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Domino
Board · Classics · plays in your browser, no download
Twenty-eight tiles, each one a pair of numbers. Match an end or draw until you can. The whole game is in what you are holding and what he has stopped being able to play.
Where it comes from
A domino is a frozen throw of two dice, and the Chinese set makes that obvious: it contains every combination two dice can show, with the commoner ones duplicated, for thirty-two tiles and no blanks. The earliest mention anyone can point to is a Song-dynasty text, Former Events in Wulin by Zhou Mi (1232–1298), listing what pedlars sold in the capital; an identifiable Chinese domino appears in the twelfth or thirteenth century.
The European set is a different object with the same idea. It adds the blank — a face a die cannot show — drops the duplicates, and ends up with twenty-eight tiles: the double-six. It turns up in the eighteenth century, and the sources argue about whether in Italy or in France. The story that Italian missionaries carried the game back from China is repeated everywhere and supported by nothing; the honest position is that the two traditions may not be connected at all.
The name is the one genuinely charming part: a domino was a hooded winter cloak worn by priests, black outside and white within, which is exactly what the tiles look like.
How to play
| The deal | Seven tiles each, the rest face down as the boneyard. |
|---|---|
| Playing | Add a tile to either open end, matching the number there. |
| Drawing | Cannot go? Draw until you can, or until the boneyard is empty. |
| Blocked | Nobody can play: lowest total in hand wins. |
| Winning | First to play every tile, or the lower hand when blocked. |
What good players are actually doing
Dominoes looks like a game of luck and is mostly a game of counting what has gone. There are seven tiles of each number. Once you have seen six of the fives — between your hand and the table — you know exactly how much five is worth to everybody.
The second thing is reading the draws. When your opponent goes to the boneyard on a four, he does not have a four, and he will not have one next time either. Forcing both open ends to the same number he has just refused is how a hand is won without ever having the best tiles.
Three things that help
Play your doubles early. A double only ever matches one number. Held to the end it is the tile that blocks you and costs you the count.
Keep a spread of numbers. A hand of six tiles covering five different numbers is worth far more than a hand of six built on two.
When you cannot win, shed weight. If the hand is going to be blocked, stop trying to go out and start playing your heaviest tiles, because the count is what you will be paying with.