Dominoes

Dump your heavy tiles early

The most useful habit in Dominoes has nothing to do with clever chains. Play your heavy tiles first. If the game blocks (nobody can move and the boneyard is empty), the round goes to whoever holds the lower pip total. Get caught with the double-six, which is worth 12 pips on its own, and you can lose a round without making one visible mistake. So when you have a choice of plays, shed the fat tiles and keep the light ones in reserve.

That advice flips only when you're clearly winning the race to empty your hand. Then you play whatever keeps you moving. Most rounds stay close, though, and dropping weight early is cheap insurance against a block you didn't see coming.

Count to seven

Here's the technique that separates casual players from good ones. In a double-six set, every number appears on exactly seven tiles. The number 4, for example, lives on 4-0, 4-1, 4-2, 4-3, 4-4, 4-5 and 4-6, and that's all of them. So count what you can see. If five tiles showing a 4 are on the table and you hold the other two, the computer cannot have a 4 in its hand. That's not a guess. It's a fact, and you can lean on it.

Use it like this: steer both open ends of the line to show 4. Now the computer can't play. It has to dig through the boneyard until it finds something, and every forced draw makes its hand heavier, which wins you blocked rounds. Players call this controlling the ends, and it's the engine of the whole blocking game. You don't need to memorize the table. Track one or two numbers you're long in, and note the moment the computer draws or passes: whatever the ends showed right then is a number it doesn't have.

A blocked round, played right

Say the ends show 5 and 2, and you hold the 5-3, the 2-2 and the 6-6. The 6-6 can't be played, and it's 12 points hanging over your head. The right move is the 5-3, because it sheds eight pips while the 2-2 sheds only four, and in a blocked round that difference is often the whole margin. Notice the real villain, though: the double-six nobody found a home for. That's the story of most lost rounds. Not a bad move, just a heavy tile held too long.

Doubles are the awkward ones

A double matches only one number. Once laid, it doesn't change the value at its end of the line, so it opens nothing new for you. That's why doubles rot in hands. Play them at the first safe chance instead of hoarding them, and treat the double-six as urgent: it's the heaviest tile in the set and the hardest to place late. Early in a round is the safest window, while the line is short and all seven tiles of its number are still live. Every turn that passes makes a big double harder to place.

• You can add to either open end, so check both before playing the first tile that jumps out at you.
• Can't go? Draw from the boneyard until you can. You only pass once it's empty.
• Before you play, picture what the two ends will show after your tile lands. If you can leave two numbers you're strong in, do it.

One more habit: watch your own suits. A hand heavy in one number feels flexible right up until that number dries up on the table. Spread your plays so you're never depending on a single suit surviving to the end.

Bones and pips

Dominoes are old. Tile games of this family show up in Chinese records from around the 1200s, and the European double-six set took shape in Italy in the early 1700s. The name probably comes from the domino, a black-and-white hooded cloak worn at masquerades, a good match for the look of the tiles. The pieces are still nicknamed bones, and the draw pile is the boneyard, both hangovers from the days when tiles were carved from real bone and ivory.

The set here is the standard 28. You and the computer draw seven tiles each, leaving 14 in the boneyard. This is the plain block-and-draw game: match the ends, empty your hand first, and don't get caught heavy when the line jams shut.