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By: Ikedi Ani-okoye.

Dominoes history

Tile games of some form have been found from around 1120 AD in China. Chinese dominoes are longer than Western ones and are divided into two types and were originally carved from bone or ivory with the indented pips made of ebony.  Each Chinese tile represents one of the twenty-one different permutations of throwing two cubic dice although there are a total of thirty-two tiles since certain dominoes are duplicated.  

A set of Chinese tiles is divided into two categories - Military and Civilian.   The Civilian tiles are the set of tiles that have duplicates while the Military tiles are those that are unique.  A variety of different games were and still are played with these tiles and the much more modern tile game of Mah-Jong evolved from Chinese Dominoes.

Block game dominoes

The dominoes are ritually shuffled face down in circles with the flat of the hand - producing a sound that has been familiar down the centuries.   Each player draws 6 dominoes and places them so that the other players can't see their value.  The traditional English pub method of doing this is face down in two rows of three so that all six can be picked up with both hands, looked at and returned leaving the other hand free for the equally important business of drinking a pint.

Beginners can just place them on their edge in a row facing them.  Remaining dominoes are termed "sleeping" tiles. The first person to play is that person holding the double-six, or failing that the double-five and so on.  The tile played must be the double tile that permitted the player to take the first turn. If none of the players hold a double, then the tiles are reshuffled and re-drawn.

CONCLUSION

Dominoes games seem to have originated in China and came to Europe in the eighteenth century. The domino tiles represent all the possible throws of two dice, this is why the standard English dominoes are a double six set. The custom of adding blanks to the domino set is a European one. The set of double twelves which is popular in the USA today is first desciribed by Hoyle in a book of 1812 which in the history of games makes them very young indeed. Double nine dominoes and double fifteen dominoes are now also popular sets.