Dominoes is a classic strategy game with numerous variation types. Play Block or Draw games with your friends, using 6x6 or 9x9 piece sets. Setup private matches and challenge people from around the world. You can in the game and train with an Artificial Intelligence to improve your skill level.

Each player starts the game with 7 bones, randomly picked out of the pile of all the bones. The player who has the highest doubles plays first. If no one has doubles (it happens) the bones are reshuffled and each gets a new hand of 7 bones. If no one has doubles again the reshuffling process repeats it self until someone has a doubles bone.

The highest doubles bone is set in the middle of the bone yard – the game's playground – and from that moment on the player to the left of the dealer picks a bone out of his hand to place near the leading bone. He can set it near any of the 4 sides of the leading bone, but only the correct half must touch the leading bone. The leading bone is the only bone that can be joined from all four sides.

All the other bones can join with only one of the halves. Joining bones together is permissible only if the number on one of the halves on a bone matches an open ended bone in the bone yard. In all other circumstances the bone is considered blocked (or "hanged" in popular lingo).

The goal of the game is to set one's bones, one at a time when it is one's turn to play, until one has no more bones to play with, at which time one would call "Domino!"

Scoring in dominoes is based on the amount of points left in the hands of all of one's opponents. Naturally, if one has no more bones than his opponents will not get any points, but in some instances, which are actually quite common in block games and more than seldom in draw games, the match ends before anyone was able to play all of his bones.

E.g. Danny, Sunny and Manny are playing together a 6x6 draw game. Danny wins the match and has no bones, Sunny is left with 1 bone of 1-0 so his total is 1 point, and Manny has a 2-1 bone so his total is 3. Calculating each player's score we find out that Danny got 4 points (Sunny's 1 plus Manny's 3), Sunny has 3 points (Danny's nil plus Manny's 3) while Manny gets only 1 (nil from Danny and 1 from Sunny). So the leader now is Danny with 4, with Sunny on his heels with 3 points and Manny's having a bad day with only 1.

In Block games or Draw games where all players get blocked even the winner might contribute points while an alleged winner could be falling behind due to the points on his bones. E.g. when the next match ends we find that Danny and Sunny, again, have 1 bone and Manny (while considering to change his name to Murphy) counts 3. The total pips over Danny's single bone is nil (he has a doubles blank). Sunny has a 5-6 bone so his total is 11. Manny's total is 8 (1-3, 2-1 and a 1-0). When each player's score is calculated we find out that Danny scores 21, Manny gets 13 but Sunny gets only 10(!) (Danny's nil plus Manny's 10). Together with what they earned in the previous match, the end match score board now sets Danny ahead with 25 points, but following him is Manny with 12 while Sunny's trailing him with 11. As any dog will tell you, it's not about how many bones you have – it's what's on them.

The game's name comes from the domini, the masks worn at Venice's carnivals that are, very much like the game pieces, colored white with black spots. French priests' winter hoods are the origin for the masks' name, which in turn are traced to Latin – dominus, meaning "lord" or "master". As the game caught a lingo has evolved dubbing the pieces cards, tiles, spinners, bones and dominoes. In The popular block and draw games the term bones prevails above all of the other contesters.

No one really knows when the game was invented, but most agree that it originated from central Asia, specifically China. The most supported claim is that in China the game pieces were first used as a substitute to dice that migrated from India, and that it laid the skeleton (witty!) to the famous Chinese Mahjong. The oldest sets in existence today are dated circa 1120. In the early 18th century the game developed to what we now accept as traditional Dominoes. It diversified from the Mahjong more distinctively, forgoing the class distinctions and suits, costume to its Chinese fore-father.

Nowadays, Dominoes usually refers to the block and draw types of the game. In both types the ultimate goal is to get rid of your bones as soon as possible by matching them to other bones in accord with their value. Both types are turn based, as the play alternates between the players in an orderly fashion and in neither type the bones are exposed to other players.

In a nutshell, in Block games those who have no match in their piles, thus being blocked (hence the name) then they would simply lose their play to the next in turn until they can match a bone or someone wins. If everyone is blocked the game ends. In Draw games, a player with no matching bones draws more bones out of the bone pile (hence the game's name) until he has a match or the pile is finished (see more under the game rules).

Modern dominoes are shaped as 2:1 rectangles (each horizontal side is twice the vertical side) split in their midst by a black line halving it into two squares. In the traditional 6x6 set the halves contain black dots (pips) numbering from 0 (no dots at all, sometimes referred to as 'blank') to 6. The 9x9 set would have a range of 0-9 pips on each half of the bone. Bones that have the same number of pips on both squares are called "doubles".