FOLLOW ME 42 T E X A S TM THE NATIONAL GAME OF TEXAS

Follow Me 42 News

Updates, milestones, and what's ahead for Follow Me 42 online.

Update

Custom Tables Are Close, Plus Pace Controls

Howdy y'all! The headline first: Phase 3 Custom Tables is close. This is the hosted multiplayer step from our roadmap - you host a 2-player, 3-player Moon, or 4-player table on a $3.99/mo host subscription, and it stays completely free for everyone who joins your table. Hosting has been limited to our tester group while we refine the lobby; general availability is the next thing to land. We are down to the last mile now, working through small UI issues on the New Game and lobby screens that we would rather polish than rush, so we are counting the release in days to weeks, not months. The rest of this update is everything that landed while we get there.

Play at Your Pace

By player request, solo games against the AI now have a Pace setting: Normal, Relaxed (1.5x), or Slow (2x). Pick it in Settings and the table gives you more breathing room between tricks and AI turns, so you can read the table and plan your play without the game moving on ahead of you. It applies to solo play only - multiplayer tables are untouched - and the opening deal and the Learn to Play tutorial keep their normal timing.

A Livelier Lobby

The lobby's Hall now leads with a clean five-tile row - Profile, Table, Community, Market, and Support - putting the places you visit most one tap away (Table stays reserved for hosts, ready for the release above). A new notification bell opens a slide-in drawer so studio announcements reach you in the lobby instead of scrolling past in chat, and every so often you will see a quick one-question poll so you can help steer what we build next. Announcements can be aimed at the right players (everyone, subscribers, or folks who have played recently) so your inbox stays relevant.

Support That Answers Back

The Support & Feedback form is now a real ticket system, and here is the part that matters: when we reply, the answer lands in your email. Responses come from our support and billing addresses with a reply-to that reaches us directly, so a question or bug report turns into an actual back-and-forth instead of vanishing into a queue.

A Cleaner New Game Screen

Setting up a game got simpler. Presets now live on unified selection tracks, the mode switch and the Start button are folded into a single card header, and your choices collapse into a tidy summary so the screen stays calm instead of crowded. This is the same screen that fronts table hosting, which is exactly why we are giving it extra attention right now.

Mobile Polish

A run of phone-first fixes: the five-tile Hall row and the five-count preset rows now hold a single line down to narrow 390px screens, segmented filter controls stopped clipping their labels on small displays, and the Community "Tournaments" tab is now the shorter "Tourneys" so it fits without wrapping.

Under the hood: support replies, notifications, and polls each ride their own audited database tables with a single shared rule for who is eligible to receive what, transactional emails route past the marketing list so account and support mail always gets through, and we cleared this cycle's dependency and security audit findings. Boring plumbing, but it is what lets us open table hosting with confidence.

The bones are almost shuffled for hosted tables. Thank you for the patience while we sweat the last details - see you at the table soon.

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Sharper AI, Honest Defense & Platform Polish

Since our last update, we focused on eliminating tactical blind spots at the table, sharpening partner defense, and hardening the platform. The highlights:

Securing the Trick in Splash & Plunge

In Splash and Plunge contracts, the bidder's partner always sits in third seat (lead, opponent, partner, opponent). Previously, if your partner was provisionally winning at turn three, the AI assumed the trick was safe and dumped low count, even when an opponent behind them held a boss tile or higher trump waiting to snatch it. The AI now checks whether remaining opponents can beat the trick. If the trick is threatened, your partner will take control and win it outright (or ruff when void) rather than throwing away a seven-trick contract on the final seat.

Forcing the Bidder in Nello

Defenders had a costly blind spot against Nello contracts: when leading, they frequently led suits the bidder was already known to be void in. Because Nello is played with no trumps, an off-suit lead gave the bidder a free pass to discard high, dangerous tiles with zero risk. Defenders now prioritize leading suits the bidder must follow, keeping the pressure on and forcing them to swallow tricks.

Disciplined Partner Count-Feeding

When feeding count to a partner whose trick is guaranteed, how the AI breaks ties between equal-value count tiles matters. Instead of dropping count in arbitrary hand order, our bots now follow a strict strategic hierarchy: saving the double-five to remain the boss five and catch later leads, while discarding tiles like the 6-4 early to eliminate the nine-leads that would otherwise draw valuable count into danger.

Competitive Bidding at the Expert Tier

We audited our expert-tier AI bidding models and removed an over-cautious rule that caused bots to pass playable hands whenever their partner had already bid. Expert players now assess hand strength and risk with proper competitive confidence rather than folding early.

Table & Profile Polish

Player cards opened from the lobby roster, chat, or leaderboards now reliably display equipped avatars even when inspecting private profiles. Segmented tab controls are unified across the Hall of Fame, the Market, and profile screens, while button sizing and pulse halos between Throw Down (CLAIM / CONCEDE) and Suit Sort now remain perfectly matched even on narrow phone viewports. We also refreshed achievement art for The Devil and updated asset caching for all mobile browsers.

Canonical Glossary & Web Overhaul

We published an expanded and standardized glossary of Texas 42 definitions on followme42.com, formatting classic terminology cleanly so players have an authoritative reference without cluttered citations. We also brought the marketing site into sync with the in-game design tokens, adding gold accents, Cinzel typography, interactive setup preview cards, and explicit free-to-play messaging.

Also: we burned down over 60 audit findings across security, rate limiting, and database indexing, hardened edge routing, and introduced ground-truth simulation tooling (including a double-dummy solver and golden hand benchmark rigs) so every strategic change is tested against mathematically optimal play before it ever reaches your table.

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Fair Play & Fewer Lost Seats

Howdy y'all! Six days since Outfits shipped, spent mostly on making the table honest and hard to break. The highlights:

Fair Play at the Table

We closed holes that let a properly seated player bend a multiplayer game: an illegal trump declaration that handed the auction winner every trick, and bids outside the legal ladder on Sevens, Moon and uncapped tables. A related defect could discard a finished game's results, ratings and XP for every seat. The server validates all of it in one place now.

Your Seat Survives a Bad Connection

An ordinary 8-second phone hiccup could cost you your seat, because reconnect attempts were spaced wider than the grace period they had to fit inside. Retry timing is derived from that window now, a stalled handshake times out instead of hanging, you are told why a connection dropped, and every waiting overlay has a way out.

The AI Explains Itself

Our AI already writes a plain-English reason for every decision it makes ("Your partner is winning! Safely throw them a count tile"), and those reasons were thrown away for most players. They are kept now and shown after the game, for everyone. Every AI complaint we triaged was a correct play whose logic was invisible, so we made the logic visible.

Reports Get Answers

42 percent of closed reports had never received a reply. A report can no longer be closed without one, the description box is required (blank submissions were landing in the queue as "No description provided"), and every open report has been answered.

The Market Is Open to Everyone

Merch no longer requires a subscription. Anyone can browse and order. Previews are square and show the real front print rather than a cropped studio shot, and the trucker hat is retired after failing quality inspection.

Outfits Polish

Rosters are leaderboard cards now, with member avatars, statistics compacted to two rows, collapsible milestones, and the felt theme on signed-in profiles. Brand-new Outfits no longer all report "Rank #1", and a leadership transfer can no longer leave a crew with zero leaders.

Also: the critical download is 27 percent smaller, the lobby stopped sending a bigger welcome the busier it gets, private profiles are respected on public table pages, and tournament prizes now reach knocked-out players (a normal 8-entrant bracket was losing 370 circuit points).

- 7 Marks Studios

Milestone

Introducing Outfits: Ride Together in Player Guilds

Howdy y'all! Over the past three days, we shipped one of our biggest multiplayer milestones yet: Outfits (Player Guilds). Players can now team up, tag their tables, manage rosters, and compete collectively on brand-new Outfit leaderboards.

What Are Outfits?

An Outfit is a crew of up to 42 players who represent a shared identity on Follow Me 42. Active subscribers can create and lead an Outfit, assign Officers, select a join policy (Open or Request-to-Join), and manage membership queues. Every player can join one Outfit at a time, whether they are a subscriber or a free player.

Tag Your Table & Earn Collective Stats

Subscribers who host multiplayer tables can tag their table with their Outfit. Completed games played by members at tagged tables roll into the Outfit's collective record, establishing performance across 42 and Moon variants.

Outfit Leaderboards & Standings

Outfits are ranked on a dedicated segment of the Hall of Fame leaderboard based on the mean multiplayer Glicko-2 rating of their established members (players with 15+ rated games and established RD). Whether your crew rides with a 1,445 or is climbing the ranks, your collective play earns your spot on the board.

Public Outfit Pages & Member Privacy

Every Outfit gets a public home at followme42.com/o/{slug} featuring its roster, table tags, and aggregate stats. To respect personal preferences, members with private profiles appear on public rosters as "Private Profile" with handles withheld from non-members, while their ratings continue to contribute to the Outfit's rank. Full handles are visible to fellow crew members.

