Domino is a game that offers a combination of simplicity and strategy. It has a rich history and is a beloved pastime. It is also educational for children and helps develop skills in counting, matching and strategy. In the digital age, it has found new fans on computers and smartphones. It has inspired many adaptations and can be played alone or with others online.
The most common domino games are layout games, which involve laying tiles in a line on the table to form patterns or arrangements. These can be blocking or scoring games, such as the very popular Draw games; or trick and trump games which take their inspiration from card games. However, there are a number of different games that have been devised with the domino tiles, including solitaire and a very simple variation of Concentration.
A domino is a small rectangular wooden or plastic block, each face of which is blank or has an arrangement of spots resembling those on a die. There are typically 28 dots, although some sets have fewer or more. The pips are usually distributed evenly around the face of the domino, but some are positioned on the edges of the tile.
In a domino game, each player starts with seven tiles or more, depending on the rules of the particular game. The players then draw a number of dominoes from the stock pile and place them in front of themselves. The player with the heaviest domino begins play, which may be either lengthwise (with the doubles played end to end) or across the line of play. The other players then try to lay their tiles so that they join the open ends of the previously laid dominoes or match those pips.
After the first player has made his or her play, any remaining tiles are drawn from the stock pile and placed on the table to become part of the line of play. If a player cannot make a play, they must draw dominoes from the stock until they can do so or miss their turn.
When the line of play is completed, it may be analyzed for scoring possibilities or the score may be declared by the winner of the current game. The winner then makes the first play in the next game.
While there are many variations of the game, most domino games fall into one of four categories: bidding games; blocking games; and scoring games. Biding and blocking games require players to empty their hand before the game is over; scoring games, on the other hand, allow the player to accumulate points throughout the game by creating certain configurations. In addition, there are a number of other games that do not fit into any of the above categories. These include solitaire games and a few variants of card-based games, such as Pope Joan and Sevens. These are sometimes used to circumvent religious prohibitions against playing cards. However, these are less popular than the blocking and scoring games.