How to play

The bones

42 uses a standard double-six set: 28 dominoes, every combination of two numbers from blank through six, with no duplicates. Each domino has two ends, and each end shows 0 to 6 dots. Dots are called pips.

A domino with the same number on both ends is a double: 6·6 3·3 0·0

Four players sit around a table in two partnerships. Partners sit across from each other, so you and the player opposite you win and lose together. The two players either side of you are the opposition. All 28 dominoes are shuffled face down (that's shaking), and each player draws seven. That's the whole set dealt out with nothing left over, which means every domino is in somebody's hand.

Suits: how dominoes act like cards

Get this one and the rest of the game follows.

Every domino belongs to two suits — one for each end. The 6·3 is both a "six" and a "three." When somebody leads a six, the 6·3 can answer it. When somebody leads a three, the same domino can answer that instead.

The seven suits are blanks, ones (aces), twos (deuces), threes (treys), fours, fives, and sixes. Each suit has seven members: its double, plus the six dominoes pairing it with every other number.

Within a suit, the double is the highest. In the suit of fives, the 5·5 beats everything. After the double, the domino with the higher other end wins. Leading fives, 5·6 beats 5·4, which beats 5·0.

Playing a trick

One player leads by placing a domino face up and naming which of its two suits they're leading. Going clockwise, everybody else plays one domino.

You must follow suit if you can. If fives are led and you hold any domino with a five on it, you have to play one. Only if you hold none may you play anything you like, but a domino that doesn't follow suit cannot win the trick. It's just discarded into it.

Those four dominoes are a trick. Whoever played the winning domino gathers it up and leads the next one. Seven tricks and everyone's hand is empty.

Trumps

Before play starts, one player names a trump suit. Trumps outrank everything.

If trumps are treys, then any domino with a three on it is a trump, and any trump beats any non-trump. Even the 6·6 loses to the lowly 3·0. Among trumps themselves, the usual order applies, with the double highest.

The rule that trips up beginners: once a suit is trump, its dominoes belong only to trump. If treys are trump, the 6·3 is a trump. It is no longer a six. So if somebody leads sixes and the 6·3 is the only "six" in your hand, you cannot use it to follow. You'd have to play something else.

The bidder may also choose doubles as trumps (all seven doubles become the trump suit, 6·6 highest), or follow me, meaning no trump at all, so every trick is won by the highest domino of the led suit.

Count: where the 42 comes from

Each of the seven tricks is worth 1 point just for taking it. That's 7.

Five dominoes carry extra value. These are the count:

5·5 6·4  10 points each
5·0 4·1 3·2  5 points each

Notice the pattern: the tens are the dominoes totalling ten pips, the fives are the ones totalling five. That's 35 points of count, plus 7 for the tricks. 42 points in every hand. That's the whole name of the game.

Count belongs to whoever wins the trick it lands in, not whoever played it. So dropping the 5·5 into a trick your partner is winning hands your team 10 points. Dropping it into one your opponents are winning hands it to them. Watching where the count goes is most of the skill in 42.

Bidding

Starting to the left of whoever shook, each player gets one chance to bid or pass. A bid is a promise: my partnership will take at least this many of the 42 points.

The smallest bid is 30 and each bid must beat the last, up to 41. Above that comes 42 — a promise to take every last point — and then bids of two marks (84) and three marks (168), which also require taking everything but are worth more.

The high bidder names trumps and leads the first domino. Everyone else is trying to stop them.

How to size a bid — count what you will lose. This is the habit that separates people who have played a lot from people who have read the rules, and it is worth adopting on your first hand rather than your hundredth. Beginners add up the tricks they expect to win, arrive at an encouraging number, and bid it. Good players do the opposite: they go through the hand looking for what they expect to give away, and take it off 42.

The reason it works is that losses are easier to see than wins. You rarely know which of your middling bones will take a trick — that depends on trumps, on who leads, and on what your partner is holding. You can usually tell which ones will not.

