Block Dominoes Rules — How to Play and Keep Score

Overview

Block Dominoes is the plain, unadorned domino game that everything else grew out of. Play a tile, match a number, and get rid of your hand before anyone else. There is no counting of multiples of five along the way as in Muggins — the only points in the game arrive at the end of a hand, and only one player collects them.

Setup

Shuffle the tiles face down. With two players, each takes seven tiles; with three or four, each takes five, though many groups deal seven regardless with a double-six set. Under strict block rules the rest of the tiles are set aside untouched and never drawn. The player holding the highest double leads it, or on later hands the winner of the previous hand leads anything.

How to play

In turn, each player adds one tile to either open end of the line, matching the number already showing. Doubles are usually laid crosswise but this is decoration and does not open extra ends. A player with nothing playable simply passes — or draws, if you have switched the boneyard on. Play continues until someone lays their last tile, or until every player in succession has to pass.

Scoring

Count spots, not tiles. A tile's value is its two numbers added together; the double blank is worth zero and the six-six is worth twelve.

Someone goes out. The player who laid their last tile scores the combined spot count of every tile still held by every opponent. If the three losing hands hold 14, 9 and 3 spots, the winner scores 26.

The game blocks. Nobody can play and nobody has emptied their hand. Each player counts their own hand. The lowest count wins the hand and scores the total spots held by all the others — the same rule as above, just applied to the lightest hand instead of the empty one. If you prefer the older differential method, the winner instead scores the others' total minus their own: hands of 8, 15 and 20 give the winner 35 − 8 = 27. If two or more players tie for the lowest count, no one scores and the hand is a wash.

Partnerships. A team scores the spots left in the two opposing hands only; a partner's tiles never count against you.

With rounding switched on, take the hand score to the nearest multiple of five, rounding a number ending in the digit 3, 4, 8 or 9 upward.

Ending the game

Add each hand's score to a running total. The first player or team to reach or pass the agreed target — 100 is the usual default, 150 or 250 for a longer session — wins immediately at the end of that hand. If two sides cross the line in the same hand, the higher total wins.

Common variations

Draw Dominoes keeps a boneyard and all but eliminates blocked hands. Sixty-one is the short cribbage-board version. Some clubs double the score when the winning tile is a double.