Dominoes House Rules: 150 or 200? All Fives, Muggins, Sniff, and Five-Up

There's a specific kind of argument that happens about four plays into a dominoes game between people who learned at different tables. Somebody dominoes and starts counting the other side's pips exactly. Somebody else says round it. A third person wants to know why the 3-3 is sitting crossways and whether they can play off the top of it. Everybody is certain. Nobody has a book.

That's because dominoes never had one book. The scoring game we call Fives has been in print since the 1860s, but it came up through kitchens, barbershops and back porches, and every table that taught it added a rule or dropped one. What follows is the map: what varies, what the common answers are, and how to settle it in thirty seconds. If you're brand new to the scoring game, start with How to Play Fives Dominoes and come back.

Where the family comes from

The scoring idea, points whenever the open ends add up to a multiple of five, shows up in print in 1863 under the name Fives or All Fives, and the game called Muggins appears in the 1864 edition of The American Hoyle. Those early versions look a little different from what's on most tables today. The 1863 game scored one point for every five and was pegged on a cribbage board, and the earliest descriptions have no spinner at all. The four-way double, the rounded go-out, the race to a round number: those came from players, not publishers. (Sources: pagat.com's All Fives page and the Wikipedia entry for Muggins, if you want to read the old text yourself.)

So when your uncle says "that's not how you play," he's half right. It's not how he plays. Here's the whole spread.

What actually varies

Nine rules move from table to table. This is the version we play, the one Cookout Dominoes runs, next to the versions you'll meet elsewhere.

Read that table once and most dominoes arguments dissolve. Nobody's cheating. They're playing a neighbor's game.

Our house, spelled out

For the record, here is the game as most Black American tables play it and as the app enforces it, so if you and a cousin disagree, the phone is the tiebreaker:

• First to 150. Three houses on the score sheet, if you keep it on paper.
• Seven bones each from a double-six set, fourteen in the boneyard. Nine each if the table wants a longer hand.
• Highest double opens the first hand only. After that, the hand's winner opens with whatever they like. That open is worth more than people think; we measured it in The Best Opening Domino, by the Numbers.
• The first double is the spinner. Later doubles sit crossways and count both halves on an end, but you can't build off their tops and bottoms. Details in The Spinner in Dominoes.
• Score the whole count when the open ends hit a multiple of 5. A 15 is 15, not 3.
• Round to 5 on a domino and on a block. Thirteen pips in your opponent's hand pays 15. A blocked hand with a 13-pip gap pays 15 to the lighter side.
• Draw until you can play. Knock only when the yard is dry.

The names, sorted out

People throw four or five names at what is basically one idea. Here's how they line up, with the hedge that regional usage is loose and your table may use them differently.

Fives, All Fives

The same game. Score when the open ends total a multiple of five. In the modern version the first double is the spinner. This is the trunk of the tree and it's what this whole site is about.

Muggins

In the strict rulebook sense, the version without a spinner: doubles count both halves on an end but nobody builds off their sides. The name is older than "All Fives" at a lot of tables, and plenty of people say Muggins when they mean Fives. If someone at a new table says they play Muggins, ask one question: "Can I play off the top of the first double?" The answer tells you which game you're in.

Sniff

Fives with the first double, "the sniff," as the spinner, and its own wrinkles about how that double is placed and when its ends open. Close enough to our game that you'll adjust in a hand.

Five-Up

The West Coast cousin. Every double is a spinner, so the board branches off every double and the count can climb fast. Same scoring unit, very different feel. If you learned in California, this may be what you think of as regular dominoes. It isn't wrong. It's a different room.

Straight dominoes, block

No count at all. Only the domino and the blocked hand score. It's the game most rulebooks describe first and the game most of us learned to skip past by age ten.

Settle it before the wash: six questions

Sitting at somebody else's table for the first time? Ask these six before the bones get turned over. It takes thirty seconds, and it means the first disagreement happens now, when nobody has money on the board.

1. "What's game?" 150, 200, or 250. If somebody says "the usual," ask again.
2. "How many bones?" Seven or nine head-to-head. Seven or five with four hands.
3. "Who opens, and who opens after that?" Highest double first hand, then the winner? Or highest double every hand?
4. "Just the first double, or every double?" This is the spinner question, and it's the one that changes the board the most.
5. "Round it or count it?" On the domino and on the block. Rounded to 5 or exact pips.
6. "Draw till I play, or draw one and knock?" Plus the follow-up: does the yard ever run dry on purpose, or do the last two stay down?

Write the answers on the top of the score sheet if you have to. The table that agrees before the wash is the table that's still friends after the game.

Why 150 anyway?

Honest answer: nobody wrote down why. What we can say is that 150 fits the way the game is actually played. On paper, a house is 50 points, so 150 is three clean houses: easy to read across a table, easy to see how far behind you are. With two good players putting up about 50 points a hand between them, 150 lands at five or six hands, which is a game you can finish before the food comes out and long enough that one hot hand doesn't decide it. Two hundred is one more house and one more hand. Neither is more correct. One of them is ours.