Updated Legal Policies & Governance

Alongside Outfits, we updated our Terms of Service (v1.2), Privacy Policy (v1.4), and Cookie Notice (v1.3) to cover Outfit creation rights, table tagging, privacy anonymization, Turnstile bot protection, and leadership succession rules (including 90-day inactive leader transfer).

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Throw Down in Quick Match

Howdy y'all! Three player reports drove most of this week's work: Throw Down was missing from Quick Match, the queue counter did not make sense, and phones were losing seats mid-hand. All three are fixed, along with a stack of table polish and two AI bidding and play improvements.

Throw Down Is Now On in Every Quick Match

Throw Down previously required a custom table with the toggle switched on, which left rated 1v1 Quick Match playing out hands that were already decided. Quick Match tables now enable it by default. Once the hand is arithmetically settled, the highest bidder gets the Throw Down button labeled CLAIM or CONCEDE, and the marks awarded are exactly the marks playing the hand out would award. Nello hands are excluded, and only the highest bidder can throw down. Tournament tables keep Throw Down off, since a circuit sets its own rules.

The Queue Counter Now Says Something Useful

The QUICK tab read "Pos: 1 of 1" while you waited, which told you nothing about how close a match was. That queue pairs exactly two seekers, so it now reads Players: 1 of 2, matching the pill in lobby chat. The SOLO tab waits for a host with an open seat rather than a fixed headcount, so it still shows your position in line.

We also fixed a case where a single player could end up holding two entries in the queue, leaving one that Cancel could never clear. Cancel now removes every entry you hold and retracts the matching lobby notice.

Lock Your Phone Without Losing Your Seat

This is the big one for mobile play. When a phone slept or a radio dropped, the client stopped listening for the wake-up event at exactly the moment the connection was down, so nothing reconnected you. Unlocking around twenty seconds later meant your seat grace timer had already expired and the seat was forfeit.

  • Instant resume: Unlocking your phone or regaining network now retries the connection immediately, whether or not the socket was still alive.
  • Smarter retries: Reconnect attempts back off with jitter instead of hammering a flat three-second timer, so a rolling update does not stack every player onto the same second.
  • No orphan connections: A resume that lands while a connection is already opening no longer creates a second socket, which is what turned a short blip into a long one.

Table & Hand Polish

  • Pass-out announcement in multiplayer: When nobody bids and the hand is redealt, the redeal toast now shows at multiplayer tables. It had only ever appeared in solo games.
  • Bid labels lead with points: Hand History rows now read 84 (2m) instead of just "2m", so the number you saw on the bid badge is the number you find in your history. Reported from game report #64.
  • Face-down tiles stay put: Hovering a face-down tile no longer lifts it. The widow reveal tile is still clickable and keeps its glow.
  • Dismissable Learn to Play cards: Each tutorial card on the New Game screen has a ✕ in its corner. Dismissals are per card, and a new Tutorial Cards row in Settings brings both back.
  • Single-tap profile back: The back arrow on your profile could appear to do nothing and need a second tap. It now returns home in one tap, every time.
  • Lobby chat header: The Online, Quick Match, and Spectate controls share one shape and one hover, take their color from your felt theme, and Online is now a real button you can reach with a keyboard. The unread pulse on the chat button is larger and brighter, since the icon had been rendering at a fraction of its intended size.

Smarter AI Bidding and Nello Play

  • The calf is priced now: The AI treated any hand holding the cow but not the bull the same, whether or not it also held the calf, and overbid hands with two of the top three trumps out. Across 10,000 hands per arm on three seeds, contracts made on exactly those hands rose about two points and count conceded dropped 16 to 20 percent, with total bid volume flat. Bull, cow, and calf now also match the terms the books use.
  • Better Nello discards: When a defender has already outranked everything the Nello bidder holds in the led suit, the trick is lost either way, so the bidder now sheds its highest safe tile instead of spending a low one it will need later. Measured over 60,000 forced declarations, contracts made improved in 27 of 30 test cells, up 2.6 percent overall and 8.6 percent in doubles-low.

Tournament Lobby & Market Notes

Tournament play is Phase 4 of the multiplayer rollout, and we found that its lobby connection had never worked: registered players could not enter their tournament match at all. That path is fixed and covered by tests ahead of the subscription release. Separately, the Alamo Chapel tile graphic is temporarily hidden from the Market while its artwork is reworked. If you already own it, nothing changes and you can keep it equipped.

Jump into a Quick Match, throw down a decided hand, and let us know how mobile play feels now.

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Streamlined Chat & Free 1v1 Play

Howdy y'all! We just pushed a fresh set of chat revisions to the table this evening, making it easier than ever to talk strategy, banter between hands, and keep table talk flowing smoothly.

Upgraded Table Chat & Presence

Tonight's update brings a cleaner, snappier chat experience to live games:

  • Header Navigation: Quick Match (⚡) and Spectate (👁️) controls are now integrated directly into the lobby chat header for one-tap access.
  • Always-On Presence & Unread Pulse: Clearer online presence signals and a pulsating chat icon so you know when table conversation is active.
  • Live Queue Announcements: Automatic lobby notices when a player queues for Quick Match, letting the room know a game is looking for opponents.
  • In-Game Speech Bubbles: Live speech bubbles over table seats so you can read chat without taking your eyes off the felt.

How to Jump Into 1v1 Multiplayer (Free Forever!)

There is no better place to try out the updated chat than in a 1v1 Quick Match. In 1v1 mode, you and your opponent play head-to-head, each paired with an AI bot partner at seats 2 and 3 for fast, rated partnership play.

Best of all, 1v1 Quick Matches will be free forever! You can jump straight into the queue in two easy ways:

  • Select ⚡ in the header at the top of the lobby chat.
  • Go to Community, select Tables, and click Quick Match.

We are committed to keeping 1v1 multiplayer completely free for everyone so you can always play real opponents, test out table chat, and help us work out any remaining kinks.

Roadmap: Subscriptions, Tournaments & Seasons

These revisions lay the groundwork for our upcoming full subscription release, which will expand multiplayer into hosted custom tables, competitive tournaments, and seasonal ranking circuits. Your play and feedback during this free 1v1 phase ensure table performance and social features are completely rock-solid when subscription features launch.

Hop in, select ⚡, try out the updated chat, and let us know what you think!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

August Roundup: Faster Play, Matching Tables & Ghosts of the Alamo

Howdy y'all! August has been a heads-down month at the table. Instead of piling on new modes, we spent it on how the game feels to play: pacing, layout, staying connected, and smarter AI. Here is everything that has landed so far this month.

Faster, Steadier Pacing

Playtesters told us the game "seemed slow," so we measured it. Loading was not the problem. Scheduled waiting was.

  • Your Timer setting no longer slows the AI: The Timer option (Off, 15s, 30s) is meant to control your own turn countdown, but it was also stretching AI thinking from a flat eight-tenths of a second out to four to fifteen seconds per play. Switching a clock on for yourself made the AI roughly twelve times slower and turned about 31 seconds of waiting per hand into about two and a half minutes. AI pacing is now one steady cadence at every Timer setting.
  • Snappier tricks: We shortened the trick sweep and the floating point count, then trimmed the pause before tiles clear from 2 seconds to 1.4. A trick now wraps up in about 3.8 seconds instead of 4.4, and a full hand spends about 25 seconds waiting instead of 31. The pause is still comfortably longer than the animations it waits on, so nothing gets cut off in flight.
  • Real performance data: We enabled real-user performance tracing, so the next "it feels slow" report arrives with numbers attached instead of guesswork.

Multiplayer Tables Now Match Solo

Multiplayer tables had quietly drifted away from the solo layout. They are pixel-identical again.

  • Same board on every screen: The felt, star watermark, play area, seats, and hand area now line up with solo across the seven screen sizes we test, from a 360-pixel phone to a 1440-pixel desktop. Moon 3-Hand matches too.
  • Seat badges clear the tiles: The East and West seat badges were 16 pixels wider in multiplayer than in solo, enough to overlap the played tiles on phones 414 pixels wide and narrower. They now use the same size solo does.
  • Table chat is usable on phones: The bottom navigation bar was stacking on top of the table chat composer in portrait, so you could open chat but not type in it. That is fixed.

Staying Connected

  • No more silent lobbies: Table connections now carry a heartbeat. A host waiting in a pre-game lobby sends no traffic, so the connection could be dropped in transit with neither side noticing, and knocks at the door never arrived until the host reloaded the page. A dead connection is now spotted within about a minute and reconnects on its own.
  • Live Quick Match queue: Your position and the total number waiting now refresh for everyone in line whenever somebody joins, leaves, or gets matched. Before this, only the last player to act saw fresh numbers, so anyone already waiting watched a frozen count.