And count the losses in points, not in tricks. This is the part that changes how a hand looks. A trick you lose is worth 1. A trick you lose with the 6·4 in it is worth 11. Five bones carry 35 of the 42 points, so giving away a bare trick costs you almost nothing and giving away a trick with count in it can cost you the hand. Two hands with the same number of losers can be twenty points apart.

So: mark your likely losers, add up the points you expect to go with them, subtract from 42, and leave yourself room for the bones you are genuinely unsure about. Your partner will usually contribute a trick or two, which is the margin you are leaning on — you are not making the bid alone.

None of this is a rule of the game. It is how the game is counted at a table where everybody has played for years, and nobody writes it down because everybody there already knows it.

Winning: marks

After all seven tricks, add up what the bidding team took.

Made it — they got their bid or better: the bidding team earns 1 mark.
Set — they fell short: the other team earns the mark instead.

A hand can end early. Once one team's points make the outcome certain, there's no reason to keep playing, so the app stops the hand there and shows the result.

Marks are the real score. First partnership to the target — usually 7 marks — wins the game. A 42 bid is worth 1 mark, 84 is worth 2, and 168 is worth 3, which is how a team behind can catch up in a hurry.

The special contracts

Four bids change the shape of the hand rather than its target. Every one of them is bid in marks, so it has to top whatever's on the table, and three of the four are only allowed if you're actually holding the dominoes that justify them. They're house games. A sanctioned tournament plays straight 42 with none of these.

Nello — one mark and up. You bid to lose every trick. Your partner turns their bones face down and sits the hand out, so it's you against both of them with no trumps. Take a single trick and you're set. How doubles behave is the argument every table has, so it's a setting: high of their suit, low of their suit, or a suit of their own.

Splash — two marks and up, and you must hold three doubles. You aren't naming trumps; your partner does, seeing only their own hand, and your partner leads. Between you, you must take all seven tricks.

Plunge — four marks and up, and you must hold four doubles. Again your partner names the trumps blind, and again your partner leads. All seven tricks again. It's the biggest swing in the game: four marks to whoever's right.

Both of those are a gamble by design and it's worth saying so plainly. You're betting on fourteen dominoes when you can only see seven of them. The doubles are what makes it thinkable: whatever suit your partner picks, a double sits at the top of it. A quiet hand opposite will still set you. The AI at this table bids them rarely and only on the hands that really hold.

Sevens — one mark and up, no holding requirement, and the strangest of the four. There are no trumps. Every player must play the domino in their hand whose pips add up closest to seven, and the closest to seven takes the trick, ties going to whoever played first. Your hand very nearly plays itself, which is the whole difficulty: you have to read it correctly before you bid, because after that you have almost no choices left. All seven tricks. There are only three dominoes in the set that total exactly seven — 6·1 5·2 4·3 — and holding them is most of the battle.

How it is actually played

Everything above is the game. This is the part that usually gets passed across a table rather than written down — the habits of people who have played for years. None of it is a rule. All of it is worth knowing before you sit down with somebody who already does.

Bid on what you will lose. Covered under Bidding, and it is the big one: mark your likely losers, price them in points rather than tricks, and take the total off 42.

Count goes to your partner, never to the other side. When a trick is already lost, the bone you throw into it should be the cheapest thing you hold. When your partner is winning it, that is the moment to let go of the 5·5. This is the single most common thing beginners get wrong, because it feels wasteful to drop a valuable bone — but the value lands wherever the trick lands, and the trick is already going somewhere.

Open at the minimum on a hand thick with count. A hand with three or four count bones in it is worth bidding even when it looks unremarkable, because those points are yours to protect rather than theirs to take. Passing such a hand hands the auction to somebody who then drags the count out of you. We measured this one: playing it that way rather than passing is worth about seventeen games in a hundred, which is the largest single difference we have found in how the bots play.

