Domino is an exciting game that has become a favorite with many people. It is a game that involves stacking dominoes on end in long lines. The goal is to set them up so that one of the dominoes will be tipped over and will then cause the next domino in line to tip over, and so on. Dominos can be stacked in extremely complex designs, and some of these displays are breathtaking to watch. Creating these intricate designs requires nothing more than the laws of physics. The domino artist Hevesh says that the main force involved in her amazing works is gravity. Watch this video to learn more about this fascinating domino effect.
A domino is a flat, thumb-sized rectangular block of wood or plastic, usually twice as wide as it is thick. Each face of a domino is blank or marked with an arrangement of dots, called pips, that resembles those on dice. There are normally 28 such blocks in a complete set of dominoes. The word dominoes is also used to describe any of the various games played with such pieces, typically by matching the ends of dominoes and laying them down in lines or angular patterns.
There are a number of different types of domino games, with the rules of each varying slightly from place to place. The basic instructions given here on this website apply to most of these games, though there are some where the line of play is not formed and where hands are not drawn. The player holding the heaviest double takes the first turn.
When a new domino is placed on the table, it must be positioned so that its two matching ends are adjacent, unless it is a double. A tile played to a double must be perpendicular to it, touching at its center. This helps to develop the chain of dominoes into a “snake-line” shape, which is a characteristic feature of the game.
Another characteristic of the game is that scoring is accomplished by counting the pips on the tiles left in the losing players’ hands at the end of a hand or the entire game. This score is then added to the winner’s total. A scoring variation is to count only one end of a double (i.e., 4-4 counts as only four points).
Dominoes are most often used for positional games. In these, each player places a domino edge to edge against another in such a way that the adjoining faces are identical or form some specified total. The number of matching sides is what determines the rank of a domino, and this rank is used to determine seating arrangements in positional games with more than one player. In positional games with fewer than three players, ties may be broken by drawing additional tiles from the stock. When playing with more than eight players, it is common to use progressively larger sets of dominoes, with the most common being double-nine, double-12, and double-18.