Big Dominoes Game
Karri Weston
Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ends. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also called pips or dots) or is blank. The backs of the tiles in a set are indistinguishable, either blank or having some common design. The gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a deck or pack. The traditional European domino set consists of 28 tiles, also known as pieces, bones, rocks, stones, men, cards or just dominoes, featuring all combinations of spot counts between zero and six. A domino set is a generic gaming device, similar to playing cards or dice, in that a variety of games can be played with a set. Another form of entertainment using domino pieces is the practice of domino toppling.
European-style dominoes are traditionally made of bone, silver lip ocean pearl oyster shell (mother of pearl), ivory, or a dark hardwood such as ebony, with contrasting black or white pips (inlaid or painted). Some sets feature the top half thickness in MOP, ivory, or bone, with the lower half in ebony. Alternatively, domino sets have been made from many different natural materials: stone (e.g., marble, granite or soapstone); other woods (e.g., ash, oak, redwood, and cedar); metals (e.g., brass or pewter); ceramic clay, or even frosted glass or crystal. These sets have a more novel look, and the often heavier weight makes them feel more substantial; also, such materials and the resulting products are usually much more expensive than polymer materials.
Modern commercial domino sets are usually made of synthetic materials, such as ABS or polystyrene plastics, or Bakelite and other phenolic resins; many sets approximate the look and feel of ivory while others use colored or even translucent plastics to achieve a more contemporary look. Modern sets also commonly use a different color for the dots of each different end value (one-spots might have black pips while two-spots might be green, three red, etc.) to facilitate finding matching ends. Occasionally, one may find a domino set made of card stock like that for playing cards. Such sets are lightweight, compact, and inexpensive, and like cards are more susceptible to minor disturbances such as a sudden breeze. Sometimes, the tiles have a metal pin (called a spinner or pivot) in the middle.[6]
The traditional domino set contains one unique piece for each possible combination of two ends with zero to six spots, and is known as a double-six set because the highest-value piece has six pips on each end (the "double six"). The spots from one to six are generally arranged as they are on six-sided dice, but because blank ends having no spots are used, seven faces are possible, allowing 28 unique pieces in a double-six set.
However, this is a relatively small number especially when playing with more than four people, so many domino sets are "extended" by introducing ends with greater numbers of spots, which increases the number of unique combinations of ends and thus of pieces. Each progressively larger set increases the maximum number of pips on an end by three; so the common extended sets are double-nine (55 tiles), double-12 (91 tiles), double-15 (136 tiles), and double-18 (190 tiles), which is the maximum in practice. Larger sets such as double-21 (253 tiles) could theoretically exist, but they seem to be extremely rare if not nonexistent, as that would be far more than is normally necessary for most domino games, even with eight players. As the set becomes larger, identifying the number of pips on each domino becomes more difficult, so some large domino sets use more readable Arabic numerals instead of pips.
The traditional 32-piece Chinese domino set, made to represent each possible face of two thrown dice and thus have no blank faces, differs from the 28-piece domino set found in the West during the mid 18th century, [8] although Chinese dominoes with blank faces were known during the 17th century.[9]Each domino originally represented one of the 21 results of throwing two six-sided dice (2d6). One half of each domino is set with the pips from one die and the other half contains the pips from the second die. Chinese sets also introduce duplicates of some throws and divide the tiles into two suits: military and civil.[10] Chinese dominoes are also longer than typical European ones.
