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This is one of my favorite games of all time. I learned to play it on a grey but not rainy Sunday in Gulfport, Florida, at the soccer fields. My uncle makes a habit of driving up there every Sunday, to stay grounded, and it’s something of a tradition to play dominoes after soccer. I figured out the rules, despite I can’t quite understand pure Patois, from watching. Jamaican-style dominoes is very particular: it feels mathematically correct. It can only be played by four players. This website explains the rules well.

Wikipedia lists the “Block Game” as having similar rules, and calls it “the simplest basic domino variant.” A two player rendition has been created in Ludii. This program will be the base of my version of Jamaican-Style Dominoes, which I will be working on this week. I will update this blog post as I make progress, and if I have time, explore other domino variants to implement. The main reason that I want to do this is that both my uncle and I frequently play this game in times of leisure with this app, the only one I know of that renders this particular ruleset, and its wait times and online capabilities are abysmal. I am hoping that Ludii can provide us both with a more pleasant gaming experience.