Dominoes
The oldest sets have been dated from around 1120 A.D. Modern games, as most of the Western world knows them, however, appear to be a Chinese invention. They were apparently derived from cubic dice, which had been introduced into China from India some time in the distant past. Each tileoriginally represented one of the 21 results of throwing two dice. One half of each tileis set with the pips from one die and the other half contains the pips from the second die. Chinese sets also introduce duplicates of some throws and divide the dominoes into two classes: military and civil. Over time Chinese dominoes also evolved into the tile set used to play Mah Jong, a game which swept across the United States in the early to mid 1920s.
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Many different games can be played. Probably the most popular game is Draw . When someone says, "Let's play!" they usually are referring of Draw. To learn how to play, start with our rules page.
Another popular game is Block, which is very similar to Draw. The main difference is that players do not select bones from the boneyard when they are playing the block version of the game.
It's interesting to note that both poker and dominoes are commonly played as a draw game. The rules of poker are not much more complicated than Dominoes Sets.
Modern commercial domino sets are usually made of synthetic materials, such as ABS or polystyrene plastics, or Bakelite and other phenolic resins; many sets approximate the look and feel of ivory while others use colored or even translucent plastics to achieve a more contemporary look. Modern sets also commonly use a different color for the dots of each different end value (one-spots might have black pips while two-spots might be green, three red, etc.) to facilitate finding matching ends.