Contest a bid you think is thin. Letting a cheap bid stand because your own hand is unexciting is how a table loses marks quietly. Worth about fourteen games in a hundred on its own, by the same measurements.

On defence, hold your trumps. The bidder wants trumps gone — every one you pull out of your own hand is one they did not have to spend. Let them do their own drawing.

Watch the auction, and remember it. Who bid, who fought, and who passed tells you most of what you will ever know about the other three hands. A player who passed at 30 rarely has the 6·6.

Two things that sound clever and are not. We tried both against thousands of hands, and they are here because a list of what works is worth less without them. Calling the special contracts on a thinner hand loses badly — they need the bones they need. And walking trump past the last one out — pulling one more round when nobody is left holding any — measured as making no difference at all.

What is not talked about. Table talk means anything said or done that tells your partner something the bidding and the play have not — a sigh, a pause, "you sure?". However friendly it sounds, it is cheating, and it is why a serious table plays quiet. The chat in this app is for the same conversation you would have out loud at a kitchen table, and it is worth remembering the difference.

And the table's own rules beat all of it. Every hall plays a slightly different game, and none of them is wrong. Ask before the first shake, not after the argument.

House rules in this app

Every table agrees on its rules before the first shake. Here's what each option means.

Game to — how many marks win. 7 is standard; 3 or 5 make a quicker game.

Minimum bid — the lowest opening bid allowed. Raising it to 32 or 34 means fewer, bolder hands.

If everyone passes — Reshuffle throws the hand in and deals again. Dealer stuck forces whoever shook to take the bid at the minimum, which they usually hate.

Nello — a special bid to lose every single trick. There is no trump, the bidder's partner turns their dominoes face down and sits out the hand entirely, and the two opponents try to force a trick onto the bidder. Take even one and the bid is set. Worth a mark like any other bid.

Nello doubles — how doubles behave during a Nello hand: High (the double is the best of its suit, as usual), Low (the double becomes the worst of its suit, which makes it a useful escape), or Own suit (doubles form a suit of their own).

Where else to play, and where to read

Texas Bones is the family table — free, no ads, your house rules, the hall. If what you want is rated, ranked 42 against players anywhere, we are not that, and we are glad somebody is. More people playing 42 anywhere is the whole point. These are the other places we know of:

Follow Me 42 — Texas 42 in the browser, real-time, with friends or matched opponents; the special contracts and three-handed Moon too. If you want the ladder, this is it.

ConectaGames 42 — 42 on your phone, iOS and Android. Win42 — the long-running Windows program, with an internet lobby. Eggers 42 — free for Windows and Mac.

Pagat's 42 page — not a place to play but the rules reference the whole hobby uses, and one of the three we check our own against.

N42PA — the National 42 Players Association's rules, the ones its sanctioned tournaments use, and what our Tournament preset is built to. Texas42.net — the game's archive: its history, the old printed rule sets going back to the 1950s, and the state championship's winners since 1981. We checked our rules against all three.

Winning 42 by Dennis Roberson — the book on the game, in its sixth edition: how to bid a hand, how to play the bid you won and how to set the one you didn't, and a century of who played it where. If you want to get better at the table, start here.

Reading this table

Two rings on your own bones. Count dominoes carry a solid gold one, so you can always see where the points are. Once trump is named, your trumps carry a dashed red one — and a bone that is both count and trump gets red dashes over gold, so it reads as both at once. Solid against dashed is the part doing the work, which is why the two rings still tell each other apart if the colours don't. Both can be turned off in your profile.

When it's your turn, the dominoes you're allowed to play are bright and the rest are dimmed. The app won't let you break the follow-suit rule, so if something looks unplayable, that's why.

The bar across the top shows the marks, the points taken so far this hand, the current bid, and the trump suit. Bobo, sitting across from you, is your partner.

The idea

Also called "straight" dominoes, the bones are laid end to end, matching numbers, and you score whenever the numbers on the open ends of the line add up to a multiple of five.

