Efren Rodriguez leaves the table annoyed as his fellow players, drunk and laughing, shout “Zapato, get out.”
The 32-year-old has just suffered an embarrassing defeat in a game of dominoes in the little fishing village of Chichiriviche on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.
Zapato means shoe in Spanish and in dominoes is the equivalent of a “duck” in cricket — a score of zero.
Photo: AFP
Dominoes “is the favorite pastime for everyone ... in the rich people’s clubs just like poor neighborhoods, in urban centers and rural areas,” wrote late former Venezuelan president Rafael Caldera in the prologue for Alfredo Fernandez Porras’ book The Art of the 28 Pieces.
In Venezuela it is played in pairs, like the card game bridge, making it a more strategic game than when played one-on-one.
Venezuelan Dominoes Federation president Efrain Velazquez said that “70 to 75 percent” of the country’s 30 million people play the game.”
“You will always find a dominoes set in any house and whenever there is a family get-together,” Velazquez said.
Dominoes is often played in bars while drinking alcohol, and in many places, such as Chichiriviche, about 50km north of Caracas, it is played only by men.
Far from the tourist beaches, young men play on old wooden tables, sitting on plastic chairs, tree stumps or old beer barrels, while the drink itself flows, as does rum, whiskey and anise liquor.
The Chichiriviche players even use a dominoes set that was a freebie from a whiskey manufacturer.
“Take that,” said one player as he slammed his piece down on the table theatrically, making the others bounce.
“I play to kill time ... it’s emotional. You win, you play another game and you win again,” fisher Ruben Mayoral, 26, said. “I play football and everything, but I prefer dominoes.”
“They gave me a ‘shoe,’ I didn’t get one point — zero — and they were teasing me ... it’s always like this,” Rodriguez said.
It is a completely different atmosphere in Valencia where one of the four annual national titles is taking place in a large hotel conference room.
About 300 seasoned players play in silence punctuated only by the sound of the pieces being shuffled after each game.
Some wear the jersey of the national team, others their state shirt.
Here, women such as Carlimar Aparicio are also allowed to play.
She said that men always tell her she cannot play, but then “they always end up calling me to play with them.”
“It’s a sport,” said Luis Marquina, 41, a seven-time world champion whose brother Carlos, 45, has also been crowned six times as the best on the planet. “We view it from a sporting perspective; it’s not that you can’t play dominoes with a beer, but when we’re in a competition we’re taking part in a sport.”
There are no winks, no shouts and no theatrical gestures, referees even walk around the room between the tables.
“We have national, Pan-American, continental championships ... it is played everywhere in the world. We hope it will be an Olympic event one day,” Velazquez said.
Far away from the world or even national championships in the Petare neighborhood of Caracas, which is often described as the largest slum in the world, a pensioners club hosts dominoes games every afternoon.
“It’s fun, you have to use your brain. It’s mental agility, a mental sport. You have to think like in chess,” retired police officer Pedro Roberto Leon said. “Sometimes there are arguments, but they’re quickly forgotten.”
While some play, those waiting their turn delight in pointing out mistakes.
“Those that pass comments are the only ones that never make a mistake,” technician Enrique Benavente, 48, said jokingly.
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