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Dominoes Scoring: Block, Draw and All Fives

Dominoes is played almost everywhere, and scored differently almost everywhere. The tiles are the same double six set from Jamaica to Mexico to Spain, but ask three tables how a round is scored and you will get three answers, all of them correct for their own house.

Braggster ships the three that matter, and this is what separates them.

The tiles, and the pips

A double six set is 28 tiles: every combination of two numbers from 0 to 6, including doubles. The whole set totals 168 pips, which is the number every scoring system is ultimately dividing up.

Play starts from one tile and grows outward, matching numbers on open ends.

Block dominoes

The simplest version, and the one most families default to without knowing it has a name.

Draw your hand, play what you can, and if you cannot play, you pass. There is no boneyard to draw from. The round ends when someone plays their last tile, or when everyone is blocked.

Scoring: the player who goes out collects the total pips remaining in every opponent's hand. If the game blocks with nobody out, the player with the lowest pip count collects the difference.

Race to 100.

Draw dominoes

Identical to Block except that when you cannot play you draw from the boneyard until you can, or until it is empty. Only then do you pass.

Same scoring, same target of 100. Draw games run longer and block less often, which is why it is the default in many places.

All Fives

The interesting one, and the reason dominoes deserves a real score sheet.

All Fives scores during play, not just at the end of the round. Whenever the numbers on all the open ends of the layout total a multiple of five, the player who just placed a tile scores that total.

Doubles count both halves. A double five lying crossways contributes 10 to the open end total, not 5.

At the end of the round the winner also collects the opponents' remaining pips, usually rounded to the nearest five. Race to 150.

This is the variant where paper score sheets drift. There are scores on almost every turn, they are small, and they happen in the middle of a conversation.

The playable tile board

Braggster gives Dominoes an in app hotseat board. Tap to place a tile on a matching open end, draw or pass according to the variant, and the round scores automatically through the same path as a hand entered result.

Because the board knows the variant, it also knows whether a boneyard exists and whether the open ends should be scored on each placement. It is the All Fives case that makes this worth having.

Regional names and reach

Dominoes is a genuinely global game, and it is one of the strongest social games in the Caribbean and across Latin America. Braggster tags it for Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, Suriname, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Equatorial Guinea, so it surfaces in the catalogue for players in all of them.

Frequently asked questions

How many points do you play to in dominoes? 100 in Block and Draw, 150 in All Fives. Both are the standard targets, and both are what Braggster uses.

How do you score a blocked game? Nobody has gone out, so the player holding the fewest pips wins the round and collects the difference between their count and the opponents'.

What counts as an open end in All Fives? The exposed number at each end of the layout. A double lying crossways contributes both of its halves to the total.

Do doubles count as one number or two? For matching, one. For the open end total in All Fives, both halves.

Can I play dominoes on the phone with someone next to me? Yes. The board is hotseat, so you pass the device around the table. There is no online play and no account.

More: browse every game at braggster.com/games, or read the overview of board game scoring.