Ok, so maybe it wasn’t technically Christmas, but since there was exchanging and opening of gifts, an excellent dinner, and some family game time, I am officially labeling our evening at James’ dad’s as the J Jones Christmas (our 6th and final!).
James’ dad called Friday morning to wish us a Happy New Year and to let us know that Joanna, Tom, and their grandson Lycan would be at his house Sunday evening through Tuesday morning. Given this time frame, he wondered if we could come out Monday night for dinner, and we happily accepted.
James picked me up from work Monday night and we headed out to Bethany. Upon arriving everyone decided to exchange gifts and as you can see from the pictures below, Lycan was right in the middle of things helping out!
Afterwards we had a relaxed meal and then Gene, Alice, Joanna, & James played a quite a few hands of 42 (a domino game similar to the card game Hearts). I had never played any domino games before, so I sat back and watched (trying to pick it up via osmosis) and also downloaded and installed some updates and stuff to Gene’s computer.
It was a great night, with James even “Shooting the Moon” and getting it (this is domino/42 lingo for saying he got all 42 points for the first hand of the game)!
Note from James:
“Shooting the Moon” is a little bit more involved than what Kona makes it out to be, but granted, she’s not experienced in the ways of 42. 42 is a domino game that we played everytime we’d get together with Grandma and Grandpa (my mom’s parents). My grandparents were anti-(everything) but especially anti-gambling; so there were no games with dice or cards in them while growing up. Therefore, I don’t know a lot of the card games, and although I can find the probabilities of getting a certain hand in poker, I really can’t play poker. Well, this game of “42” was okay because it was dominoes, not dice or cards. It doesn’t matter that people can (and do) gamble on dominoes, they’re just not associated with it like dice and cards are. Anyway, there are 7 hands (tricks) in a game and there are points associated for the 5 or 10 spots (dominoes that have a sum of the pips of 5 or 10, the 5-0, 4-1, 3-2, 5-5, or 6-4). Those counters add up to 35 points and then you get one point for each trick you take. The maximum you can get is 42 points, hence the name of the game. The minimum bid you can make is 31, which means that you can lose a 10 spot and one trick and still make your bid, but if you miss any more, then you go set and lose whatever your bid was. A perfect hand is 42, which means that you get all of the points and your opponents get none of the points.
Still with me? Okay, the game is played to 100 points and you can go in the hole. On the very first hand of a game, you have the option to “Shoot the Moon.” This means that you’re bidding 100 points that you’ll have a perfect hand. If you get all the points, the game is over with that one hand; if you lose even a single point, your score is now -100. So there is significant risk.
The hand I picked out had 5 trumps and 2 doubles. If no trumps are played, then the highest domino of whatever was laid is the top one and doubles are always the highest. The problem is that I had the 5 trumps and I had the double, but I didn’t have the second highest trump. So, as long as one of my opponents didn’t have both of the other trumps, I was safe. But if either one of my opponents had both trumps, I was doomed and we were going down 100 points from the start.
As soon as I saw that Tom and my dad both had one, a huge sigh of relief came, and I laid down the rest of my dominoes to show that I had them all. It was quite exciting; I can’t say that I ever remember shooting the moon and winning before. It might have happened, but I was usually a pretty conservative bidder.
Of course, I later wondered just how “lucky” I was. So I sat down and figured out the possibilities. There are 9 ways* that the 2 trumps could have been dealt to the other three players. Only 2 of those resulted in me losing, so I had a 7/9 chance of winning when I bid. Yes, it would have been disappointing if it would have happened, but I had a pretty good chance of winning. Now, the 2/9 is an a priori probability. That is, once I saw my hand, I had a 2/9 chance of losing and a 7/9 chance of winning. The chance of getting the hand I got is no where close to that good. That’s why shooting the moon doesn’t happen more often.
* How are there nine ways? There are two trumps remaining; a high one and a low one. This table shows the way that the dominoes could have been distributed.
[table id=2 /]
