Domino Games

There are 3 types of domino games, they are block domino games, point domino games and card domino games.

Block Domino Games

General Rules

Setup

After shuffling the dominoes, each player draws tiles that make up their hand. The number of tiles drawn depends on the number of players:

• 2 players draw 7 tiles each
• 3 players draw 5 tiles each
• 4 players draw 5 tiles each

The remainder of the tiles in the boneyard are not used. If there are four players, then they may play as partners, with the partners normally sitting across from each other.

Gameplay

A player that cannot make a move must pass. In the block game, players may not draw tiles from the boneyard. The game ends when one player uses the last domino in his hand, or when no more plays can be made. If all players still have tiles in their hand, but no moves can be made, then the game is said to be "blocked".

Scoring

The player with the lightest hand (i.e. the number of dots on their dominoes) wins the number of sum total of points in all of his opponents hands, minus the points in his own hand. If there is a tie, the win goes to the player with the lightest individual tile. For example, if one player has a 1-2, 2-4, and 3-5, and the other player has a 5-5 and a 3-4, they both have a total of 17, but the first player wins because his lightest tile (1-2) is smaller than the second player's lightest tile (3-4).

Games are often played in a number of rounds, where the score in each individual round (or hand) is added to the score in the previous rounds. When one player's total score exceeds a pre-established "winning score" (100, for example), the game is over and the winner is declared.

Point Domino Games

The main feature point games is that points can be scored while a hand is in progress, as well as at the end. Typically, scoring is based on the point values of the dominoes making up the ends of the layout. Depending on the game, there may be 2, 3, 4, or even more open ends. The way the points are scored varies from game-to-game.

Card Domino Games

Card domino games use dominoes in the game, but rather than connecting tiles as in block and point games, the dominoes are used much as like playing cards, usually in trump and trick-taking games.

Many of the card domino games are actually based on card games, with the rules modified to account for the differences in number of suits and number of cards (tiles).