How is a domino game scored? Three systems compared

A domino game is scored in one of three ways. In most block and draw games, the player or team that wins a hand collects the pips left in the losers' hands. In All Fives and Muggins, you also score during play whenever the two open ends add up to a multiple of five. In Jamaican partner play, a won hand is simply worth one point. Inside each system, tables still disagree on the details — whose pips count, what a blocked hand is worth, and how far the game goes — and those details are where the arguments start.

Here is how each system works, with numbers you can check at the table.

The one number to know

A double-six set has 28 tiles and 168 pips, so the average tile carries six. A seven-tile hand averages 42 pips. That is a useful sense of scale: in a pip-scored game to 100, one hand where all three opponents are caught with full hands can take you most of the way.

System one: count what is left

This is the default for block and draw dominoes in the English-speaking world, and for most Latin American partnership play.

When a player goes out — plays their last tile, which is called dominoing — the hand stops. Everyone else counts the pips on the tiles still in their hand, and the winner scores the total.

Say four players are playing block. Ana goes out. The others are left holding:

• Ben: [6-5] [3-0] — 14 pips
• Carla: [4-4] [1-0] — 9 pips
• Dev: [6-6] [5-3] [2-0] — 22 pips

Ana scores 14 + 9 + 22 = 45.

When nobody can go out

A blocked hand — every player stuck, nobody out — is where the traditions split. Usually the player with the fewest pips wins it. What they score is the open question.

Take the same hands, but now the game blocks with Ana still holding [5-1], six pips. John McLeod's draw-game rules at pagat.com record three different answers in use:

• The winner scores everything left, their own pips included: 6 + 14 + 9 + 22 = 51.
• The winner scores the others' pips minus their own: 45 − 6 = 39.
• The winner scores the sum of the differences between each opponent and themselves: (14 − 6) + (9 − 6) + (22 − 6) = 27.

Same hand, three scores. None of them is wrong; each is a real tradition. If your table has never discussed it, you have probably been arguing about it without knowing why.

Ties for fewest pips are just as unsettled. Pagat's main rule is that nobody scores. Other tables give the hand to the player who caused the block, or to whoever holds the fewest tiles.

Partnership pip scoring

With four players in two teams, the question becomes whose hands count. Pagat's comparison of partnership traditions shows two answers:

• Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela: the winning team scores only the losing team's pips. Partners' leftover tiles are ignored. Game is 100.
• The international federation rules (FID) and Puerto Rican Doscientos: the winning team scores the pips left in all four hands, partner included. Game is

Suppose your partner goes out. You still hold 12 pips; your opponents hold 15 and 20. Under the Mexican rule your team scores 35. Under FID rules it scores 47. That is why the target doubles: counting all four hands produces bigger scores.

Blocked partnership hands go to the team with fewer pips, but ties split three ways in pagat's table. In Mexico the tie goes to the team that started the hand, in Colombia to the team that blocked it, and in Venezuela nobody wins and the next player starts.

Bonuses

Some traditions add points for how you win, not just how much is left over. Pagat records Puerto Rican Quinientos, played to 500, which pays a 100-point bonus for capicú — going out with a non-double that could have been played on either end — and another 100 for going out with the double blank. Doscientos pays bonuses for plays that force opponents to pass. Some British club rules, also on pagat, double the opponents' pips when the winner goes out with a tile that fits either end, or with a double.

A shortcut some tables use

Because pip totals get large, some partnership players divide every hand's score by ten and round down, with anything under ten still counting as one. A 39-point hand becomes 3, and a 7-point hand becomes 1.

System two: score during play

All Fives, and its close relative Muggins, add a second source of points. After every tile is placed, add the pips on the open ends of the line. If the total is a multiple of five, the player who just played scores it at once.

A double placed crossways at an end counts both halves. So if one end shows a crossways [6-6] — 12 — and the other end shows a 3, the total is 15 and the player scores 15. In the Muggins rules on pagat, where doubles are not spinners and the line has only two ends, the highest possible score from one play is 20: [6-6] at one end and [4-4] at the other.

Worked example. The ends show a crossways [6-6] and a 2: 14, no score. You hold [2-3] and [2-5].

• Play [2-3] on the 2: the ends become 12 and 3, total 15. You score 15.
• Play [2-5] on the 2: the ends become 12 and 5, total 17. Nothing.

Now look at what each play leaves the next player. After [2-3], the ends are 12 and 3. The only tile that scores in reply is [6-2], played on the double to make 2 + 3 = 5. After [2-5], the ends are 12 and 5, and three tiles score: [5-3] on the 5 makes 15, [6-0] on the double makes 5, and [6-5] on the double makes 10. The play that scores also leaves less behind. Counting the reply before you play is the whole skill of this game.

At the end of the hand, the leftover pips still count, rounded to the nearest five — a hand holding [1-2] counts as 5, one holding [1-1] counts as 0. In most descriptions the player who went out collects them; pagat's Muggins page also gives a version that subtracts them from each holder instead.

Pagat gives the target as 200 for three or four players and 250 for two. A common variant counts one point per five instead of the full total — 5 scores 1, 10 scores 2, 15 scores 3, 20 scores 4 — which keeps the numbers small and suits scoring on a cribbage board. In versions where the first double becomes a spinner that can be played off on four sides, more ends count toward the total and bigger scores become possible.

All Threes works the same way with multiples of three, scoring one point per three.

System three: one point per hand

Jamaican partner dominoes ignores pip totals almost entirely. As pagat records it:

• The team that wins a hand scores one point.
• Going out with the key bone — the only tile in play that could have fitted, because both ends are hard ends showing different numbers — scores two.
• A blocked hand goes to the team of the single player holding the fewest pips. If two opponents tie for fewest, the hand is a tie and nobody scores.
• The aim is to give the opponents six love: reach 6 while they have 0. As long as one side keeps winning, it keeps adding points. If the other side wins a hand, the score goes back to 0–0.

Tables vary at the margins — some play a deciding hand at 1–1, some replay a tied hand for extra points — but the shape holds: hands are worth one or two points, and pips only matter when a hand blocks.

How the target changes the way you play

Scoring is not bookkeeping; it changes good play.

In a pip-scored game, being caught with [6-6] and [6-5] at the end hands the other side 23 points, so shedding heavy tiles early is worth something. In Jamaican partner play the same two tiles cost nothing beyond the hand itself, so control of the ends matters more than weight. The guide to what separates a good player goes further into that trade-off.

The target matters too. In a game to 61, one 45-point hand nearly ends it, so a big early lead is close to decisive. In a game to 200 with all four hands counted, there is more room to come back, and a single bad hand matters less.

Five things to agree before the first tile

Most scoring disputes come from one of these:

1. Whose pips count? Losers only, or every hand including the winner's partner?
2. What does a blocked hand pay? Everything left, the difference, or the sum of differences — and who wins a tie?
3. Do you score during play? If someone is counting fives and someone else is not, you are playing two different games. The overview of the main domino games covers which games do.
4. Are there bonuses? Capicú, going out on a double, forcing a pass.
5. What is the target? 61, 100, 200, 250, 500, or six-love.

There is no governing body that settles any of this for a home table. The right answer is the one everyone agreed to before the first tile went down.