder.

Sixes

Bid and played exactly like "Sevens", each player plays their domino whose sum is closest to six to win each trick.

Fives, Eights, Nines, etc.

Each variation of the original "Sevens" allows for the bidder to determine the starting value for each player to play closest to. In all cases, a player must bid at least 42 (one mark) to bid in this way, and losing even one trick will set the bidder.

Variations

• 84, a variant played with two sets of dominoes. Play usually consists of six to eight players. Some of the terminology also differs, such as bidding "pistol" instead of "nello".

• Shoot the Moon is another variant. In this game, no domino has a special value, and all tricks remain worth one point. The game is played by removing all of the blank dominoes except for the blank ace. If a team is denied the possibility of winning, or set, then they instead lose the amount they bid from their total. The game is played to 21 points, and the minimum bid is 4. The name of the game comes from "shooting the moon." If a player states during the bidding phase that they will shoot the moon, then they must catch all tricks. Doing so is worth 21 points. Failing to catch all 7 tricks results in a loss of 21 points. This is the highest possible bid, unless another player elects to "shoot it over" the player who is shooting the moon; this makes their own bid worth 42 points. There are no special contracts in this game.

• Geezer uses a set of double seven dominoes and each player draws nine. The 7-3 adds another ten count and the minimum bid is 39. A 46 bid will out bid one mark and conventions include "dip," "dive," and "plunge" bids depending on the number of doubles (3, 4 or 5) held. A dip is two marks, dive is three and plunge is four. An opening 41 bid invites the watery responses, but a naked dip, dive or plunge is allowed. Otherwise a two mark bid is the maximum allowed except to overbid another. Third bidder must bid or the fourth bidder may either ask his partner to name trumps or play 39 for two marks. The eccentrics who developed this game also added strange low bids for nello, in which anything can be low in its suit. Thus if 3s are low, a 3-6 is lower than the 6-blank. The successful bidder's partner does not play in a nello game. There is also a 51 bid, in which count is trump and 5 or 10 count dominoes must be played in response to a count lead of the bidder and the bidder must catch all except three tricks with no count on the three. What others would deem to be cheating is mere convention, as players signal their partners what they can catch by pointing a domino, spinning it counterclockwise or clockwise or even place it at various angles. Invented by good Presbyterian professional men who learned 42 from their grandmothers and who will be happy to tell a newby if he wins. Started as a way to justify the purchase (for $.50) of a bag of assorted dominoes by an incredibly thrifty (cheap)individual. Expanded to anything-low when Weird Charlie from Orange introduced the concept of doubles low at a Mo Ranch retreat. He lost, but it was inspirational.

• The Big Game is a variant for players who want a challenging game based on a larger set of tiles instead of special bids. (It is a mathematically accurate extension of 42 from 7 to 11 tricks.) All rules in The Big Game are the same as "standard 42" except:
  • Play is with an 8-8 set of dominoes. (You can create an 8-8 set by taking a 9-9 set and removing the ten tiles with 9s on them. This leaves a 45-tile 8-8 set.)
  • The counters are still all tiles of weight 5 or 10. (This adds 2 more counters worth ten each: the 7-3 and 8-2). Counters are thus: 0-5, 1-4, 2-3, 4-6, 5-5, 7-3, 8-2.
  • In the deal, each of the four players takes 11 tiles each. One tile is not dealt and is left face-down.
  • The minimum starting bid is 42. Bidding proceeds clockwise, and players continue in the bidding process until they pass. (Unlike 42, players may make more than one bid, until they pass.) A Game is 400 points across hands.
  • The bid winner looks at the one tile left over face-down from the deal. If it is a Counter, he MUST take it into his hand. If it is not a Counter, he may choose whether to take it into his hand. If the bid winner takes the tile into his hand, he discards face-down some other non-counter tile to take his hand back down to 11 tiles. Thus all counters are always in play.
  • If either of the "new" counter tiles are led to a trick (the 3-7 or the 2-8), the person who leads the tile may optionally announce that the lower number on the tile is the suit of the trick. So you can lead the 3-7 to the trick as a 3-suit tile (the third highest tile in the 3’s suit), and lead the 2-8 as the second highest tile in the 2’s suit. This rule only applies to leads of the 3-7 or 2-8, only when announced by the trick leader, and only when these tiles are not members of the trump suit.

• 3-handed 42 is played by only three players. The blank-ace is removed from the set, and each player draws 9 dominoes. Bidding is usually the same as in traditional 4-handed play (i.e. minimum bid of 30 and so forth).

External links

• Learn to Play 42
• Rules of Domino Games: Texas 42
• CardsAndDominoes.com - Rules and analysis for 42 and its variations, Moon, Partnership Moon, and Domino Euchre
• 42-Online, an online dominoes gaming site