Same 28 dominoes, seven to each of four players, partners across from each other. But this is a completely different game from 42: no bidding, no trumps, no tricks. You build one connected layout on the table, adding one domino per turn.

Matching and laying

The first player sets any domino. After that, each player in turn adds one domino to an open end, matching that end's number.

If the layout ends in a four, you can play any domino with a four on it — 4·1, 4·6, 4·4 — and it joins with the fours touching. The other end of your domino becomes the new open end.

Doubles are laid crosswise, turned sideways against the line. That's not decoration. It matters for counting, below.

If you can't match any open end, you knock (pass) and play moves on. In this app the Knock button only appears when you really have nothing.

The spinner

The first double played becomes the spinner, and it's the heart of the layout.

Unlike every other domino, the spinner can be built on from all four sides. The two ends of the line open first; once both of those have a domino, the two sides of the spinner open too. So the layout eventually grows in four directions like a cross.

This app marks the spinner with a gold outline, and when you pick up a domino it shows a glowing marker at every end where that domino can legally go. Tap the marker to place it.

Scoring: the open ends

After you lay a domino, add up the numbers showing at every open end of the layout. If that total is a multiple of five, you score it.

Two counting rules matter:

A double at an open end counts both halves. If the 4·4 sits at the end of an arm, that arm contributes 8, not 4.

The spinner counts both halves until it's boxed in. While the spinner is still an end of the line, its full pip value counts. Once dominoes sit on both of its main sides, it's no longer an end and stops counting on its own.

Worked example: you lay the 6·4 to start. The open ends are 6 and 4, totalling 10, a multiple of five, so you score 10. Next player adds 6·6 on the six. That double is the spinner and counts both halves: 12, plus the 4 still open at the other end, is 16. Not a multiple of five, so no score.

Everything you score goes on the board immediately, and this app pops the number up so you can see where it came from.

Ending the hand

Domino! — play your last domino and the hand ends. Add up all the pips left in your opponents' hands, round to the nearest five, and your side scores that. So a hand ending with heavy dominoes stranded in enemy hands is worth a lot.

Blocked — if all four players knock in a row, nobody can move and the hand is dead. Compare the pips left in hand: the lighter side scores the difference, rounded to the nearest five. Which is why you get rid of the heavy ones early.

Play hands until one side reaches the target — 150 or 250 points, agreed before the game.

House rules in this app

Game to — 150 for a shorter game, 250 for a full evening.

Teams — Partners is the standard 2-vs-2 with partners across. Cutthroat is every player for themselves.

First play — Left of shaker rotates the opening play each hand. Highest double gives the first play to whoever holds the biggest double, an older convention some tables prefer.

A little strategy

Keep an eye on what the open ends will become after you play. A domino that scores you 5 but leaves the board sitting on an easy 10 for the next player is a bad trade. The Sharp difficulty AI in this app does exactly that calculation against you.

Shed heavy dominoes when the scoring is a wash, so a blocked hand doesn't punish you. And watch which numbers keep getting knocked on. If nobody can play a three, holding threes is dangerous.

Why Moon exists

Three people is the most common thing that happens to a domino night. Somebody works late, somebody's kid is sick, and you're sat there with a set on the table and nobody across from you. 42 needs four. Moon needs three, and it is a proper game rather than a consolation.

It is 42's near relation — trick-taking, trumps, a bid — with three differences that change how it feels: a smaller set, no partners, and a bid measured in tricks instead of points.

The set: twenty-two bones

Take a standard double-six set and pull out every domino with a blank on it — except the 0·0, which stays in. That leaves 22.

The reason is arithmetic: three players at seven each is twenty-one, and the twenty-second lies face down in the middle. Nothing left over, nothing spare.

It also does something to the feel of the game. With the blanks gone the middle of the set is thick and the low bones are scarce, so a 6·5 is a bigger animal here than it is in 42.

