Dominoes is a great way to get kids active. It encourages jumping, summersaulting, and more. This game also helps develop counting skills.
The first player selects a domino and places it in the game area. The next player matches either side of the domino with a matching tile. If there is no matching piece, the player draws from the boneyard.
Origin
Domino is a popular surname and the game of domino is played worldwide. It originated in China and it was brought to Europe by the 18th Century where it became a fad.
A domino is a thumb-sized, rectangular block that is blank or bearing from one to six pips or dots. It is part of a set of 28 such pieces which are used to play various games.
Domino teamed with Wolverine’s X-Force strike team and later helped Cable oppose Lucas Bishop’s (Cable’s clone) antimutant ULTIMATUM squad. She also aided her old Six Pack teammates Grizzly and Hammer against the deranged Weapon X director Malcolm Colcord’s clandestine facility in Switzerland. She later fought in Rumekistan against the mutant-devouring Skornn entity and assisted S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Bridge against the cyborg Reavers’ Operation: Zero Tolerance project.
Rules
There are many different domino games. The rules for each game determine the order in which players make their plays and who starts the first hand. The player who draws the highest double or single makes the first play in most games. In some games the winner of the last game may start the first hand. The order of play is also determined by seating arrangements.
When a player draws a tile, he must place it squarely against the first double or other domino touching it. This configuration is called the layout, string, or line of play. The line of play develops in a snake-line fashion and is often limited by the playing surface. The winning player is awarded points based on the sum of all the opposing players’ spots in their hands rounded to a multiple of five.
Variations
Dominoes are similar to playing cards, but have a line in the center to distinguish them from dice. Each domino bears a number of spots, or pips, on one side and is blank or identically patterned on the other. This feature allows the pips to be grouped into suits, with each suit containing tiles of different numbers.
Most games are played by matching the open ends of dominoes. The resulting configuration is called a layout, string, or line of play. Some players may use doubles as spinners, allowing them to be played on all sides and causing the lines of play to branch. This can speed up the game. Other variations include matador, where the goal is not to match adjacent dominoes but to make all the open-end pips on the layout a multiple of five; and muggins, in which the number of crown symbols on a tile is used to score points.
Materials
Dominoes are small rectangular game pieces made from a variety of materials. They are usually twice as long as they are wide, and each side features a number of spots called pips. The pips are uniformly molded or drilled into the domino. Each domino is also marked with a line in the middle that divides it visually into two square halves. The two sides may feature different numbers or the absence of spots (which represents a zero).
Historically, dominoes were made from bones, wood, ivory, and stone. Bakelite, a new compound developed in the 19th century by Leo Baekeland, became the preferred material for dominoes. In the later half of the 20th century, plastics derived from petroleum took over, resulting in the domino sets you buy today.
Scoring
A domino is a tile with a number of dots on both sides. These dots are called pips. They can be used to count the value of a single domino or of an entire line of tiles. The number of pips on a domino is its rank or weight. A heavy domino is one with many pips, while a light domino has few pips.
Some players keep track of their score on a cribbage board, while others use a system similar to Holsey and Tidwell’s X’s. In either case, scores are totaled as the dominos are played, rather than at the end of a hand. This allows players to make a better plan for their next turn, which will help them win the game.