Mobile Window Fixes

The player profile popup, the report window, and the Live Games spectate list were all rendering flush against the top edge on phones, tucked up under the notch. All three now center on screen, and on desktop the player profile still opens anchored to where you clicked.

Ghosts of the Alamo

Our Halloween theme pack is live in the Market, and it grew since it first went in.

  • Seven items for $5.99: Alamo Stone table color, Limestone tile material, Spirit Fire pips, the Wilted Rose tile graphic, the Alamo Sentinel watermark, the Ghostly Aura avatar effect, and the new Ash and Bone player theme. Bought separately they run $23.93.
  • Ash and Bone: Bone for your team, ash blue for theirs, and oxblood for the third seat in Moon. We checked that the team colors stay separable under color blindness simulation rather than trusting how they look side by side. Ghostly Aura was retinted to the same ash blue so the bundle reads as one set.
  • Jimothy joins the Critters: A standalone raccoon watermark at $2.99, in a brand new Critters group in the watermark picker.
  • Alamo Chapel: Out of the bundle while we rework its artwork. It is still sold on its own, and it stays yours if you already own it.
  • Artwork that adapts: Monochrome tile art now darkens automatically on light tile materials like Limestone and White, where it used to wash out. The Themes picker also draws tiles through the same engine the table uses, so a preview finally matches what you get.
  • Market polish: The featured bundle now has a carousel through every item it contains, and avatar effect previews sit on your own felt like every other preview does.

Smarter AI

  • Splash and Plunge: Two fixes out of a confirmed player report. AI partners stop leading trumps that cannot win, and they now choose trump for taking all seven tricks instead of for scoring points, which are different goals. Measured over 3,000 forced hands, Plunge success moved from 30.8% to 32.3% and Splash from 18.6% to 19.6%.
  • Forced dealers bid honestly: An AI dealer stuck with the bid on a passed-out hand was capped at 30 even while holding a lay-down 84. It now bids the 84, the same option the forced-dealer screen gives you.
  • Better game reports: When you file a report, we now capture every AI play and trump call along with the earlier hands of that game. Reports we previously could not reproduce are now actionable.

Under the Hood

Our deploy pipeline now retries the intermittent database errors that were aborting perfectly good releases, and it waits for a new build to reach every edge before promoting it. We also cleared every outstanding dependency security finding in our build tooling.

Pull up a chair. The table moves quicker than it did two weeks ago.

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Activity Bar: Quick Match, Spectate & Chat

Welcome back to the table! Today we have deployed a new Activity Bar, bringing fast, direct navigation for your favorite multiplayer features right to your fingertips.

One-Tap Access & Smooth Navigation

The new Activity Bar gives you quick access to jump straight into key community and gameplay areas:

  • Quick Match: Jump straight into rated head-to-head multiplayer queues with a single click.
  • Spectate Mode: Navigate directly to active tables to watch live domino matches unfold in real time.
  • Lobby Chat: Smoothly scroll down to the community chat section to send messages and catch up on table talk.

Check out the new Activity Bar in your next session and enjoy faster navigation around the table!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Smarter Hand History & Clean Statistics

Over the past 48 hours, we have upgraded our hand history tracking and refined game statistics visuals for Follow Me 42.

Enhanced Hand Review

  • Seat & Score Attribution: Full seat attribution and scoring breakdowns are now integrated into hand history for Moon 3-Hand and multiplayer games.
  • Clean Formatting: No Trump, Nello, Plunge, and Splash labels now render cleanly without visual clutter.
  • Mobile Optimizations: Spacing and readability improvements across phone screens.

Enjoy the updated reviews in your next session!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Marching to Multiplayer: Rated 2-Player Quick Match & Throw Downs

Welcome back to the table! Over the past 48 hours, we have rolled out a major feature release. We are officially kicking off the next stage of our multiplayer rollout with Rated 2-Player Quick Match, and introducing a satisfying new way to speed up your hands with early resolution. Here is a look at what has arrived.

Multiplayer Rollout Phase 2: Rated 2P Quick Match

Our march to a full multiplayer release continues! You can find this new mode by heading to Community, selecting Tables, and clicking Quick Match. In this mode, two human players are matched head-to-head. You and your opponent are seated at seat 0 and seat 1, and the game automatically fills seat 2 and seat 3 with our AI bots. This sets up a fast-paced partnership match: you and your bot partner against another player and their bot partner.

Even better, these head-to-head Quick Matches are rated! Matches count toward your multiplayer rank, updating your Glicko score and rating pairs after every completed game.

Understanding the Multiplayer Roadmap

To help everyone understand how our multiplayer rollout is structured, here is a breakdown of our roadmap:

  • Phase 1 (Lobby Chat): Standard chat integration to connect players in real time (FREE).
  • Phase 2 (Quick Match): Rated 2-Player head-to-head partnership play with AI partners (FREE).
  • Phase 3 (Custom Tables): Hosted 2-Player or 4-Player tables, requiring a $3.99/mo subscription for the host, but remaining completely FREE for joining players.
  • Phase 4 (Tournament Play): Competitive tournament brackets, requiring a $3.99/mo subscription for participants. Occasionally, we will run free open tournaments that grant temporary subscriptions to winners to join paid or circuit play.
  • Phase 5 (Circuits): Seasonal competitive tournaments, requiring a $3.99/mo subscription for players.

Introducing Throw Downs

Tired of playing out the last few tricks of a hand when the outcome is already a mathematical certainty? We have introduced Throw Downs for early hand resolution. To use this feature in your custom matches, simply turn on the new Throw Down toggle under the Game options group when setting up a custom solo match or hosting a custom multiplayer table.

The game engine now constantly monitors the board state. Once the bidding team has successfully made their bid (such as winning the required 42 points for limit and mark bids) or has been set, the active bidder can choose to resolve the hand early. A new Throw Down button will appear on the screen, labeled to show if you are claiming the remaining tricks (CLAIM) or conceding (CONCEDE). To keep solo games moving just as fast, bots will also automatically throw down decided hands.

Unified Hand Controls

To support the new Throw Down buttons, we have redesigned the gameplay overlay. Hand sorting, throwing down, and shaking the bones are now grouped into a single, unified hand control overlay, keeping the UI clean and leaving more room for your tiles.

Jump into a Quick Match, test your Glicko rank, and try out the new Throw Down buttons!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Pin & Popout: Trick History Upgrades

The bones are shuffled, the felt is clean, and we have just rolled out a fresh batch of upgrades focusing on how you review previous tricks, plus some bidding and layout polish. Here is a look at what has changed.

📌 Pin and Popout: Control Your Trick History

For our desktop and tablet players, we have added two new controls to the top of the Trick History drawer: a pin icon and a popout icon. If you pin the drawer, it stays open on the side of the table while removing the screen dimming overlay. This lets you keep the history visible while keeping the board fully playable. If you click popout, the history detaches into a separate floating panel that you can drag, resize, or minimize into a small pill. The game remembers your floating window's size and position between hands so you can customize your table view exactly how you like it. On shorter screens and tablets, the pinned drawer's height is automatically adjusted to stay below the scoreboard so it never blocks your view of the score.

Bid Visibility and Trick Holds

We also refined the pace of play. Bid badges now remain visible through the trump selection process until the first domino is played for all contracts, making it easier to remember what was bid. Additionally, we unified how long completed tricks stay on the table. Every trick now holds for a uniform 2000 milliseconds before sweeping away, giving you a clear moment to review the played tiles alongside the trick winner announcement.

Under the Hood

Behind the scenes, we rewrote our deployment process to enforce that production updates only deploy from fully merged and verified code, preventing version drift and keeping the matchmaking server stable.

We hope these adjustments make studying the table and planning your next play a breeze!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Smoother Chat & Table Polish

Welcome back to the table! We have rolled out a weekend update focusing on chat optimization, visual polish for our game tables, and a major cleanup of our style system. Here is a look at what has changed.

Smoother Chat & Android Support

We optimized how player roster updates are handled in lobby chat, removing lag during busy times so your messages send and scroll instantly. For Android players, we resolved an issue where virtual keyboards would warp the game screen. The app now handles keyboard sizing gracefully, adding dedicated send and exit buttons so you can stay in the conversation without losing your view of the board.

Centered Felt & Table Visuals

We made a small but satisfying change to our table layouts: the felt radial pattern is now anchored directly to the center of the active playing area rather than the viewport. This means the board is perfectly symmetrical on all screen sizes. Additionally, if a player disconnects mid-game and a bot takes over their seat, the game will now automatically reopen that seat for human players once the match finishes.

Behind-the-Scenes Polish

Under the hood, we completed a massive cleanup of our stylesheet codebase. We tokenized z-index layers, centralized safe-area spacing for notch displays, and retired legacy overrides to make page rendering faster and more reliable. We also updated our server dependencies to keep matchmaking database operations highly performant.

