Domino (Muggins or All Fives rules)

In My Humble Opinion
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I’m asking this in IMHO since I have discovered that this will change regionally.

Here’s the story: Some colleagues of mine and I decided to take our lunch breaks every so often by playing games. The thing I discoverd is that we all have different rules for the games we play. We usually find a resource and agree that it will serve as the definitive answer. The exception has been dominos. We have a Texan, a Georgian, and Indian (from India, not Oklahoma), and a Canadiaan, so I’ve seen some pretty crazy variations.

So here’s my question… how do YOU guys play dominoes (of the All Five or Muggins variety)?

the basic rules I play with are as follows:

  1. either draw for high domino to go first (usually play this way), or let the highest double start the first game. Afterwords, whoever went “domino” last hand, goes first the next round.

  2. everybody draw 7 dominos, play begins as stated above, thereafter go in clockwise rotation. Player can draw if he wants to, but can only pass when he can’t play and there are no more dominos to draw from.

  3. Dominos must be played in a manner that the numbers match each other. When playing a double it has to be played sideways (perpindicular) to the domino it’s being played on. (forming a “T”). There can only be four legs of play, and you can only play off the first double on the board (called the spinner). you must play on both sides of the spinner before you can create a new leg. (you have to play “+” before your play can be “L” )

  4. Scoring is achieved by playing such that the ends of the dominos total up to a multiple of 5. You only count the exposed half of the domino, unless it’s a double then you count the entire domino (as it will be played sideways to the rest of the leg).
    The first player to go domino (play his last domino) scores the points everyone else has in their hand rounded to the nearest five (if you’re playing partners ,you subtract out your partners points first).
    A locked table (no player can play) results in all players exposing their dominos and whoever has the lowest count gets the sum of the other players’ count.

Question:1 If a player locks up the board for other players but can still play himself, Can He play? or do you play that he has effectively ended the game? Because it seems like you could draw dominos at the start of the game and control the entire game if you knew what you were doing.

Question 2: as mentioned above, we play that whover wins a round, starts the next round. I’ve also read variations that you always pass the lead to the next player as in most card games.

So… what do yooze guys think?

E3

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Sorry, I play dominó in Spanish and the only differences I know depend on whether the domino set has pictures (kiddie sets) or dots. With pictures you can’t get stuck with the double naught, which counts more than any other tile (this rule is often waived when playing with kids, and of course it only counts if you’re running series, not if you’re playing individual games). There’s some variation on the treatment of the double-naught and when it’s valid to close, but everybody I’ve played with knew several versions and considered all of them as “family variations” (and I’m talking about people from a dozen countries), not as “this is THE way to play”.

The rules for us would be, just as an FYI:

  • scramble all the tiles, face down. Each player picks one and puts it face-up. The person with the highest-value tile goes first (a double is worth more than an odd, so double-5 is worth more than 4-6). Who will go first on other rounds gets agreed in advance, it’s usually the person to the right of the last starter (same as in most Spanish card games).

  • starter puts one tile down, person to his right another, etc. If you can’t put a tile down, you take another, until there aren’t tiles left. Doubles are placed perpendicular to other tiles but it’s all just a single line, really; you can place tiles only in two points at any given time.

  • you can close when you have a tile that can be placed on both ends. Say you need a 2 on one end and a 3 on the other: if you have the 2-3, you can close.

  • when a person closes or runs out of tiles, the other players toss down their tiles and, if it’s a multi-round game, count the points (btw, “point” and “dot” are the same word in Spanish). The double-naught is often awarded a value of 40 points. In theory, someone could close and still lose the round, I’ve seen it happen! (and boy was he pissed when I showed that all I had was the 0-1, prrrrr)

  • 4-player games can be played solo or in pairs. Any other size is played solo.

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Doh, forgot:

each player starts with 7 tiles. And “you can close” doesn’t mean you have to: you actually have to say “I close”.