What We Actually Know About Moon, the Domino Game
This is the history of Moon as a thing in itself - what it is, where it lives, how it got its name, and what the documentary record actually shows. No origin comparisons, just Moon.
The Name: "Shooting the Moon"
The name of the game comes entirely from one bid: the supreme, all-or-nothing declaration to take every single trick in a hand. The name Moon refers to winning all the tricks, which in several American card games is known as "shooting the moon." Pagat
That phrase itself has a traceable ancestry. The slam known as "shooting the moon" first appeared in Britain in 1939 in a variant of Hearts called "Hitting the Moon." Before that, Hearts itself, as a distinct game, is generally placed in the United States around 1880. So the phrase "shooting the moon" entered trick-taking game culture in the late 19th to early 20th century, and the domino game of Moon borrowed both the phrase and the concept wholesale - naming itself after the single most dramatic thing a player can do at the table. Wikipedia Cardanoir
What Moon Is
Moon is a three-player trick-taking domino game. There are three players instead of four, playing cut-throat instead of partners. All the blanks have been removed from the dominoes, except the double-blank, leaving 22 tiles. This leaves one extra, called the "widow." The person who wins the bid gets to look at the widow and substitute it for one of his dominoes (if he wants), before he calls trumps. There is no "count" - each trick is worth one point. Texas 42 Club
The bidding structure is where the game lives or dies. In this game, bidding starts at 4 tricks and goes as high as 7, called "shooting the moon." There are only 3 players, and each bids or passes once. They can bid 7 or 21: 21 being the game. Failing costs the bidder the points/tricks he or she bid. The opponents get points for the tricks they captured. Dominorules
The moon bid itself is the game's defining moment: someone can bid "shoot the moon," in which he must take all the tricks, and gets 21 points if he makes it, or minus 21 if he doesn't. Texas 42 Club
Trump selection gives the winning bidder meaningful decisions. There are nine possible contracts: any of the seven pip values as trump, a "doubles" contract where all seven doubles form their own trump suit, or "follow me" (no trump at all). The widow gives the bidder one tile of hidden information and a chance to improve the hand before committing to a trump declaration.
Where Moon Is Played
Moon is primarily a Texas game. A four-player version is popular in the Tidewater area of Virginia, though the name Moon is apparently not used there, the game being known simply as "dominoes." Pagat
The Virginia game has its own distinct conventions. In Virginia, the lowest bid allowed is 5. Bids are made by saying "5 times," "6 times," or "7 times." The high bidder chooses one of the seven numbers as trump, or no trump (there is no "doubles" contract in which all the doubles are trump). Instead of the 21 bid, there is a bid of "shoot the moon," which can only be made after another player has bid "7 times." The team that shoots the moon wins the whole game if they succeed and loses it if they fail. Pagat
Whether the Virginia tradition arrived from Texas, developed independently, or shares a common ancestor with the Texas game is simply unknown - it rests on a single uncited informant reference and no further archival record has surfaced.
The Documentary Trail
This is the honest picture: Moon's written record is thin and recent.
The earliest known published ruleset for Moon appears in Jennifer Kelley's Great Book of Domino Games (Sterling Publishing, 1999). The dominorules.com entry carries this citation explicitly: Reprinted with permission of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., NY, NY from Great Book of Domino Games by Jennifer Kelley, ©1999 by Jennifer Kelley. Dominorules
The Pagat.com entry - the most authoritative online reference for card and tile games - was first contributed by Joe Celko in 2001, and revised and maintained by John McLeod. It draws on information from Celko, Howard Fosdick, Eugene Beach, and Lynda Moore - people with direct community knowledge of the game as played in Texas. Pagat
That is the paper trail: 1999 and 2001. No earlier dated document - no newspaper reference, no printed pamphlet, no club handbook - naming "Moon" as a domino game has been located. The game was almost certainly played well before it was written down (trick-taking domino games passed entirely by oral tradition for decades), but when that oral tradition began cannot be confirmed from available sources.
Texas A&M Variants
Joe Celko, one of the primary sources for the Pagat entry, also documented campus variations that show Moon evolving and mutating in active play communities.
Joe Celko reports that at Texas A&M a version without trumps is played, in which when leading a non-double you can choose which of its two suits it belongs to. You call the suit and everyone must follow that suit. This creates unusual hand shapes - a player holding all tiles of one value can potentially sweep all seven tricks regardless of tile strength. Pagat
Joe Celko also reports another college variation in which two dice are thrown before each deal, and only the numbers shown on the dice are available as trump suits. This randomizes the trump landscape before bidding even starts, adding a layer of variance that straight Moon doesn't have. Pagat
House Rules in Living Play
The Texas 42 Club's published Moon guide documents the game as it's actually played at tables, including a concrete house rule variant: a variation to the official version where you play to 15 instead of 21. Game winner gets $1 per player once they reach 15. Minimum bid is 5 and to shoot the moon, it's 14 points. When you don't make your bid you get minus that bid but the most you can go negative is -14. You get a hickie every time you go set. If you lose the game, you pay an extra dollar for every hickie you have. Texas 42 Club
This is the game as a living thing - money on the table, penalty tracking, a community shorthand for being set ("a hickie") - the texture of a game passed person to person, not out of a rulebook.
The Four-Player Version
A partnership version exists and is fully playable. Moon can also be played by four players in two opposing partnerships. Use the full double-six domino deck. Three tricks is the lowest permissible bid. If the partnership that wins the bid makes their bid, they win the hand and score points for all the tricks they took. If they fail to make their bid, they score minus the amount of their bid. The players opposing the bidders always score the number of tricks they take. The first partnership to 21 points wins the game. Best of three games wins the match. Pagat
What Remains Unknown
Honest gaps in the record:
- No dated primary source for Moon predates 1999. The game was almost certainly played before that - it shows all the signs of having spread the same way Texas domino games always did, person to person and table to table - but the written record doesn't reach back further.
- The Tidewater Virginia connection is documented only in a single reference from Joe Celko's Pagat contribution. No Virginia newspaper, club record, or oral history project has corroborated it in published form.
- No named inventor, no founding date, no origin event. Unlike some games that can be traced to a specific table or moment, Moon exists only as something that was already there when people started writing it down.