How to Play Dominoes
The Click That Never Gets Old

How to play: the Block game

There are dozens of ways to play dominoes, but the Block game is the one to learn first: the standard family game, on which every other variant is built.

Setting up

1. Turn all 28 tiles face down and shuffle them with a good swirl of the hands, traditionally a job children fight over.
2. Each player draws a hand: seven tiles each for two players, five each for three or four. Stand them on edge facing you, hidden from the table.
3. The leftover tiles stay face down to one side. This is the boneyard, and in the Block game you never touch it again.
4. Whoever holds the highest double (double-six if it is in play, otherwise double-five, and so on down) lays it in the middle to begin. If nobody drew a double, the player with the heaviest tile, the most spots in total, starts instead.

Taking a turn

1. Play passes clockwise. On your turn, add one tile to either open end of the line, matching number against number: a six touches a six, a blank touches a blank.
2. Doubles are laid crosswise across the line. In the Block game this is purely for spotting them at a glance; the line still has only two ends.
3. If you cannot match either end, you knock, a polite rap of the knuckles on the table, and play passes on. No drawing from the boneyard.
4. If you can play, you must. Pretending you cannot is the oldest crime in dominoes.

Winning

The round ends one of two ways. Either a player lays their last tile, calls "domino!", and wins outright, or the game blocks: everyone has knocked in turn and the line is dead. Then all remaining tiles are turned face up and the spots counted; lowest total wins the round.

For a quick game, play single rounds. For a proper contest, the winner of each round scores the spots left in the losers' hands, and the first to 100 points takes the match.

Disputes, settled

• The line hits the table edge. Turn the corner and keep going. The shape means nothing; only the two end numbers matter.
• Someone played a tile that doesn't match. Spotted before the next player moves, it comes back and a legal tile is played. Spotted later, it stands.
• Can you knock when you could play? No. The traditional penalty for being caught is sitting out a turn. With young children, a cheerful "look again" does the job.
• A blocked game ends in a tie on spots. A drawn round, nobody scores. Play another; it takes fifteen minutes.

Fives, or Muggins: the scoring game

Once the Block game is second nature, older players (around eight and up, and adults who fancy themselves) graduate to Fives, also called Muggins. The play is the same with two changes that transform the game.

First, you score during play: whenever the two open ends of the line add up to a multiple of five, you score that total, so ends of six and four score ten on the spot. Second, if you cannot play, you draw from the boneyard until you can. First to 150 or 250 wins. The name comes from the rule that if you fail to claim your own score, any opponent may call "muggins!" and pinch the points, which keeps everyone's arithmetic honest.

Toppling runs: the under-fives' game

Then there is the third way to play, the one every child discovers within minutes of opening the box: standing the tiles on end in a long winding line and pushing the first one over. It is the game's second life, and for a three-year-old it may be the better one.

The only technique worth teaching is spacing, about half a tile's length between tiles, and the only rule worth keeping is that the builder pushes the first domino. Start with runs of ten, build to the full 28, add a curve. The collapse takes three seconds; the building takes twenty minutes of the most focused work you will see a small child do all day.

A short history

Tile games of the domino family are centuries old, and the format has barely needed to change: flat tiles, two numbers each, match them up. The game reached Europe in the 18th century and settled in for good, becoming a staple of British pubs and parlours alike. The same 28 tiles that decided matches over pints on a Friday night were teaching children their numbers on the parlour floor on Sunday afternoon, and that double life is the surest sign of a perfectly designed game.

What dominoes builds

What dominoes teaches changes as the child grows. At three, it is a matching and classification game: same goes with same, and a tile can belong to two families at once. These are exactly the quiet skills that first board games are prized for, delivered with no reading and almost no rules.

At five, it becomes a counting game: recognising spot patterns at a glance, then counting, comparing and, in the blocked-game count-up, adding them. By the time a child is ready for Fives, they are doing rapid mental addition every turn and calling it fun.

Throughout, it is a turn-taking game: waiting, watching, knocking and passing when the tiles are against you, and losing a round knowing another starts in a quarter of an hour. The toppling runs do their own work: precise fine motor placement, patience, and the purest lesson in cause and effect a child can stage on a kitchen floor. Twenty minutes of careful building for three seconds of payoff is a fine antidote to the instant feedback of a tablet, which is why it sits so naturally among our screen-free activities.

Playing with under-5s

The full Block game works from about five. Before that, adapt rather than abstain.

• At three, play tiles face up. Forget hidden hands. Lay everything in the open and make each turn a shared hunt: "can you find a tile with a four on it?" Pure matching, which is the point at this age.
• Shorten it. Deal five tiles, or play a half set (remove everything with a six). A finished short game beats an abandoned long one.
• Team up. A four-year-old paired with a grown-up gets the rhythm of real turns without the burden of unaided decisions.
• Handicap gently. Take an extra tile yourself, or decline your best blocking moves. Let them win often at first, but not always: a five-year-old who sometimes loses, with a rematch immediately on offer, is getting losing practice in its mildest form.
• When the rules collapse into toppling runs, let them. That is not the game failing. That is the other game starting.

The kit

All you need is a double-six set: 28 tiles, ideally in wood, heavy enough to stand proudly in a run and to land with that satisfying click no app has ever reproduced. A good set takes decades of shuffling without complaint.

See the Jaques traditional games collection → Browse all Jaques games →

Common questions

How many dominoes do you start with?

With a standard double-six set of 28 tiles: seven each for two players, five each for three or four. The rest go face down into the boneyard, never drawn from in the Block game, drawn from whenever you cannot play in Fives and other Draw variants.

Who goes first in dominoes?

The player holding the highest double, who must lead with it. If no doubles were drawn, the heaviest tile (most spots) starts. In later rounds the most common convention is that the previous winner leads. Agree before you start, and you have prevented half of all domino arguments.

What happens if nobody can play?

The game is blocked, which is normal, not a fault. Everyone turns their remaining tiles face up and counts the spots; lowest total wins the round, scoring the spots left in the other hands if you are keeping count. A tie is a drawn round.

What age can children play dominoes?

From three, children can match tiles face up, sort by number and build toppling runs, all genuine play and genuine learning. From about five, most can manage the real Block game with hidden hands. The scoring game, Fives, suits roughly eight and up, once quick adding feels like a power rather than a chore.