Shuffle the bones, enjoy the centered layouts, and see if you can set the new AI defense!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Stay at the Table: Seamless Connections & Smarter Nello

Welcome back to the table! We have rolled out a major backend update tonight to make our multiplayer tables more resilient, keep your rules synchronized, and polish our background telemetry. Here is a look at what has changed.

A Major Step Towards Multiplayer: Persistent Tables

We have upgraded our server infrastructure to support persistent multiplayer game rooms. Previously, whenever we deployed a code update or a server experienced a brief restart, active game rooms would be shut down. With tonight's update, the server now remembers your exact board state, scores, and seats. This means we can deploy updates in the background without interrupting your games.

Furthermore, player connections are now much more resilient. If your internet connection drops momentarily or you switch apps, the game client will seamlessly reconnect you to your exact spot at the table. We also added turn timers to keep games moving and improved how spectator seat requests are handled so table hosts can manage open seats smoothly.

Smarter Nello AI Play

We have upgraded our AI play engine to handle Nello contracts much more intelligently. In Nello, your goal is to avoid winning any tricks. Previously, AI bidders would sometimes lead a dangerous singleton tile, losing control of the hand and setting themselves.

Our bots now evaluate the exact Nello rank safety of each tile before leading, prioritizing safe discards over premature void-chasing. We also adjusted how AI players preserve low doubles, ensuring they hold onto these defensive blockades to protect themselves later in the hand.

Custom Nello Rules Sync

We have improved how special contracts are configured on multiplayer tables. Your custom Nello settings, including pass-out rules and preferred doubles treatments (such as Bidder's Choice, Own Suit, High, or Low), are now loaded directly from the database to your active games. This ensures your custom house rules are fully synchronized across all seats when playing with others.

Quieter Background Monitoring

We have optimized our telemetry and error-tracking systems to filter out harmless network errors. If a player blocks a tracking script or suffers a transient offline hiccup, the game will no longer flag it as a server issue. This keeps our logging clean and lets our team focus entirely on resolving actual gameplay bugs.

Shuffle the bones, enjoy the persistent tables, and may the tiles fall your way!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Midweek Update: Smarter Void Play, Stable HUDs & Rate Limiting

Howdy players! We have been busy under the hood cleaning up the gears and making sure the tables stay steady for your games. Over the past 48 hours, we have rolled out a round of improvements focusing on smarter bot play, interface stability, and backend security. Here is what has changed.

Smarter Void Play: No More Overtrumping Partner

We resolved a frustrating behavior where Hard and Expert bots, when void in a led suit, would sometimes play a trump tile even if their partner already held a guaranteed win on the trick. Our updated logic ensures that if your partner has the trick locked down and the bot has non-trump options in hand, it will keep its trumps safe and discard a low off-suit tile instead. Your bots will now protect their partner's wins and hold onto their trumps for when they really need them.

Stable HUD and Scoreboards

We fixed an issue where the gameplay HUD and scoreboard heights would jump or snap when changing between standard and special contracts (like Nello or Sevens). By keeping the point-tracking rows in the visual layout with hidden visibility rather than completely removing them, the board heights now remain perfectly stable. This keeps the interface clean and consistent on all screens.

Backend Security and Rate Limiting

Behind the scenes, we integrated Cloudflare rate limiting across our servers to block spam and keep lobby and matchmaking performance smooth for everyone. We also added automatic retry logic for reporting completed tournament matches, ensuring that real scores are recovered during the round sweep even if a brief network hiccup occurs.

Shuffle the bones, enjoy the stable HUDs, and see if you can set the new AI defense!

- 7 Marks Studios

Bug Fix

AI Partner Polish: No More Trumping in Splash & Plunge

Welcome back to the table! We have rolled out a targeted update to make our AI partners much more cooperative and strategic during special contract play.

Deference in Splash and Plunge

We resolved a frustrating bug where AI players would sometimes trump their own partner's winning tricks during Splash and Plunge contracts. For example, if a player led a high winning double, the AI partner (if void in that suit) would dump a trump count tile or their lowest trump, taking the trick from their own partner and wasting a valuable trump.

To fix this, we updated our follow play strategies for Splash and Plunge contracts. Now, when their partner is already winning the trick, AI players will actively avoid playing trumps unless they have no other legal options or the led suit itself is trump. This keeps the winning trick in the partner's hand and preserves valuable trumps for later in the round.

Hop into a game, try out Splash or Plunge, and enjoy the smarter teamwork from your bots!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Sunday Updates: iOS Storage Resilience & Centered Modals

Howdy players! We have rolled out another round of updates to improve login reliability on mobile devices and polish the layout of our gameplay screens. Here is a summary of what has changed over the last 24 hours.

iOS and Browser Storage Resilience

We resolved a startup bug that could prevent the game from loading for players with strict browser cookie controls. On iOS Safari and managed devices, selecting "Block All Cookies" would trigger a database storage error that stopped the app from launching, leaving players stuck on a blank screen. The game now uses a resilient storage wrapper that falls back to in-memory storage, allowing the game client to mount safely. If storage is blocked, a notice in the sign-in modal will guide you on how to adjust your settings, though you can still proceed to play.

Login and Signup Fixes

We fixed a race condition during email signup that could trigger premature authentication checks and lead to confusing errors. Additionally, we added recovery guidance to our sign-in screens: if your email verification link expires, you can now trigger a password reset via the "Forgot Password" link, which automatically verifies your email in Firebase once completed.

Centered Modals and Spacing Polish

We centered all top-level overlays (such as player profiles, terms, and login modals) to use symmetric 16-pixel gutters on mobile phones, correcting an offset that previously pushed them flush against the left edge. We also updated our page metadata: while signing in, Safari's minimized tab bar will now automatically blend with the darkened modal scrim for any active table felt color, providing a fully immersive dark backdrop.

Cloudflare Turnstile Bot Protection

We integrated Cloudflare Turnstile into our registration screen to protect the lobby from bot traffic and keep the game fair for everyone. This new-user challenge runs silently in the background, only prompting for validation on new email or OAuth signups. Existing players will pass through seamlessly. To support this change, we updated our security headers and bumped our service worker reload version, ensuring all cached clients receive the new Turnstile integrations immediately.

Grab a seat at the table, enjoy the centered layouts, and let us know how your matches go!

- 7 Marks Studios

Prior Updates

July 2026 (7 posts)
Bug Fix

July Bug Scrub: Better Reconnections & Chat

Howdy players! We spent the day scrubbing the gears and polishing the corners of the table to make your play smoother, faster, and more secure. Here is a high-level summary of the bug fixes and enhancements that went live today.

Smoother Chat Window

We resolved a rendering bug that could cause the game to feel a bit laggy when dragging the floating chat window. Previously, dragging the window forced the entire game board to recalculate and write data to your browser on every single frame. Now, dragging is completely smooth, and the game only saves the window's final position when you release it.

Resilient Connections

If your network experiences a brief hiccup or your login session temporarily expires mid-game, you will no longer be booted to a terminal "Failed" screen. The game client will now automatically attempt a silent background reconnection to keep you at the table and in the action.

Infinite Reload Guard

We fixed a rare glitch where a slow background game update could get stuck in an infinite page-refresh loop. A new safety check ensures the game client only performs a necessary reload once.

Clean Chat Inputs

We resolved an issue where browser autocomplete popups would display over the chat message box, trying to autofill your saved passwords or text history. Browsers can now identify the chat inputs properly, but autocomplete has been disabled.

Locked-In Private Room Security

We tightened security for private game rooms. Lockout timers for incorrect passphrases are now saved in our persistent database, preventing unauthorized users from resetting their failed guess attempts by simply refreshing their browser.

Behind-the-Scenes Reliability

Under the hood, we added guards to ensure tournament brackets and matchmaking schedulers advance rounds exactly once, even when multiple matches finish at the exact same moment. We also added enhanced error logging to help us detect and resolve potential table issues faster.

Grab a seat at the table, enjoy the smoother chat, and let us know how your games go!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Centered Modals & Tournament Privacy

Howdy y'all! Today we have rolled out some visual spacing refinements to keep our gameplay modals looking sharp on mobile and tablet viewports, alongside a critical privacy fix to keep tournament brackets fair.

Centered Play Modals

We have refined the layout for mobile and tablet portrait orientations. We removed the bottom-anchoring block for key gameplay modals (the Bid Slider, Trump Selector, and Nello Selector) and got rid of the 100-pixel scoreboard offset. Now, all gameplay modals fall back to our base centered rules, matching the look of the widow-exchange modal on every viewport.

Tournament Bracket Privacy

We also fixed a bracket bug to keep our competitive play fair and square. During tournament blind rounds, player IDs are now completely masked (null) when querying the tournament bracket API. This means competitors show up strictly under their anonymized aliases (like Competitor-1) and cannot be tracked down behind the scenes.