The widow

That twenty-second bone in the middle is the widow. Whoever wins the bid picks it up, then buries one from their hand, face down, out of the game. Eight in, seven out.

This is the most interesting decision in Moon and it is worth thinking about properly. You are not just deciding what to keep. You are deciding what to be short of, because a suit you hold nothing in is a suit you can trump.

Nobody sees what you buried, and it counts for nobody at the end.

Bidding, in tricks

You bid how many of the seven tricks you will take. The least you can say is four — you cannot bid three, because taking three of seven is not a claim worth making. Then five, six, seven.

Over all of them is moon: all seven tricks, for twenty-one. It is the bid the game is named after and you will not make it often.

Everybody speaks once, going round, and each bid has to beat the one before. If all three pass, the bones are thrown in and shaken again.

Naming trumps

Having buried, you name the trumps: any number, or doubles as a suit of their own, or follow me, which is no trumps at all.

Naming blanks is legal, and it is a curiosity worth knowing about. There is exactly one blank left in the set — the 0·0 — so a blanks trump gives you precisely one trump bone. It is a bluff, not a plan, and it is occasionally the right bluff.

You lead the first trick.

The play

Same as 42. Follow the suit that was led if you can. If you cannot, play anything. Highest trump takes the trick; if no trump was played, the highest bone of the suit led takes it. Whoever takes it leads the next one.

What is different is that there is no count. No fives, no tens, nothing to protect or catch. Every trick is worth exactly one trick, which makes the game cleaner and, once you get used to it, harder. You cannot dump a bad bone somewhere safe, because nowhere is safe and nothing is cheap.

Scoring

Make your bid and you score it. Bid five, take five or more, and you take five points.

Miss it and you lose it. Bid five, take four, and five points come off. You can and will go backwards. That is the whole tension of the game and it is why you bid the number you can see rather than the number you would like.

Everybody else scores a point for every trick they took, whether the bid came home or not. So there is always something in it for the two of you who did not buy the hand: even against a bid that makes, a trick stolen is a point banked.

First to 21 wins.

Playing it well

Count the hand before you bid. Trump length first: five trumps is usually four tricks on its own. Then walkers outside trump — a bone that is the highest left in its suit will take a trick whenever you lead it.

The widow is worth about half a trick. One bone in, one bone out. Do not bid a whole extra trick on the strength of a card you have not seen.

Bury for shortness, not for weakness. Getting rid of your worst bone is the obvious move. Getting rid of your only bone in a suit is often the better one, because from then on that suit is one you can trump.

Defending is worth doing. You are not just trying to set the bidder — every trick you take is a point, and two defenders quietly taking two apiece while a bid makes is a perfectly good hand for both of you.

Why it's in a domino app

It isn't a domino game. It's here because Taroky travelled the same way 42 did — carried by families, taught at a kitchen table, never written down until somebody worried it might be forgotten. Czech families brought it to Texas and to Nebraska in the 1800s and their descendants are still playing it, at tournaments across the state every year.

The game here is the four-player partnership game as Texas tables play it, with a second setting for the way the Czech and Slovak tables count and pay. Where the two agree, which is nearly everywhere, there is one game. Where our Texas source is silent we have used the Czech rule and said so below, and we are checking those with the people who run the tables. If your family plays it differently, they aren't wrong, and we'd like to hear about it.

The pack

Taroky uses a 54-card tarot pack, not a poker deck. It splits in two:

22 taroky — the permanent trumps, numbered I through XXI, plus the Skýz, which carries no number. They outrank every suit card, always.

32 suit cards — eight each in hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. Each suit has four court cards (King, Queen, Rider, Jack) and four pip cards.

What beats what

Among the taroky the numbers run in order: II is beaten by III, III by IV, and so on up to XXI, the Mond. Above all of them sits the Skýz, the highest card in the pack. The I, the Pagát, is the lowest trump — and the most interesting card in the game.

