Friday, April 14, 2006
Coming Soon to a Station Near You!
In case you have not noticed yet one of the hottest spectator sports going these days is Texas Hold’Em Poker. It is everywhere. It is on ESPN and the Travel Channel. It features actors, actresses and the usual has-beens, much like some TV game shows. But there are ominous warning signs that the party is about over. Deluxe Texas-Hold’Em sets are going unsold and are being dumped in the clearance bins at drastically reduced prices. Nelson ratings have also started dipping. So already ESPN has started frantically searching for the next big thing. Right now they are focused on a professional domino league. The Network is in cohoots with the Professional Domino Association and has helped sponsor five tournaments. Don’t laugh! First prize is $10,000. The new league has a paltry 170 members, but it has scheduled 12 tournaments so far this year. The League apparently has a TV contract, but it is going head to head against some heavy hitters: the National SCRABBLE® Championship, World SCRABBLE® Championship, the National Tiddlywinks Associations, and the formidable National Mah Jongg League which boasts over 200,000 members. There is also competition from within their own ranks: the Andalusia Annual World Championship Domino Tournament held every year in Andalusia, Alabama, and the World Domino Tournament in Las Vegas with $150,000 in prize money. ESPN is already a proud sponsor of the latter event.
Is it just a coincidence that the new domino league is starting out in Texas? The Long Star State has already given us this new poker game. And it popularized Forty-Two, another domino game, and Mexican Train, yet another domino game. One of the first mentions of dominoes in the state of Texas comes from LBJ who related how he learned the game from his father who like to sit up late to play dominoes and to down a few beers. LBJ followed in his father’s footsteps, only he substituted bourbon for the beer. When LBJ inherited that mess in Vietnam, he soon began using the domino analogy to explain why we must prevail there. The countries in that part of the world are like dominoes all lined up. Tip one over and they all fall one by one. So there is bad karma to overcome for the domino league.
Domino players of the world must also bear up under some recent bad publicity. Last year in Leewarden, Netherlands, tragedy struck at a highly publicized event. Employees of a local TV station had labored for weeks to set up 4,002,136 dominoes for Domino Day in order to establish a new, world record for domino toppling. Suddenly, a sparrow gained entry to the theatre and in a matter of seconds wrecked havoc—toppling over 23,000 dominoes to set a new record for the most dominoes toppled by a bird. The witnesses were not amused. After all they could care less about the bird’s record. All that mattered was their own record. So a man shot the sparrow. Of course, everything was captured on film. A world furor resulted.
Presumably dominoes originated in China. Although Chinese checkers originated in the United States. The Chinese version of the game was based on a pair of dice. Each half of a domino contained the face of one die, while the other half contained the other face. That only produced 21 dominoes. The other seven in a traditional set were added when Americans introduced blanks. Some people say that the Americans have been firing blanks every since. The Chinese decided to move on to something more exciting with their ivory tiles—mah jong. Some say Confucius invented the game. For a while the game was reserved for the royalty. Commoners who played were… decapitated. So there were few who played and even fewer who played a second time. Eventually, everyone was granted the privilege of playing. When Joseph P. Babcock brought that game to the United States in 1920 from Shanghai, it took the country by storm. Babcock changed the rules somewhat. All references to decapitation were eliminated. With that hurdle out of the way, a mah jong shortage quickly developed. To avoid a national panic, bones were shipped from Kansas City and Chicago to provide raw materials for the manufacture of the sets. Please note that today when players speak of the “boneyard” in dominoes, there really was a time when the boneyard came from a boneyard.
In the twenties mah jong had various aliases. Some simply called the game Chinese Dominoes. Others used the English translation—the sparrow game. Whoops! The sparrow is the patron mascot of dominoes. And the people in the Netherlands did what? St. Francis is probably turning over in his tomb. So here is some parting advice for the new domino league: watch the trash talk and don’t mess with the birds.
In case you have not noticed yet one of the hottest spectator sports going these days is Texas Hold’Em Poker. It is everywhere. It is on ESPN and the Travel Channel. It features actors, actresses and the usual has-beens, much like some TV game shows. But there are ominous warning signs that the party is about over. Deluxe Texas-Hold’Em sets are going unsold and are being dumped in the clearance bins at drastically reduced prices. Nelson ratings have also started dipping. So already ESPN has started frantically searching for the next big thing. Right now they are focused on a professional domino league. The Network is in cohoots with the Professional Domino Association and has helped sponsor five tournaments. Don’t laugh! First prize is $10,000. The new league has a paltry 170 members, but it has scheduled 12 tournaments so far this year. The League apparently has a TV contract, but it is going head to head against some heavy hitters: the National SCRABBLE® Championship, World SCRABBLE® Championship, the National Tiddlywinks Associations, and the formidable National Mah Jongg League which boasts over 200,000 members. There is also competition from within their own ranks: the Andalusia Annual World Championship Domino Tournament held every year in Andalusia, Alabama, and the World Domino Tournament in Las Vegas with $150,000 in prize money. ESPN is already a proud sponsor of the latter event.
Is it just a coincidence that the new domino league is starting out in Texas? The Long Star State has already given us this new poker game. And it popularized Forty-Two, another domino game, and Mexican Train, yet another domino game. One of the first mentions of dominoes in the state of Texas comes from LBJ who related how he learned the game from his father who like to sit up late to play dominoes and to down a few beers. LBJ followed in his father’s footsteps, only he substituted bourbon for the beer. When LBJ inherited that mess in Vietnam, he soon began using the domino analogy to explain why we must prevail there. The countries in that part of the world are like dominoes all lined up. Tip one over and they all fall one by one. So there is bad karma to overcome for the domino league.
Domino players of the world must also bear up under some recent bad publicity. Last year in Leewarden, Netherlands, tragedy struck at a highly publicized event. Employees of a local TV station had labored for weeks to set up 4,002,136 dominoes for Domino Day in order to establish a new, world record for domino toppling. Suddenly, a sparrow gained entry to the theatre and in a matter of seconds wrecked havoc—toppling over 23,000 dominoes to set a new record for the most dominoes toppled by a bird. The witnesses were not amused. After all they could care less about the bird’s record. All that mattered was their own record. So a man shot the sparrow. Of course, everything was captured on film. A world furor resulted.
Presumably dominoes originated in China. Although Chinese checkers originated in the United States. The Chinese version of the game was based on a pair of dice. Each half of a domino contained the face of one die, while the other half contained the other face. That only produced 21 dominoes. The other seven in a traditional set were added when Americans introduced blanks. Some people say that the Americans have been firing blanks every since. The Chinese decided to move on to something more exciting with their ivory tiles—mah jong. Some say Confucius invented the game. For a while the game was reserved for the royalty. Commoners who played were… decapitated. So there were few who played and even fewer who played a second time. Eventually, everyone was granted the privilege of playing. When Joseph P. Babcock brought that game to the United States in 1920 from Shanghai, it took the country by storm. Babcock changed the rules somewhat. All references to decapitation were eliminated. With that hurdle out of the way, a mah jong shortage quickly developed. To avoid a national panic, bones were shipped from Kansas City and Chicago to provide raw materials for the manufacture of the sets. Please note that today when players speak of the “boneyard” in dominoes, there really was a time when the boneyard came from a boneyard.
In the twenties mah jong had various aliases. Some simply called the game Chinese Dominoes. Others used the English translation—the sparrow game. Whoops! The sparrow is the patron mascot of dominoes. And the people in the Netherlands did what? St. Francis is probably turning over in his tomb. So here is some parting advice for the new domino league: watch the trash talk and don’t mess with the birds.