Under the Hood & FAQ Cleanup

We also optimized the recommended play and bidding engines to reduce dependency triggers and improve general render speeds. Finally, we swept away the obsolete bidding-skipped FAQ entry in our FAQ, since the score-based bidding cap was retired in yesterday's release.

Grab a seat at the table, enjoy the clean look, and good luck in the brackets!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Login Stability & Bid Privacy

Today we have rolled out two critical updates: a resolve for the login loop issues that locked out some PWA and mobile players today, and a complete privacy design for special contract bidding that introduces a post-bid contract switcher to correct mis-taps.

Resolving the Login Loop

First, we want to ask for your forgiveness. Earlier today, we rolled out same-origin authentication proxying to address iOS privacy limitations. Unfortunately, this update caused a login loop for players on our preview and playtest channels, as well as PWA users whose devices cached the old auth paths. If you found yourself repeatedly redirected or locked out of the game, we are incredibly sorry.

We have deployed a series of hotfixes to resolve this: playtest and preview domains are now fully whitelisted on the same-origin auth proxy, and our service worker has been updated to ignore authentication paths. We also bumped the client reload version to force PWAs to clear out their local cache and fetch the fix immediately. Logins should now be fully stable across all devices and channels.

Bidding Privacy: Numbers Only

Following player feedback, we have redesigned how special contracts are handled during the bidding phase. In real-world Texas 42, you announce a bid only by its number, you do not declare standard, Nello, Splash, or Plunge until you win the auction.

To match this, the game now keeps all bids private during the auction:

  • Numbers-Only Display: The bidding slider and seat badges show only the numeric value of bids during the bidding phase.
  • No Leakage: Once play begins, only the winning contract is revealed. Losing special bids (such as a Nello or Splash that was outbid) remain masked as simple numbers. This prevents opponents from figuring out what special tiles or doubles you held, protecting your hand's defensive integrity.

Post-Bid Contract Switcher (Error Correction)

Since the bidding screen no longer shows the contract type, players who mis-tap a bid number need a way to declare Nello or a special contract once they win the auction.

To support this, if you win the auction with a standard bid, you will now see a contract switcher on the trump-selection screen. This allows you to easily switch your contract to Nello, Splash, or Plunge before naming trumps.

If you select Nello, you can choose the doubles treatment inline. Selecting Splash or Plunge will hand trump-naming over to your partner. Please note that Splash or Plunge bids made during the auction are not switchable - once they are bid, they stand!

We hope these adjustments bring the game closer to the authentic table experience while giving you a safety net for mis-taps.

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Standard Bidding, Smarter AI & Tactile Polish

We are back with another update today, focusing on standardizing our bidding system to match traditional rules, boosting our bots' play engine, and cleaning up a few layout details across the player profile.

Removing the Score-Based Bidding Cap

One of the biggest changes in today's release is the complete removal of the score-based bidding cap. In previous versions, the game capped your maximum allowed bid by the number of marks your team needed to win the game (for example, if you only needed one mark, you couldn't bid two or more marks).

While this seemed logical, it is not how standard Texas 42 is played! In traditional play, you are always allowed to bid any amount up to the absolute ceiling, regardless of your current score. We have fully removed this restriction from both the game engine and the bidding slider, and deleted the "Bidding Capped" toast warning. You can now bid 84 points (2 marks) or higher whenever it is strategically appropriate.

Alongside this change, we hardened our bidding validation to prevent non-standard "junk" bids, ensure "no jump bidding" is always properly enforced even if the opening cap is disabled, and verify that special contracts (like Splash or Plunge) can only be selected when you actually hold the required tiles.

Smarter AI: Protecting Insecure Partner Wins

Our Hard and Expert bots just got a brain upgrade when void in a led suit. Previously, if their partner was winning a trick but that win was not guaranteed (because an opponent playing later had a beating tile), the AI would sometimes throw away a weak off-suit tile.

Bots will now check the remaining players in the trick. If the partner's win is insecure, the AI will strategically trump in with a high or secure trump tile to lock down the trick, preventing opponents from swooping in and capturing valuable count points.

Dashboard & Stats Polish

We have refined the player profile screen to give you a clearer look at your stats:

  • Game Mode Labels: Your recent games list now explicitly labels the game variant (42 vs. Moon) and format (Solo vs. MP) so you can easily browse your play history.
  • Side-by-Side Toggles: We reorganized the rating chart toggles. The buttons for switching between 42/Moon and Solo/MP are now embedded side-by-side, saving vertical space and making the layout cleaner.

Tactile Haptics & Reliability

We also polished a few mobile features and backend details:

  • Synchronized Haptics: We tweaked the vibration duration for mobile players when "shaking the bones" (dominoes) to 1880ms, ensuring that the haptic rumble co-terminates perfectly with the shuffle animation and compensates for latency.
  • Cosmetic Loading Fixes: We resolved an issue where custom felt watermarks and table cosmetics sometimes failed to load and display properly. We also improved how player profile avatars load to ensure they display consistently.

Shuffle the bones, try out the unrestricted bidding, and see if you can outsmart the new AI defense!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Marching to Multiplayer: Table Roster, Spectator Controls & UI Polish

We have been busy over the last few days working on the game client, with our primary focus on polishing the multiplayer experience and getting the tables ready for general play. Here is a high-level summary of the improvements and additions made over the last 72 hours.

Table Roster and Spectator Controls

As we continue our march to a full multiplayer release, we have added a brand-new Table Roster Drawer and a Spectator Popover. If you are hosting a table, you can now see exactly who is watching your game, kick players or spectators when needed, and easily promote a spectator to an open seat. We also added a gold spectator count indicator that blends beautifully with both light and dark action panel themes.

Sleeker, High-Contrast UI

We have done a complete sweep of the game's visuals to make everything look cleaner and more premium:

  • Blacker Dark Theme: The dark player card modal has been updated to a pure, deep black backdrop, eliminating distracting blue tints and offering high contrast.
  • Sleeker Buttons: We reduced the vertical height of buttons and settings selectors for a more compact and modern look.
  • Smoother Transitions: We made the modal backdrop completely transparent. This fixes the jarring screen-darkening flash that occurred when closing a player profile card.
  • Tablet and Mobile Keyboard Viewport Fix: Resolved a layout bug where opening the virtual keyboard would cause chat layout shifts, gaps, or rotation artifacts on tablet and mobile devices. The chat window now resizes dynamically and stays perfectly anchored above the keyboard.
  • Badge Progress Meters: Achievements and player badges now showcase their progress using centered progress meters rather than basic bar indicators.

Rule Alignments and Polish

We also addressed several core rule alignments and bug fixes to ensure your games run exactly as they should:

  • Trump Declaration Fix: We resolved a critical rule alignment bug in Plunge and Splash bidding. Now, the bidder's partner is correctly allowed to declare the trump suit.
  • Moon Improvements: We adjusted seat arrangements and the exchange of the widow card in our three-player mode, Moon, to ensure smooth gameplay.
  • Smoother Chat Muting: Restored close-on-mute functionality on player profile cards, making it simple to manage your table chat.

Hop into a game, try out the new controls, and enjoy the march to multiplayer!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

July 4th Watermark, Multiplayer Progress & Moon GA

We have just rolled out today's update, featuring a celebratory watermark, exciting new multiplayer access, and the official release of our newest game mode.

A Patriotic Addition: The 250th Watermark

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States, we have added a brand-new, commemorative “Semiquincentennial” (yeah, let that swirl around a bit) Watermark to the cosmetic catalog. Available for free starting today, this special design can be etched directly into the center of your playing table felt to show some patriotic spirit just in time for the July 4th holiday.

Step Towards Multiplayer: Joining Tables for Rated Players

We are taking another major step toward our full multiplayer release by opening up table access to more players. If you have an established Rated status (which you earn by playing rated solo games against the AI), you can now participate in multiplayer testing in two ways:

  • Join Hosted Tables: Rated players can now join active, hosted tables to play live multiplayer games with other humans.
  • Community Leaderboards: You can now view both multiplayer and tournament leaderboards in the community section to see how you rank.

Please note that hosting tables (which will eventually be tied to subscriptions) remains disabled for general availability for now as we continue refining our lobby systems. However, we do have a group of active testers who are currently able to host tables. If you are interested in participating in the hosting test, please reach out to us on Facebook. We are making steady progress and appreciate everyone participating in these testing phases.

Moon is Out of Beta!

Our three-player, partnerless, cutthroat variant of 42 has been a massive hit. The early access testing phase was so successful, and player engagement was so high, that we have decided to skip the remainder of the beta period and release Moon for General Availability today! Moon is now a permanent addition to the play servers. You can review the full rules, deck composition, and bidding structure on our dedicated Moon Rules page.

Backend Hardening

Under the hood, we have implemented several backend changes to harden both multiplayer and tournament play. While these changes are not visible at the tables today, they help secure and optimize server performance, laying the groundwork for a reliable and stable experience as we scale.