In the suits the courts rank King, Queen, Rider, Jack, high to low. The pip cards are the part that trips people up: in the black suits the higher number wins — 10 beats 9 beats 8 beats 7 — and in the red suits it is reversed, the Ace highest, then 2, then 3, then 4. (The red order is the Czech rule; our Texas source doesn't say.)

The deal, and whose hand it is

Four play. The dealer's right-hand neighbour cuts; six cards go face down to the middle as the talon, then twelve to each player, six at a time, counter-clockwise.

One player each hand is the povinnost — the one whose turn it is to take the hand. On the first hand it is whoever was dealt the II; after that it moves one seat counter-clockwise each deal, and so does the shake.

"Everybody good?"

Once the cards are sorted the povinnost asks the table: "everybody good?" It means two things at once — are you happy for me to take the hand with a partner, and does anyone want it instead? Each of the others answers in turn. Good means carry on. Prever means I'll play alone against the three of you; the stakes are trebled. The first to say prever has it.

The partner

A povinnost has a partner, and nobody knows who it is yet — not even the povinnost. The partner is whoever holds the XIX. If the povinnost holds the XIX, they may call the XVIII instead (or the next one down that they don't hold), or say nothing and let the others assume the XIX — which means playing alone against three. The partner is revealed the moment the called card is played; until then you read the table. Somebody playing under you, or slipping a counter onto a trick you have already won, is telling you something.

The talon

If nobody says prever, the povinnost takes four cards from the talon and lays four away; the next two players who are not the dealer take one and lay one away; the dealer takes none. What you lay away still counts for you at the end.

A prever takes three of the six — the first three, or, sight unseen, the second three, which pays double against them if they lose. The other three go to the opponents' count.

Laying away: never a King, and a one-point tarok only when you hold nothing else that can go.

What is held, and what it pays

Before a card is led, what you were dealt is announced and paid in chips by each of the other three. In the Texas game: Big ones, ten or more taroky, four chips; Little ones, eight or nine, two; Bita, two or fewer, two; the Trul — the I, the XXI and the Skýz together — four; all four Kings, four; Honery, any four of the seven five-point cards, two. The app announces these for you, so nothing is forgotten.

Two things are announced by choice. The holder of the I may announce Pagát to the back — that they will win the last trick with it — for four chips from each player if they do, or four to each if they don't. And an opponent of the contract may say contra, doubling the hand; the contract side may answer re-contra, doubling it again.

In the Czech setting the same holdings have their Czech names and values — taroky, taročky, barvy, barvičky, trul, honéry, královské honéry — and Pagat to the back pays twenty.

Playing a hand

The player after the dealer leads. You must follow the suit led. If you can't, you must play a tarok. If you have neither, anything goes. The highest tarok takes the trick, or if none was played, the highest card of the suit led. The winner leads the next trick. Twelve tricks, four cards each.

The count, and the chips

Every card has a value: the Trul and the Kings 5, Queens 4, Riders 3, Jacks 2, everything else 1. Each side counts what it took, with what it laid away.

Texas: count straight. The pack comes to 106, and the side with 54 or more has won. The losers pay by the tournament formula: take their points from 53, add ten, double it — treble it against a prever — and divide by ten, rounded to the chip. Each loser pays one winner; a prever settles with each of the three. Thirty-six points lost, for instance, is five chips.

Czech: count in threes — groups of three cards, two points off each group — so the pack comes to 70 and 36 wins. The winners are paid their margin over 35, a chip a point, doubled for a prever's second half.

Everybody starts with a hundred chips, and a game is a set number of hands. (A dead-even count goes against the bidder — the Czech rule.)

If you want to learn it

The best way is still a person: the tables at the Czech festivals, the heritage museum in Temple on its Taroky evenings, and the tournaments held around the state. The Where else to play page lists what we know of. Play a few hands here first and the words will already be familiar.