The short version: a standard game of dominoes uses a double-six set of 28 tiles, each player draws a hand, and you take turns matching the open ends of the line until someone empties their hand or nobody can move. The winner scores the pips left in everyone else's hands, and most people lose not because of bad luck but because they hoard their doubles too long. Below is the full rulebook plus the one strategy mistake that decides most games.
What you need to play
A standard set is called double-six, because the highest tile is the 6-6. There are 28 tiles in total, running from 0-0 (the "double blank") through every combination up to 6-6, with no repeats. Add up every pip on every tile and you get 168, which is a nice number to know if you ever suspect someone's dropped a tile under the sofa.
You also need a flat surface, two to four players, and somewhere to put the tiles nobody has drawn yet. That leftover pile has a real name: the boneyard. Dominoes started life carved from bone or ivory, which is where both the nickname and the phrase "bones" for the tiles come from.
Setting up the game, step by step
- Turn all 28 tiles face down and mix them around the table for at least ten seconds. This is called shuffling the bones.
- Each player draws a hand without looking at the faces. Two players draw 7 tiles each, leaving 14 in the boneyard. Three players draw 5 each, leaving 13. Four players draw 5 each too, which uses 20 tiles and leaves 8 in the boneyard.
- Whoever holds the highest double goes first and plays it into the middle of the table. If nobody has a double, the tile with the highest combined pip count goes down instead.
- Play moves clockwise from there.
That boneyard number matters more than people think. With only 8 tiles left in a four-player game, you'll often run out of spares fast, which forces more passes and makes the blocking side of the game much sharper.
How a turn works
On your turn you must place a tile from your hand so that one of its numbers matches an open end of the line already on the table. A 3-5 tile can only join an open end showing a 3 or a 5. If you can't match either open end, you draw one tile at a time from the boneyard until you get something playable, or until the boneyard is empty, at which point you simply pass.
Doubles are laid crossways, sideways across the line rather than end to end, and in most versions of the rules a double creates a branch: you can play off either side of it, which means the layout stops being one straight line and starts spreading in more than one direction. Some house variants insist both sides of a double must be filled before anyone can extend past it. Agree this before you start, because it changes strategy.
A round ends one of two ways: someone plays their last tile and "goes domino" (also called "going out"), or the game is blocked, meaning no player can move even after drawing everything available.
Scoring: the blocking game versus the scoring game
There are two families of dominoes and most beginners only ever learn one, which causes confusion at family gatherings.
Block game (also called Draw): when a round ends, whoever went out, or whoever has the fewest pips left if the game is blocked, wins the round. They score the total pip count still sitting in every other player's hand. Play repeatedly to an agreed target, commonly 100 or 150 points.
All Fives, or Muggins: here you score during play, not just at the end. Every time you lay a tile, add up the two open ends of the whole layout. If the total is a multiple of 5, you score that number of points immediately. Play to 61, 100, or 200 depending on the group.
Pick one before you sit down. Trying to score both ways at once is the fastest way to end a game night in an argument.
A worked example round
Say you run a family game night with three friends and you're playing a straightforward block game to 100 points. Each of you draws 5 tiles from the shuffled 28, leaving 13 in the boneyard.
You hold the 6-6, so you open with it. Player two matches a 6 with a 6-4. Player three can't match a 6 or a 4, so they draw twice from the boneyard before finding a 4-2, which they play off the open 4 end. Play comes back to you, and you play a 6-3 off the remaining open 6.
Now the open ends read 3 and 2. Player two has no 3 or 2 left and draws three tiles in a row, luckily one is a 2-5, so they play that. You go out three turns later by playing your last tile, a 5-1, onto the open 5.
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Round over. You add up the pips left in the other three hands: player two has 9 pips left, player three has 14, the fourth player has 6. You score 29 points for that round. Play continues, round after round, until someone crosses 100.
The rule most players get wrong
Here's the part that most guides skip because it doesn't sound like a rule at all, it sounds like advice, but it decides more games than the rulebook does. Holding onto a double, especially a high one like 5-5 or 6-6, feels safe because it's a strong tile. In practice it's often the worst thing sitting in your hand.
Doubles only fit one number. If that number stops showing up as an open end because opponents avoid feeding it, you're stuck holding a heavy, useless tile while everyone else empties their hands around you. Good players get rid of doubles early, unless they're deliberately trying to block a specific number they've noticed nobody else can play. Dominoes gets called a luck-of-the-draw game constantly, and the shuffle is random, but the actual skill is tile counting: watching what's been played, working out what's probably stuck in opponents' hands, and steering the open ends toward numbers you know they don't have. That's closer to a memory game than a dice game, and it's the reason the same two or three people at any table win most rounds.
Common variants worth knowing
- Mexican Train: uses a bigger double-twelve or double-nine set, each player builds their own "train" plus a shared one, and you can only play on someone else's train if they haven't marked it as open.
- Chicken Foot: similar setup, but every double must have three tiles played off it before the game moves on, creating a shape like a chicken foot.
- Draw dominoes: identical to block, except players must draw from the boneyard whenever they can't play, rather than passing immediately.
- Tiddly-wink: a faster variant where any player, in any order, can slap down a matching tile the moment they spot one, ignoring normal turn order.
Dominoes travels well too. It's one of the few games that survives being played across generations at the same table without anyone needing a screen, which is exactly why it turns up so often on lists of offline board game apps for family night when people want a digital backup for a rainy evening. It also holds up as one of the better low-effort options for older relatives, alongside the kind of simple, low-pressure titles covered in this rundown of easy offline game apps for seniors, because the rules are short enough to explain in two minutes but the tile counting keeps sharp players interested for hours.
Agreeing house rules before you start
Every family plays dominoes slightly differently, and that's fine as long as you settle it before the first tile goes down. Decide these four things:
- Block game or scoring game (All Fives)?
- Does a double need both sides filled before play continues past it?
- What's the target score, or are you playing best of a fixed number of rounds?
- If the game blocks with nobody able to move, does the player with the fewest pips win the round, or does it count as a draw with nobody scoring?
Write it down if the group is competitive. I've watched enough marketing meetings collapse over undefined terms to know that "we'll just figure it out as we go" is how every argument starts, and dominoes is no different.
I have written more around this on the site: Free Offline Board Game Apps for Family Night: 20 Picks, Free Offline Game Apps for Seniors That Are Easy to Learn.
Frequently asked questions
How many dominoes do you draw at the start of a game?
With two players you draw 7 tiles each from the standard 28-tile double-six set. With three or four players you draw 5 tiles each, leaving the rest in the boneyard as a draw pile.
What happens if you can't play a domino?
You draw one tile at a time from the boneyard until you can make a legal move, or until the boneyard runs out, at which point you simply pass your turn to the next player.
How do you win at dominoes, not just finish a round?
Whoever goes out first or has the fewest pips left when the game blocks scores the pip total from everyone else's hands. Games are usually played to 100 or 150 points across multiple rounds, so winning is about consistently emptying your hand early or blocking opponents with high tiles.
Is dominoes a game of luck or skill?
The initial draw is luck, but the play itself rewards counting which numbers opponents have avoided and steering the open ends away from tiles they need. Players who dump their doubles early and track what's missing consistently outperform players who just play whatever fits.