Equip your new watermark, try out the multiplayer tables, and go shoot the moon!

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Table Polish: Smoother Chat & Faster Loading

We have rolled out a new update focusing on table polish, making your games run faster and feel much smoother. This release is all about improving the small details of how the game looks and feels when you are sitting at the table.

A More Comfortable Chat Experience

Following the release of our lobby chat, we listened to player feedback and added several quality-of-life improvements to make conversations at the table more natural:

  • Smarter Chat Scrolling: Reading back through the chat to catch up on what you missed is now frustration-free. New incoming messages will no longer forcefully scroll your window to the bottom. Instead, a helper badge will slide in to notify you of new messages, allowing you to scroll down when you are ready.
  • Unified Text Sizing: When you adjust the chat text size, the game now rescales the entire chat window - including player names, the active player list, and your typing box - so everything stays perfectly proportioned and easy to read.
  • Cleaner Tables & Layouts: We cleaned up the chat panel layouts and added a setting to hide the chat scrollbars if you prefer a completely clean, distraction-free board.
  • High-Contrast Player Cards: We improved the player card modal and updated player avatars so that names, border highlights, and showcase badges are crisp and readable on both light and dark backgrounds.

Faster Loading & Smoother Performance

We optimized how our website and game servers deliver images, text, and data behind the scenes to make play snappier:

  • Instant Page Loads: We optimized how our text fonts are delivered. This speeds up how quickly pages load and eliminates that brief, distracting flicker of raw text you might have seen while loading the site.
  • Crisp, Consistent Logos: We resolved a visual bug that caused our game logo text to display inconsistently on certain browsers. Logo lettering and peaks are now sharp and beautiful on all screens.
  • Snappier Profiles & Stats: We tuned our database servers to stay fast and responsive under heavy traffic. Your game profiles, matches, and achievements will now load instantly, even during peak weekend playing hours.

Pull up a chair, check out the new chat controls, and enjoy the faster loading times!

- 7 Marks Studios

June 2026 (16 posts)
Bug Fix

Smarter AI Play: Defensive Leads & Bidding Safety

We have rolled out two significant updates to the game's artificial intelligence engine, refining how bots handle critical opening leads. These changes fix frustrating behaviors where bots would make self-defeating plays right at the start of a hand.

Both updates focus on assessing when it is safe to play double tiles and high-value count tiles:

  • Safe Defensive Doubles: When defending against an opponent's bid, bots will now prioritize leading safe off-suit doubles. The AI verifies that neither opponent has shown a void in that suit, ensuring the double cannot be easily trumped. This prevents defenders from throwing count tiles early when a safe double is available.
  • Bidder Count Safeguards: We resolved an issue where bidding bots would blindly lead count-carrying tiles when they had safer alternatives. Bidding bots will now check if opponents are void in the suit before playing, preventing them from throwing away points.

We validated these improvements using our headless self-play simulation harness over thousands of hands. The data confirms that AI defenders are now significantly more effective at setting contracts, capturing more count points while bidders play with much better safety.

Thank you for playing, and keep the feedback coming!

- 7 Marks Studios

Milestone

Connecting the Table: In-Game Chat & Presence

For as long as people have sat around kitchen tables or game hall benches to play Texas 42, the game has been about more than just bidding and taking tricks. It is about the friendly banter, the strategic sighs, the shared groans of a set bid, and the community that grows around the table. Today, we are celebrating a massive milestone on our march towards multiplayer: the deployment of our brand-new in-game chat and social features.

This update brings our digital table to life by layering real-time communication and presence features directly onto the gameplay screen, creating a seamless and engaging social experience:

  • Real-Time Presence: Built on Durable Objects, the game now supports real-time presence indicators. You can see who is online and active at the tables.
  • Floating Desktop Chat: Play is better when you can chat comfortably. We have introduced a floating popout chat window on desktop that is fully resizable and can be docked or minimized. Your window size and minimized state are saved automatically to your device, persisting across screen and game transitions.
  • Collapsible Nicklist: Keep your table clean. The new player roster partially collapses into a clean, avatar-only sidebar on desktop, maximizing your view of the table felt.
  • Tailored Typography: Adjust chat text size on the fly with a dedicated cycle button in the chat header, saved automatically to your device.
  • Expressive Emojis: A new inline emoji picker popover is integrated directly into the message bar, featuring a solid dark theme that matches the game's premium aesthetic.
  • COPPA and Safety Controls: To keep our community welcoming and safe, we have introduced clear COPPA age compliance gating, simplified guidelines agreements, and click-to-expand moderation tools for table hosts.
  • Symmetric Chat Bubbles: Styled message bubbles with inline timestamps keep conversations neat and legible, with opponent and partner bubbles clearly separated.

Join the conversation, greet your partner, and enjoy the march towards multiplayer!

- 7 Marks Studios

Feature

Express Yourself: Custom Player Themes

Texas 42 is a game of character, and we believe your playing board should reflect yours. Today, we are excited to roll out a brand-new customization update: Custom Player Themes.

This update gives you the power to change the visual identity of your playing table. Instead of being locked into the default color scheme, you can now swap out the colors of the scoreboard, your teammates, and table highlights. When you select a player theme, the game dynamically updates the board interface: styling team badges, score trackers, and player frames to match your chosen aesthetic.

To kick things off, we have seeded four beautiful, distinct player themes directly into the cosmetic catalog. Best of all, they are completely free for every single player:

  • Classic: The traditional Texas 42 look you know and love, featuring Blue, Amber, and Purple accents.
  • Ocean Breeze: A relaxing coastal palette that shifts the table to refreshing Cyan, Orange, and Coral tones.
  • Sunset Mesa: Warm, desert-inspired tones of Rose, Yellow, and Teal.
  • Forest Trail: A lush, nature-inspired palette combining rich Green, Purple, and Orange highlights.

You can equip these themes right now by tapping the brush theme icon at the bottom of your Player Profile screen, or in the bottom navigation bar during gameplay.

Find your favorite colors, style your board, and enjoy the new look!

- 7 Marks Studios

Bug Fix

Smarter AI Play: Partner Count-Feeding Safeguards

In Texas 42, partnership cooperation is key. When your partner is winning a trick, you want to throw them point-carrying dominoes (known as "count") to secure those points for your team. But in our previous engine, the AI was a bit too eager to feed count.

A player reported through our in-game feedback system that the bots would blindly dump count tiles onto their partner's winning play, even on insecure tricks where an opponent playing later in the sequence held a beating card. Opponents would swoop in, capture the trick, and take the points the AI had just gifted them.

In today's update, we've optimized the AI play engine to be much more defensive and seating-aware when feeding count:

The Fix: Seating-Aware Trick Assessment

  • Opponent Threat Detection: When deciding whether to throw a count tile to a partner's winning card, the AI now checks the clockwise remaining play sequence. It looks at all outstanding unplayed dominoes and uses its knowledge of opponent voids to determine if any remaining opponent is capable of beating the partner's tile.
  • Withholding Guard: If a remaining opponent is a threat to win the trick, the AI will withhold its count tiles, playing a safe non-point slough instead. If forced by suit-following rules, it will still play the count tile legally.
  • Safety Gating: This guard is enabled for standard highest-wins contracts (Standard, Over, Plunge, Splash) on Hard and Expert difficulties. Inverted contracts (like Under or Nello, where lowest-wins rules apply) naturally bypass the guard to preserve correct behavior.

Thank You!

This bug was found and resolved thanks to a detailed catch from a player who logged multiple matches where bots donated count on insecure partner leads.

We ran extensive headless self-play simulations (4,000 hands per arm) to validate the fix. The data confirmed a statistically significant reduction in defender-captured count points (with Hard tier showing a decrease of 0.529 points per hand), while ensuring that bidding make-rates remain completely non-inferior.

Thank you for helping us make the bots smarter and the game fairer. Keep those reports coming!

- 7 Marks Studios

Feature

The Return of “Low-No”: Nello Pass-Out Rule

Texas 42 has a rich history of regional variations and house rules. One of the oldest documented rules is Low-No (often called "Low Boy" in early booklets). First published in the Cardinal Products Company rule booklet in 1948, this rule is now back in our latest update.

As the original 1948 rules state, the main purpose of the Low Boy rule is to give the forced dealer a strategic alternative during forced bidding situations: "The player who is forced to bid (and only this player) has the option of bidding 'Low Boy'... A regular 30 bid could cost him as much as 72 points."

In Follow Me 42, when all players pass, the dealer is forced to take the bid. Instead of being stuck with a standard 30-point bid on a weak hand, the dealer can now declare a Nello (Low-No) contract. Like standard Nello, the dealer's partner sits out the hand, play becomes 3-handed, and the bidder must lose every trick to win.

How to Enable Low-No

To use this rule in your games, open your table settings or start a new game and change the Pass-Out Rule to Nello.

