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Dominoes strategy

Keep track of which numbers each player couldn't play, and leave them ends they can't match. Get your doubles and heavy tiles down early, and keep a spread of numbers in your hand so you're never stuck. In All Fives, take the points when they're there, but look at what your tile leaves for the next player first.

By Emre Özen, updated October 8, 2026. The numbers here come from exact counts over the 28-tile double-six set and from thousands of games between copies of our computer player, under the pagat.com rules our dominoes game uses. New to the game? Start with how to play dominoes.

Remember who passed, and on what

When a player draws or passes, everyone learns something: they had no tile with either number showing at the ends. If the ends were 3 and 5 and your opponent drew, they held no 3s and no 5s. Unless they draw again later, that's still true. So when you can, leave them a 3 or a 5.

This is the habit our strong player leans on most. Every turn it works out the chance that the next player can't match the ends a move would leave, from the tiles it hasn't seen and the numbers that player has already passed on. We took that habit out and played the two versions against each other in 1,000 two-player games each. Without it, the player won only 132 of 1000 Draw games and 225 of 1000 Block games.

Counting helps too. Each number appears on exactly 7 tiles. If you can see all 7 tiles of a number, on the table and in your hand, nobody else can ever play on that number. An end showing it is yours alone. If you hold the last two 2s and the line ends in a 2, the other players are shut out of that end.

Doubles are a burden, so play them early

A double only matches one number, so it's harder to place than any other tile. We looked at every hand the leader played in our strong-against-strong games, sorted by how many doubles the leader was dealt. In Draw, the leader's share of hands won fell steadily with every extra double. In Block, the drop started at two doubles:

Doubles in the leader's 7 tiles	Draw: leader won the hand	Block: leader won the hand
0	66% of 936	66% of 2,175
1	62% of 2,983	70% of 7,268
2	56% of 3,509	63% of 8,260
3	47% of 1,718	55% of 4,083
4	42% of 389	47% of 824

That's a pattern in our games, not a law: a hand with many doubles also tends to cover fewer numbers. Still, the advice follows. When a double fits and nothing else is pressing, play it. In Draw and Block our strong player gives every double a small push for the same reason.

Don't count on dodging doubles in the deal, either. A 7-tile hand has no double only 9.8% of the time (exact count). In All Fives with two players, where you get 9 tiles, it's 4.3%.

Set from your longest suit

When you lead, pick a tile whose numbers you hold more of. Pagat's Draw Dominoes page gives the same tip: set your strongest suit, preferably with a double, so you'll have more options on later turns. The leader has a real edge. In our strong-against-strong games the leader won 57% of Draw hands and 63% of Block hands. A hand where you're one tile ahead from the start is worth protecting.

Keep a spread, and shed the heavy tiles

A hand of 4s and 6s with nothing else is one bad end away from a pass. Before you play, ask what you'll be able to play next turn. Our strong player prefers moves that keep several tiles playable on the ends it leaves, and that keep as many different numbers as possible in its hand.

Heavy tiles are the other worry. If a hand blocks, every pip left counts against you, and the double 6 alone is 12. Blocks happen a lot: 31% of our two-player Draw hands ended blocked, and 65% of Block hands, since 14 tiles sit out of play in every two-player Block hand. When the choice is close, play the heavier tile.

In the Draw game, the boneyard isn't free

Every tile you draw is more pips in your hand if the hand blocks. In our two-player Draw games a player had to draw on about 3.4 turns per hand, between both players. Leaving ends your opponent can't match makes them draw instead of you. And remember that the last two tiles never get drawn, so late in a hand a stuck player passes, and the line stays the way you left it.

All Fives: most points come during play

In our two-player All Fives games, 79% of all points were scored while the tiles went down, and the rest at the end of hands. So the counting matters more than going out first.

Lead a scorer. Exactly 5 tiles score when they're set first: 0-5, 1-4 and 2-3 for 5, the 4-6 and the double 5 for 10.
Look for the multiple of 5. Before you play, add up the ends your tile would leave. A double on an end counts both halves, and the spinner counts both halves until both of its sides are covered.
Don't set up the next player. If your move leaves the ends adding up to 7, the next player scores 10 with any tile that raises an end by 3. Our strong player weighs the points a move scores against the points the next player could likely score back, using the tiles it hasn't seen. Without that guard, it won 314 of 1000 games against the full version.
Mind the race at the end. When a player is down to one or two tiles, getting your heavy tiles down matters more, because going out scores the others' pips, rounded to the nearest 5.

Our two-player All Fives games took about 6.5 hands to reach 250, with about 67 points scored per hand between both players.

Our numbers

Two players	Draw	Block	All Fives
Strong against strong: games in the test	1,000	1,000	1,000
Hands per game	9.6	22.7	6.5
Hands that ended blocked	31%	65%	17%
Points scored per hand	17.3	7.6	67.2
Strong player against the easy one	won 929 of 1000	won 877 of 1000	won 996 of 1000
Simplest player against the strong one (see below)	won 67 of 1000	won 130 of 1000	won 157 of 1000

Block games take more hands because a blocked hand often scores little, and a tied block scores nothing. With more players the strong computer's edge shrinks, as you'd expect: against three easy players it won 133 of 300 four-player Draw games, 104 of 300 Block games and 192 of 300 All Fives games. A player with no edge would win about 1 in 4, or 75 of 300, so all three are still above that.

Method: full games between copies of our computer player, each with its own shuffle, seats swapped every other game, October 2026. The simplest player is our strong player with all but one habit switched off: in Draw and Block it plays its heaviest tile that fits, and in All Fives it takes the most points it can right now and looks no further. The script and its output are kept with our site's code. Computer players aren't people: real players bluff, misread and get lucky in ways ours don't, so treat these as one well-defined benchmark.

Practice with hints

The quickest way to pick up these habits is to play and check. In our dominoes game online, the Hint button marks the tile and the end the strong computer would choose and says why: a tile that blocks, a score in All Fives, a heavy tile to shed, or a move that keeps your options open. You get 6 hints a game. All the rules are on our dominoes rules page.

Sources

Our simulations and exact counts, October 2026, using the same code as our game (scripts/dominoes-sim.test.ts).
"Draw Dominoes", "Block Dominoes" and "All Fives", pagat.com (the rules the test games follow, and the tip about setting your strongest suit).