Dominoes

Dominoes is the most popular table game in the Dominican Republic. The game is said to have been invented by monks many centuries ago. In 1924 the supreme court of the Dominican Republic ruled that dominoes is not a game of luck but a game of skill and that therefore it is legal to place small bets on the outcome of the game. This, at a time when gambling was illegal.

Mainly on the weekends and in the evenings, you will see men sitting around a domino table, outside a colmado (corner store), playing dominoes for hours on end. The game is played with a 28 piece set, with blank|blank up to six|six. Four people play at a time, two against two, therefore each player starts with seven dominoes. And the game is taken very seriously, with every bystander having an opinion on which domino should or should not be laid.

At first, it does not seem like there is much to the game. How could this be a game of skill? You only have seven dominoes to start and there are only two numbers to play on. A book on dominoes in the DR states "among good players, it is easy to predict with great exactitude, after having played 2 or 3 dominoes, which dominoes are left in each of the remaining players hands, but this requires great attention and not forgetting in a single instance which domino was played by which player". Seems incredible, but Kaleab and I (Galen) experienced this first hand when playing with three other Dominicans on the Pedernales trip (photo). Time after time, we were skipped (there was no pause from the person playing on our left to the person playing on our right - game is played counter-clockwise) because they knew exactly which dominoes we had and which choices they needed to make so that we could not play. Once you learn the game, you can see how this is possible.

One player told me that as the game unfolds, it "speaks" to you and you can begin to "see" who holds which dominoes. This, because since you are playing with a partner, you are trying to help your partner to win. So you are always trying to "repeat" the numbers which your partner has played because you assume they played that number because they have more of it. And you are trying to "kill" the numbers your opponents played for the same reason. So when you fail to do this, you are indicating that you don't have that number. Another clue is how long a player takes to play. An immediate play indicates no other choices. A small delay indicates two choices and a longer delay indicates more than two choices. You might think that you can "bluff" on these delays, but that does not quite work because you have also bluffed your partner! So instead, the game progresses quite orderly with all players playing with the same assumptions and receiving the same clues, and becomes quite a beautiful game of cat and mouse.

In most cases, the game is simply played for fun. But in some circles, small wagers are made. When we visited a Batey (Haitian Sugar Cane cutters village), they were wagering one pound bags of rice (seen below the table).

The three 2001-02 SST groups have all played dominoes, some members becoming quite adequate players (it takes more than three months to learn the game up to the level at which Dominicans play it). The Spring group held a tournament at the final retreat and every group member participated. This Summer's group is planning on doing the same. They have played at Casa Goshen, on the bus, and even at the beach. It has been wonderful to see them develop, and discover, and embrace a unique aspect of Dominican culture.