Shake, draw, and stand them up

Most fusses at a forty-two table do not start with a bad bid. They start before the bidding, with somebody drawing too soon or a domino getting turned over. Here is the routine, and where each piece of it is written down.

Shaking. In forty-two, shuffling is called shaking, and the person who does it is the shaker. All 28 dominoes go face down, and the shaker mixes them up well on the table. Pagat's rules say the first shaker is picked at random and the job passes clockwise after each hand. The Austin 42 tournament rules pick the first shaker by having everybody draw one domino. Whoever draws the one with the most spots shakes.

Drawing. Each player takes seven. The order matters, and both of those sources agree on it: the shaker's opponents draw first, then the shaker's partner, and the shaker draws last. Count to seven before you look.

Standing them up. Pagat says to set your dominoes on edge, so you can see the spots and nobody else can. The Austin tournament rules go further. You may not hold them in your hand except to look at them the first time. You line them up in front of you in two rows, four and three or three and four, the same way every hand. Once play starts you do not move them around or push them together, and you do not touch them except to play one. At home nobody is going to hold you to all of that. It is still a good habit. If you slide your dominoes around after every trick, the sliding can tell people things about your hand.

Tricks. Pagat says the tricks your side wins go face up near one member of the team, kept in the order they were played, where everybody can see them. Anybody at the table can look back and count. When a team bids to take all seven tricks, pagat says it may choose to stack them, laying the third trick on top of the first, the fourth on the second, and so on, so only two are showing.

If a domino gets turned over. It happens. Under the Austin rules, if one flips during the bidding, an opponent decides right then whether the dominoes get shaken again. At home, decide your own rule before it comes up.

None of this is about being stiff. It is so that when the hand is over, nobody has to wonder whether it was fair.

Sources:

• John McLeod, "Texas 42," pagat.com, sections on the deal and the play. pagat.com
• Austin 42, "Tournament Rules," sections on shake and draw, positioning of bones, and bidding. austin42.org
• "42 (dominoes)," Wikipedia, terminology section (shake, meaning shuffle). en.wikipedia.org)