The Texas House of Representatives approved bill HCR 84 designating 42 (or Texas 42), a partnership/trick-taking/auction dominoes game, as the official table game of Texas (it has sometimes been called this, unofficially).

The bill was introduced by Rep Erwin Cain, who read the following poem [1] on the floor in support of the bill and to diss poker and other games of luck:

In a little town of Garner
On the windy West Texas plains
It was common for farmers and ranchers
To indulge in questionable games

Two such young country Baptists
With parents being pious and devout
Who frowned on the card game Whist
Devised a new game less they be found out

Using double six dominoes in 1887
They created this holy game
Or rather it fell straight from heaven
Our blessed 42 with now such wide acclaim

No game of chance is this
As in cards, roulette or dice
For skill it takes in this game of bliss
Not so for those games of vice

No pairs, folds, flushes or straights
No rivers, turns or flops
No divining the first out of the gate
And, no guessing where the ball will stop

In 42 when the game begins,
A domino on the table you play,
The trump suit or the high suit wins,
The players then make another lay.

Tricks are made until the end
Each is given a point of one
Some others count for five or even ten
To determine who has won.

So hereby made is a motion
To establish for our state
The game of 42 with the notion
To be the table game of Texas so great

So vote aye when the bell the clerk rings
Not red or two at your desk
And let the clouds part and the birds sing
For such a proclamation as this.

Move adoption –

And now we see why Rep. Cain is a politician, and not a poet. The bill must now be voted on by the Texas Senate. It is currently scheduled for a public hearing on Friday, May 20.

(source, image)

[1] Courtesy of Jay Wiley, Rep. Cain’s Chief of Staff