A So Wi Live

Just drop a six at everyone’s favourite game

Keeping your counsel

 
Things get a little tense

 
Manning the Scoreboard

It aint over yet.

Taking things very seriously.

Wednesday,  August 31, 2005

It is played at church socials, at friends’ houses, at the bars, at the village shops in backyards and on verandas.

There are official domino clubs and teams just as there are in any other sport and winning a game brings on that triumphant feeling as with any other sport, especially if the game required intense mental skill to calculate the play.

Losing a ‘six-love’ can be a hard experience particularly for those who don’t take well to losing. Often in friendly games, one can stay a mile away and hear the pounding of the pieces on the table to indicate a challenging play.

Up close, the regular touting of the winning team can become an event by itself. “Dominoes is a way of life fe Yardie,” Rick told The Jamaican In Cayman.

Though there are several types of domino games with varying numbers of pieces, Jamaicans mainly play with the double six packs that contain twenty-eight pieces.

The game is also a spectator sport just like with cricket, football or any other interesting game people like to watch. And when there are high-prizes up for grabs the games can attract dozens of spectators.

And again as with any other sport, the greater the number of spectators, the more intense the game becomes.

“I play harder when people a watch de game,” said Anthony after finishing a friendly game.

Because the game was once played mainly at bars or village shops in Jamaica, it had the impression of a male oriented sport, though some girls would sneak away for a game or two.

“Mi use to hide and go play it,” Loretta said, now she is a referee in big matches. Jamaican women are seriously involved in the sport now and play just as tough as their male counterparts.

Though it is unclear where the word ‘domino’ came from, the game probably originated in China, several centuries ago and slowly found its way into western culture.

It arrived in Britain in the late 18th Century from France where it was played mostly in inns and taverns and it made its way to Jamaica with the slave masters who left it as a legacy.

Domino games are played all over the world, but are most popular in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially Jamaica and in all Jamaican communities abroad. Of the two types of games popular amongst Jamaican, (Coding and Mental) the Mental game requires the most in-depth concentration.

The players have to study the pieces played, who played what, under what circumstances and when the pieces were played.

A team member has to imagine what play his or her partner is trying to initiate, he or she has to also determine from early on in the game who has the most dominant card of the two and begin from an early stage to play toward that hand.

In Coding, there is an open line of communication between the team members ,only it is done through gesture and other body language. In the end the satisfaction is the same. That is, if one manages to give his opponent a six love.

Here in Cayman, in one single afternoon, The Jamaican In Cayman set out to capture the games around George Town and found that you don’t have to search long to find a game, especially on a Sunday evening.

A game at Tony’s Jerk on School Road, one at the Cricket Field, one under the lights on Shedden Road and in a whole hosts of bars, the dominos were flying.

At the Mango Tree Restaurant there was a friendly match between Island All Stars and Wellys.

There will be more and more games going on too over the coming weeks as the play-offs will begin to find the best two pairs to enter the World tournament scheduled for October, in Montego, Jamaica and one thing is for sure, whoever ends up in Mo’Bay there will be plenty of intense games leading up to those finals.

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