42 (dominoes)

42, also known as Texas 42, is a trick-taking game played with a standard set of double six dominoes. 42 is often referred to as the "national game of Texas". Tournaments are held in many towns, and the State Championship tournament is held annually in Hallettsville, Texas on the first Saturday of March each year. In 2011 it was designated the official State Domino Game of Texas.

According to a 1985 news article written by Christopher Evans of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the game originated in Garner, Texas. Two local boys, William Thomas and Walter Earl, developed the game in response to a general disapproval of card-playing games held by many Protestants at that time. William and Walter were able to incorporate dominoes in their game, which mimicked the mechanics of a trick-taking card game like pitch. The game they developed, which was the precursor to today's 42, found acceptance since dominoes did not carry the negative stigma of card-playing. From there, the game spread throughout Texas.

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" or 250 points. The game consists of a number of hands (a maximum of 13 hands when playing for marks).

Before commencing each hand, each player will bid to win the choice of trumps. The bidder determines what to bid by estimating how many of the forty-two (42) total points the team will win in the hand based only on the seven (7) known tiles. 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, in some variations of play, the dominoes are reshuffled by the next dealer. Each hand consists of 42 points. 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, each worth the number of pips it contains. 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.

After each player gets one chance to bid, the highest bidder chooses the trump for that hand, which can consist of designating as the trump one of the following: a particular "suit" (blanks through sixes, i.e. all tiles containing a six on one or both sides behaves as a trump when played); doubles (any tile containing the same number of pips on each of the two halves of the marked surface of that tile will behave as the trump in that hand when played); or the "follow me" rule (also known as "no trump").

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Wikipedia