To make setup as seamless as possible, we have added automatic setting interlocks:

  • Selecting the Nello Pass-Out Rule automatically enables Nello contracts and sets them to Dealer Only (meaning players cannot bid Nello during the regular auction).
  • If you later toggle off Dealer Only or disable Nello contracts entirely, the Pass-Out Rule will automatically revert back to Redeal.

Shuffle the bones, set your rules, and see if you can survive the dealer's seat!

- 7 Marks Studios

Feature

Happy Father's Day, Moon Early Access & Free Cosmetics

Happy Father's Day to all the dads, grandpas, and father figures in the Follow Me 42 community! Whether you learned the game from your father or are passing the tradition down to the next generation, we hope you get to play a few hands today.

To celebrate, we are excited to open early access testing for our most requested gameplay variant: Moon. Starting today, Moon will be available on our play servers for the next two weeks.

What is Moon?

Moon is a popular three-player relative of 42. Unlike standard Texas 42, which is played by four players in fixed partnerships, Moon is a partnerless, cutthroat game. Players draw tiles from a reduced 22-tile deck (with all blanks removed except the double-blank) and bid on the number of tricks they can win. The highest bidder takes a single face-down tile (the widow), discards one tile, and names the trump suit.

Scoring in Moon is built around tricks only, with no count dominoes in play. Each hand has exactly seven tricks, and each trick is worth one point. The first player to reach 21 cumulative points wins the game.

Free Cosmetics for Everyone

Along with the Moon early access release, we are gifting two brand-new, free cosmetics to all players to customize your playing tables:

  • The “Lunar Midnight” Felt: A dark, deep space-themed table surface felt that pairs perfectly with night play sessions.
  • The “Sleeping Fisherman” Watermark: A beautiful, traditional Texas watermark etched into the center of the table.

You can equip both cosmetics immediately by tapping the theme menu icon in the bottom navigation bar during gameplay, or at the bottom of the player profile screen.

How to Play

During this two-week testing period, you can jump right into a Moon game by logging into the game app at play.followme42.com. You can review the full rules, deck composition, bidding structure, and scoring details on our dedicated Moon Rules page.

As with all early access features, your feedback is incredibly valuable. If you run into any issues or have suggestions, please use the in-game reporter icon to let us know.

Grab a seat, customize your table, and shoot the moon this Father's Day!

- 7 Marks Studios

Bug Fix

Clarity on Capped Bidding

Under standard Texas 42 rules, a team's maximum possible bid is capped by the number of marks they need to win the game. If you only need one mark to win, you cannot bid two or more marks. If the bidding reaches a point where the other team cannot legally outbid you, the auction is terminated early.

Previously, when this early termination happened, the game would immediately and silently transition to the play phase. This caused some confusion, making it feel like the game was skipping players or acting glitchy.

To clear this up, we have added a transient Bidding Capped announcement toast at the start of the hand. If the auction is closed early because a team's bid cap has been met, the game will now display a brief message on the board explaining why the bidding has ended.

Helping players understand the rules, one hand at a time.

- 7 Marks Studios

Bug Fix

Bidding Rules: Opening Cap & No Jump Bidding

A player used our in-game reporter to flag a bidding issue: they were able to open the auction at three marks when no one had bid two marks first. That report led us to audit the entire bidding pipeline, and we found that two core N42PA rules were not being enforced at all.

The Rules

Under standard Texas 42 tournament regulations, including those outlined by the National 42 Players Association:

  • Opening Bid Cap: No player may open the bidding higher than two marks (84 points). You cannot jump straight to three marks or higher to start the auction.
  • No Jump Bidding: Once a bid reaches the two-mark cap, subsequent overbids may only increase by one mark at a time. From 84, the next legal bid is 126 (three marks), then 168 (four marks), and so on. You cannot jump from 84 straight to 168 to shut down the bidding.

Both of these constraints existed in our database but were never enforced by the game engine. They were dormant fields. Today's update wires them up across every layer of the game:

What We Fixed

  • Engine Enforcement: The game engine now validates every standard bid against both the opening cap and the one-mark increment rule. If no prior bid has reached the cap, opening bids above two marks are blocked. Once the cap is reached, each subsequent overbid is limited to one mark above the current highest. Special contracts like Splash and Plunge are exempt, as they have their own structural requirements.
  • AI Compliance: AI players now respect both constraints. Your AI partner will no longer open above two marks on Tournament or House rules, and AI opponents cannot jump-bid to shut down the auction.
  • Bid Slider Capping: The bidding slider now visually caps at the correct mark level at every stage of the auction. During the opening phase, the slider stops at two marks. After the cap is reached, it only extends one mark beyond the current highest bid.
  • Custom Mode Setting: We have added an “Opening Bid Cap” dropdown to the Custom game settings panel. You can set it to No Limit, 1 Mark, 2 Marks, or 3 Marks. Tournament and House presets default to the standard two-mark cap.

Thank you to the player who filed this report through the game reporter. One bug report turned into a full audit that caught two missing rule enforcements. If you spot something that does not look right, that little exclamation mark icon during gameplay is there for a reason. We read every report.

The rules are the rules. Now the game enforces them.

- 7 Marks Studios

Feature

Introducing Sevens: A New Way to Play 42

We heard you. Since launch, one of the most consistent requests we have received is for Sevens - the luck-driven contract where the only thing that matters is how close your domino is to a pip total of seven. Today, we are excited to announce that Sevens is coming to Follow Me 42.

What Is Sevens?

Sevens is an alternative contract that completely changes how tricks are won. Instead of the traditional trump-and-suit-following system, every trick in a Sevens hand is won by the domino whose pip total is closest to seven. A 3–4 or a 5–2? That is a perfect seven - it wins outright. A 6–6 at twelve pips? Five away. A blank–blank? Seven away and at the bottom of the pile.

There is no trump suit, no suit to follow, and no strategic sequencing. Every player simply plays any tile from their hand, and the one nearest to seven takes the trick. If two or more tiles are equally close, the first one played wins. It is fast, it is unpredictable, and it is a blast.

How to Bid Sevens

During bidding, if Sevens is enabled, you will see a new Sevens contract option on the bid slider alongside Nello, Splash, and Plunge. Sevens starts at a one-mark bid, but you can bid higher. The bidder's team needs to win all seven tricks to make the contract. If the other team takes even one trick, the bid is set and the opponents earn the marks.

A Note on Ratings

Because Sevens is fundamentally a luck-based contract - play is forced, there is no strategic suit-following, and the outcome depends almost entirely on the deal - games that include a Sevens hand will not affect your skill rating. Your Glicko-2 rating (solo and multiplayer) is protected. You will still earn XP, progress your title, and unlock achievements as normal. We just did not want a coin-flip contract inflating or deflating the rating that measures your skill.

New Achievements

Sevens comes with four new achievements to chase:

  • Lucky Seven: Win your first Sevens contract.
  • Seven Card Stud: Win 10 Sevens contracts.
  • Slot Machine: Win 25 Sevens contracts.
  • Sevens Wild: Win 50 Sevens contracts.

Shuffle the bones and try your luck.

- 7 Marks Studios

Bug Fix

Custom Game Fixes

Today's update addresses a bug several players reported in Custom game mode.

Bug Fix: Custom Game Contract Toggles

During custom solo games, players could toggle Nello, Splash, or Plunge off in the settings lobby. However, when transitioning into the bidding phase, the bidding UI controller failed to respect these preferences. This resulted in the corresponding buttons remaining active on the selection slider.

We have updated the game controller to properly filter the allowed contracts based on the custom lobby state. Disabling these options now completely hides them from the bidding interface. We also updated the AI bidding engine to ensure bots respect these restrictions and will not attempt to bid disabled contracts. The setting you choose is now the setting you get.

- 7 Marks Studios

Bug Fix

Splash & Plunge AI Adjustments

In today's update, we have addressed a bug affecting how our AI players handle Splash and Plunge contracts in both solo and multiplayer games.

Players reported that AI opponents were calling these high-stakes, multi-mark bids far too aggressively, often on hands that were easily set. Additionally, once a Splash or Plunge contract was active, the AI players on the table weren't defending or supporting the bid with the coordination and urgency that these game-altering contracts demand.

Here is how we have corrected these behaviors:

  • Smarter Bidding Assessment: We have corrected the AI's bidding evaluation system. AI players will now only bid Splash (2 marks) or Plunge (4 marks) when they hold a truly dominant, powerhouse hand, making these bids the rare, exciting events they should be.
  • Aggressive Partner Support: If an AI player's partner calls Splash or Plunge, the partner will now play cooperatively to clear the path. They will prioritize leading trumps to draw out opponent doubles and keep their partner in control of the table.
  • Coordinated Defense: Since a Splash or Plunge contract is set by losing even a single trick, the defending AI players will now play with maximum aggression, fighting for every single trick to shut down the bidder's run.

