Domino is a set of small rectangular blocks, each bearing from one to six pips or dots, that can be used in various ways to create games. Dominoes are normally twice as long as they are wide and may be arranged in straight lines or angular patterns. Also known as bones, cards, men, or pieces, dominoes are played in various ways with the aim of achieving specific goals, such as scoring points and blocking opponents from making certain plays.
A domino game can be played formally or casually. In informal games, the player with the most points wins. If all players have scored, the game ends with each player counting the value of their remaining dominoes. If one player has more dominoes with a particular number, for example fives, they will play those first to “bleed” the other players of their own fives and force them to pass.
The mechanics of dominoes are often used as a model for the function of nerve cells, or neurons. The speed at which a domino falls, and the direction it moves in, are often used to describe the firing rate of neurons.
Dominoes are also popular in mathematics and computer science, where they are used to represent a system of linked events or a set of rules. They are useful for modeling complex systems such as global finance and politics, and for demonstrating the domino effect, the phenomenon whereby one event triggers another. The mechanics of dominoes are used in many Rube Goldberg machines.
There are many different domino games, but most involve matching one tile to another by the value of their sides. Some games also use the blank side of a domino, which can be ascribed any value by the players. In the Block and Draw game, players begin with a fixed amount of dominoes – two players start with seven tiles, three players with five tiles, and four players with four tiles – and add to their hands whenever they can. A turn begins with placing a domino, ideally so that it touches the end of a line of other dominoes already on the table. This creates a chain reaction of the other dominoes falling. Then, the next player must add to the chain by playing a domino with the same number as that on the other end of the existing line. The other end of the line then becomes a “spinner” and new tiles can be added on both sides. This is the most common way to build up a long chain of dominoes. The last player to play a domino with the same number as the spinner wins the round. The other players score for the number of open-ended dominoes that add up to a multiple of five. Domino is available as a fully-managed cloud service, on-premises or in hybrid multi-cloud environments. It combines code and data management to make it easy to scale and manage projects.