From France, the game was introduced to England by the late 1700s,[a] purportedly brought in by French prisoners-of-war.[15] The early forms of the game in England were the Block Game and Draw Game.[16] The rules for these games were reprinted, largely unchanged, for over half a century.[17] In 1863, a new game variously described as All Fives, Fives or Cribbage Dominoes appeared for the first time in both English and American sources; this was the first scoring game and it borrowed the counting and scoring features of cribbage, but 5 domino spots instead of 15 card points became the basic scoring unit, worth 1 game point. The game was played to 31 and employed a cribbage board to keep score.[18]In 1864, The American Hoyle describes three new variants: Muggins, Bergen and Rounce; alongside the Block Dominoes and Draw Dominoes.[19] In Muggins, the cribbage board was dropped, 5 spots scored 5 points, and game was now 200 for two players and 150 for three or four. Despite the name, there was no 'muggins rule' as in cribbage to challenge a player who fails to declare his scoring combinations.[20] This omission was rectified in the 1868 edition of The Modern Pocket Hoyle,[21] but reprints of both rule sets continued to be produced in parallel for around twenty years before the version with the muggins rule prevailed. From around 1871, however, the names of All Fives and Muggins, became conflated and many publications issued rules for 'Muggins or All Fives' or 'Muggins or Fives' without making any distinction between the two. This confusion continues to the present day with some publications equating the names and others describing All Fives as a separate game.
All the early games are still played today alongside games that have sprung up in the last 60 years such as Five Up, Mexican Train and Chicken Foot, the last two taking advantage of the larger domino sets available.[24]
Some modern descriptions of All Fives are quite different from the original, having lost much of their cribbage character and incorporating a single spinner, making it identical, or closely related, to Sniff.[25][26] Most published rule sets for Muggins include the rule that gives the game its name, but some modern publications omit it even though the muggins rule has been described as the unique feature of this game.[26]
Dominoes is now played internationally. It is recognized as an "ingrained cultural activity within the Caribbean" but is also popular with the Windrush generation (who have Caribbean heritage) in the UK.[27]
In the U.S. state of Alabama, although rarely prosecuted, it was illegal to play dominoes on Sunday within the state until the relevant section of the Alabama Criminal Code was repealed, effective April 21, 2015.[28][29]
Dominoes (also known as bones, cards, men, pieces or tiles), are normally twice as long as they are wide, which makes it easier to re-stack pieces after use. A domino usually features a line in the middle to divide it visually into two squares, called ends. The value of either side is the number of spots or pips. In the most common variant (double-six), the values range from six pips down to none or blank.[30] The sum of the two values, i.e. the total number of pips, may be referred to as the rank or weight of a tile; a tile may be described as "heavier" than a "lighter" one that has fewer (or no) pips.
In some versions the doubles can be treated as an additional suit of doubles. In these versions, the ? belongs both to the suit of sixes and the suit of doubles. However, the dominant approach is that each double belongs to only one suit.[30]
The most common domino sets commercially available are double six (with 28 tiles) and double nine (with 55 tiles). Larger sets exist and are popular for games involving several players or for players looking for long domino games.
The most basic domino variant is for two players and requires a double-six set. The 28 tiles are shuffled face down and form the stock or boneyard. Each player draws seven tiles from the stock. Once the players begin drawing tiles, they are typically placed on-edge in front of the players, so players can see their own tiles, but not the value of their opponents' tiles. Players can thus see how many tiles remain in their opponents' hands at all times.
One player begins by downing (playing the first tile) one of their tiles. This tile starts the line of play, in which values of adjacent pairs of tile ends must match. The players alternately extend the line of play with one tile at one of its two ends; if a player is unable to place a valid tile, they must continue drawing tiles from the stock until they are able to place a tile. The game ends when one player wins by playing their last tile, or when the game is blocked because neither player can play. If that occurs, whoever caused the block receives all of the remaining player points not counting their own.[30]
A common variant of the blocking game that is played in the Middle East features four players with slightly altered rules. The stock is divided equally on all players, each having seven tiles in hand. After drawing the tiles, the player with the double-six tile starts by downing that tile on the table and the game then proceeds counter-clockwise.
Since there is no boneyard, a player without a matching tile passes their turn. A player that is unable to play is called a downed or sitting player. A less common alternation of the middle eastern game requires the player to the left of the sitting player to transfer one of their tiles (not necessarily playable) tile to the downed player. In this variant, if the transferred tile can be played, they have to down it.
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