Domino Games – Using the Domino System

Dominoes is an ingenious family of multi-sided tile-based board games, also called dominoes. Each domino is basically a square tile with a long line dividing it into at least two short square ends. All the squares are either marked with number of empty spots (x’s) or are blank. The object of dominoes is to lay the stack of domino tiles face up across the line, choosing a tile to be the solitary (outlined in the illustration) and dropping the rest. Dominoes usually start out flat, but after they are rolled out, they can “bump” into one another, creating extra space on the board.

In this section we will look at two important lessons that any novice student of dominoes (or, for that matter, any person learning to play dominoes) must master in order to make a profit: strategy and timing. Although most beginners learn to play dominoes by getting a simple set of cards (called a deck), each successive turn adds new challenges to the strategy of the game, requiring both strategy and skill. As you go through your first few dominoes games, please help improve your Domino 101 knowledge by studying this section and becoming familiar with the basic game plan. Please help improve your Domino playing skills and learn how and when to use these strategies

Domino playing cards (the set consists of 52 dominoes) consist of four suits, with each suit consisting of four different colors. For example, a novice player of dominoes should know that the set consists of fifty-two colors, with the remaining colors being alternated between black and red. Some of the card suits are not quite obvious; for example, all the pips are red, which makes black a very common color for dominoes, but all the jacks, hearts, diamonds, etc., are white. The four suits, then, consist of black (the basic), red, yellow, green, and blue. One of the more obvious cards is the king, which is in all likelihood the most used card in the entire set, but it can be confusing for a novice – and, indeed, for many who are just beginning to study and play dominoes (it is one of the easier sets to learn).