Kozel
забить козла
Dominoes in which you accumulate not points but penalties: whoever reaches a hundred and one first has lost.
Set of dominoes
Under these rules: Twenty-eight tiles.
Twenty-eight rectangular tiles carrying every combination of halves from double blank to double six.
A set is named after its highest double: the ordinary one is a double-six. Every combination occurs exactly once, and that is what makes the game countable — knowing what has been played, you can work out what is left in other people's hands. Larger sets exist — double-nine with fifty-five tiles and double-twelve with ninety-one — and they are there for a bigger company.
The rules of naval Kozel
What differs
Everything as in ordinary Kozel except two numbers: the game runs to a hundred and twenty-five, and the recording floor is twenty-five.
The higher floor means small hands barely count at all, and the game is decided by a few large ones.
Worth knowing
Beyond those two numbers naval Kozel is nowhere described separately — everything else is taken from the ordinary game and settled on the spot.
Glossary of terms
- Blocked hand
- The position where nobody can extend the line. The hand goes to whoever holds the fewest pips.
- Recording floor
- The threshold below which a penalty is not recorded at once: it is remembered and added to the next entry.
- The goat
- Whoever first reaches a hundred and one penalty points. The game is over for them.