These adjustments make playing with or against the AI during high-stakes bids feel much more realistic, challenging, and fair.

- 7 Marks Studios

Feature

Introducing Immersive Play for Mobile & Tablets

We are excited to announce a new update to FollowMe42 designed to bring you closer to the table than ever before. Starting today, mobile and tablet players will default to our new Immersive Screen Mode!

What is Immersive Mode?

Playing Texas 42 requires focus, spatial awareness, and quick decision-making. Standard browser navigation bars (such as the address bar, bottom controls, and system overlays) can take up valuable screen space, cause layout shifting, and lead to accidental misclicks when you are trying to select your dominoes.

Immersive Mode solves this by automatically running the game in full-screen mode on mobile and tablet viewports, hiding the browser's navigation bars and letting the table felt fill your entire screen.

Key Highlights of the Update:

  • App-Like PWA Experience: The moment you interact with the app on a mobile device or tablet, the navigation bars slide away, giving you a full-screen, premium app feel.
  • Self-Healing Fullscreen: Mobile operating systems often exit fullscreen mode if you swipe to view notifications, receive a call, or temporarily switch to another app. FollowMe42 now monitors this state. The next time you tap the screen after returning, the game will automatically slide back into Immersive Mode without requiring you to re-open settings.
  • Optimized for All Felt Colors: Immersive Mode synchronizes your device's status bar color directly with your chosen table surface color (Blue, Green, Maroon, Red, Black, or Wood), maintaining a beautiful, cohesive aesthetic across the entire screen.

Prefer the Standard View? You’re in Control

While we recommend Immersive Mode for the best gameplay experience, we know some players prefer to keep their browser navigation bars visible at all times.

You can easily switch back to Standard Mode at any time:

  1. Open the Settings Panel (tap the Gear icon in the top header or side panel).
  2. Look for the Screen Mode option.
  3. Toggle from Immersive to Standard.

Your preference is saved locally and will persist across browser reloads, game sessions, and PWA updates.

- 7 Marks Studios

Update

Tactile Trick Wins & Localized Feedback

We've heard your feedback! While the gameplay loop of Texas 42 is fast-paced and exciting, resolving tricks every few seconds was causing visual fatigue. Players let us know that the repetitive, high-contrast, center-screen text toasts (like "TOOK IT!" and "LOST IT!") interrupted the flow of play and cluttered the board.

Today's update addresses this problem directly by replacing standard trick-level center toasts with subtle, localized board animations and transitions:

  • Domino Sweep Animations: Played tiles now physically sweep toward the winning player's seat, scaling down and fading away dynamically based on exact screen coordinates.
  • Winner Halos: The winning player's hand container (on desktop) or profile badge/avatar (on mobile and multiplayer) now pulses with a color-coded team glow (blue for your team, amber for opponents) upon winning a trick.
  • Floating Point Indicators: When count-carrying tiles are won, a small, animated point indicator (+5, +10, etc.) floats upward from the winning seat in the team's signature color.
  • Milestone Dramatics: Standard tricks are now clean and quiet, while high-impact center toasts are reserved exclusively for critical game milestones like Nello trick resolutions, reneges, and end-of-round status checks to keep the drama where it belongs.

We also updated the dealer visual cues. The gold dealer indicator (the "S" badge for Shaker) displayed on compass positions and profile avatars now actually shakes (rattles) while shuffling and dealing tiles prior to play. This makes the dealing phase feel more tactile and responsive, giving you a clear visual cue that the bones are being mixed.

- 7 Marks Studios

Feature

Sign In Once, Play Anywhere: Offline Solo Mode

Whether you are on a flight, in a rural area with spotty coverage, or playing from Perote Prison, we want to make sure you can always get a hand of Texas 42 in. Today's update brings a highly requested feature: full support for offline solo play against our AI.

How it works:

  • Play offline automatically. Once you have signed into your account online, your device will remember you. If you lose your internet connection, the game will seamlessly transition to offline mode. You can launch the app and play solo games against the AI without needing to connect.
  • Seamless background sync. Any solo games you play offline are saved securely on your device. The next time you open the app with an active internet connection, your scores, stats, and XP will automatically sync back to our servers in the background.
  • Keep earning progress. To keep play fair and rewarding, you can earn XP and progress your level for up to 20 games played offline per day.
  • No more accidental sign-outs. We resolved a frustrating issue where opening the app offline or having a connection drop could trigger a logout, forcing you to sign in again when network service returned.

Along with offline play, we have rolled out several polish adjustments and fixes over the last 48 hours to make the game look and run beautifully on all screens. This includes cleaner layouts for smaller mobile displays, dealer indicators placed directly on opponent hand areas, and fixes for a rare issue where audio could fail to initialize on certain web browsers.

Grab your device, sign in, and take the game with you wherever you go.

- 7 Marks Studios

Bug Fix

Smarter AI Bidding

We received some great feedback from players about how the AI handles bidding, and today's update addresses two things that were bothering folks.

What changed:

  • AI now bids bigger on strong hands. Previously, the AI was too cautious and almost never bid more than one mark, even when holding a dominant hand. If the AI is dealt a powerhouse, it will now bid accordingly, just like an experienced human player would.
  • Nello opening plays improved. When the AI bids Nello (the contract where you try to lose every trick), it now almost always opens by leading a double. This is the textbook play, since it gives the bidder the most control over that critical first trick.
  • Simplified settings. We removed the "Max Opening Mark" setting. It was creating unnecessary confusion and limiting how the AI could bid. The game now handles bid limits naturally based on the current score, which is how real 42 works at the table.

These changes apply to both solo play and multiplayer. The AI should now feel more like a real opponent who knows when to push and when to play it safe.

- 7 Marks Studios

Feature

Refining Trick History

We just rolled out an update focusing on the game board's Trick History drawer. We've redesigned how bids, trumps, and plays are visually organized to make the screen clearer and more responsive across different device sizes.

Key details in this release:

  • Responsive Grid Alignments: Switched to a flex-proportional column layout, matching headers and tiles perfectly. This removes horizontal scroll issues on smaller screen sizes.
  • Team-Colored Pill Badges: Bidders and locations (like East, West, North, and You) are now rendered as clean pill badges matching their team color (Blue for US, Amber for THEM).
  • Unified Typography: Standardized font sizing across all variable fields and labels in the header for a more polished presentation.
  • Centered Popups: Relocated play explanation tooltips to the row level. This ensures they center cleanly without clipping off the side of the viewport.
  • Nello Polish: Simplified Nello hand summaries to hide redundant trump tags when the contract name matches.

We are continuing to monitor performance and polish mobile visual layouts as we prepare for broader multiplayer rollouts. Thanks for playing!

- 7 Marks Studios

May 2026 (2 posts)
Update

What's Coming Next

With go-live behind us, we're settling into the production soak period: watching the servers, listening to feedback, and making sure everything runs the way it should at scale. Once we're satisfied that the foundation is solid, the next wave of features heads to beta.

Here's what's on the workbench:

  • Multiplayer: Play 42 with real people. The multiplayer system is built and currently in expanded testing. We're putting it through its paces before opening it up to everyone.
  • Tournaments: Structured bracket play with Swiss and elimination formats. Sign up, compete, and see how you stack up.
  • Circuits: Recurring seasonal tournament series that build toward something bigger. More on this soon.
  • Moon (3-player 42): A new game mode coming this fall. Moon is a three-hand variant of 42, perfect for when you have three players at the table instead of four. New rules, new strategy, same Texas roots.

These features will roll out to the beta environment first for testing before they go live. If you were part of the original beta group, you already know the drill, and we'll be looking for more testers as these features shape up.

Stay tuned. There's a lot of 42 left to play.

- 7 Marks Studios

Milestone

Happy Birthday, Follow Me 42 🎂

Follow Me 42 is live.

This started as a personal project born from a simple frustration: we couldn't find an online version of Texas 42 that got the rules right and respected the game the way it deserves. So we built one. What began at a kitchen table has grown into something real, and today it's yours.

Before anything else, we want to say thank you to our beta testers. You showed up early, played countless hands, broke things so we could fix them, and told us the truth when something didn't feel right. You shaped this game. Every rule edge case we caught, every AI improvement we tuned, every piece of the multiplayer system that works under pressure. That's because you were willing to sit down and play before it was ready. You took a chance on us, and we won't forget it.

If you're arriving for the first time today, welcome. Whether you learned 42 from a grandparent at a family reunion, picked it up at a church social, or you've never seen a double-six domino in your life, there's a seat at the table. The AI is patient, the rules are faithful, and the game is the real thing.

We built Follow Me 42 because this game matters to people. It's been part of Texas since 1887, passed from hand to hand across generations. It deserves a home online that treats it with the same care that the people who taught us gave to every hand they played.

Pull out a device and play a hand. We're glad you're here.

- 7 Marks Studios

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