Texas 42
Dominoes played as a card game: suits, a trump, bidding, and seven tricks worth forty-two points.
Set of dominoes
Under these rules: Twenty-eight tiles, seven per player.
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 42 for points
What differs
Bidding is in points, not marks: the numbers thirty to forty-two, then eighty-four and a hundred and sixty-eight. A hundred and sixty-eight cannot be bid until somebody has bid eighty-four.
Passing
All four cannot pass: after three passes the dealer must bid.
Scoring
On a bid below forty-two, a side that makes it records the points it took, and so does the opposition.
Failing, it records nothing and the opposition takes its own points plus the amount bid.
On a bid of forty-two, eighty-four or a hundred and sixty-eight, the side making it records the bid. If it is set, the opposition records the bid and nothing for its tricks.
The special contract
In place of there is a contract of the same intent, but only the dealer may name it, and only after three passes. Made, it earns the side forty-two points; failed, it hands forty-two to the opposition.
Plunge and Sevens are not played in this form.
Worth knowing
Plunge and Sevens are not played in this form, and in place of Nello there is a contract only the dealer may name, and only after three passes. All four passing is impossible here — the dealer must name something.
Glossary of terms
- Mark
- The unit of scoring. A mark is won for a contract made; a match runs to seven.
- Nello
- A contract to take no trick at all. The declarer's partner turns their tiles face down and takes no part.
- Suit
- The number on a tile. There are seven suits — blanks through sixes — and an ordinary tile belongs to two at once.
- Trump
- The suit named by the declarer. Every tile bearing that number becomes a trump and ceases to belong to its other suit.