Fives Dominoes Strategy: 12 Tips That Actually Win Hands

Fives is a counting game wearing a party's clothes. The trash talk is real and the slam is real, but underneath it every hand is decided by a handful of decisions that reward the player who's doing arithmetic while the other one is doing theater. Here are twelve of those decisions, ordered by how much they matter.

Where we cite numbers, they come from the Cookout Dominoes engine, the same code the app and the ranked server run. We simulated more than 100,000 hands between two strong players, first to 150, seven bones each. The method and the full tables are in The Best Opening Domino, by the Numbers. If you're new to the rules, start with How to Play Fives Dominoes and come back.

1. Count before you play, every single time

This is the whole game, so it goes first. Every play in Fives changes exactly one open end. You cover a number and expose a new one. So the new total is just:

Say the ends show 3 and 6. That's 9. You're holding a 6-4, a 3-2, and a 3-4. Run them:

• 6-4 on the 6: 9 − 6 + 4 = 7. Nothing.
• 3-2 on the 3: 9 − 3 + 2 = 8. Nothing.
• 3-4 on the 3: 9 − 3 + 4 = 10. Dime.

Three subtractions, no board-scanning. Once this is automatic you'll see the scoring play before your hand is off the table. Players who don't count don't miss dimes because they're unlucky. They miss them because they never looked. The full arithmetic with spinner cases is in Dominoes Scoring: Counting the Open Ends.

2. Know the board's answer

After you play, ask the only question that matters: what scores for them now? For any pair of ends, there's a short list of bones that would make the total land on a five. Those bones are the board's answers. If you hold them, or you've watched them get played, the board is safe. If you don't know where they are, you're gambling.

Take ends 4 and 6, a total of 10. What can they do to it? Play on the 4 and expose a number that plus 6 hits a multiple of 5: they'd need a 4, but the 4-4 is a double and exposes 8, making 14. Nothing. Play on the 6 and expose a number that plus 4 hits five: a 1. The 6-1 pays a nick. That's the board's entire answer list. If you're holding the 6-1, that board is a locked door.

Now try ends 5 and 5. A blank on either side leaves 0 + 5 for a nick, and the 5-5 played on an end exposes 10 for 15 total: trees for them. That board has two answers and one of them is loud. Don't leave it unless you know where the 5-5 and the blanks are. Tip 6 is how you know.

3. All money ain't good money

The saying every grown folks' table repeats, and the reason is Tip 2. A nick that leaves a dime open is a five-point play that costs ten. You didn't score five. You paid five.

Here's the shape of it. The ends show 1 and 3, a total of 4. You're holding the 3-4 and the 1-1, and both score a nick:

Two plays, same score, and one of them gives back double what it took while the other gives back nothing. When you have a choice between scoring plays, the tiebreaker isn't the points. It's the board you leave behind.

4. Open smart: the heaviest bone is a myth

You only choose your opener when you won the last hand. Make it count. The folk rule says lead your heaviest bone to get the pips out of your hand. We tested it. On identical dealt hands, leading the heaviest bone netted +2.0 points per hand. Leading the highest double netted +5.5 and won the most hands outright (66.5%). Leading the bone that scored the most on the open netted +5.2. The app's Shark, which searches the whole hand before it leads, netted +6.6. Heaviest-first was the worst deliberate policy on the list, barely ahead of picking at random.

Bone by bone, three openers stand clear of the rest: the 5-5 (+9.6 net per hand), the 6-4 (+9.0), and the 3-2 (+6.7). The 5-5 and 6-4 pay a dime before your opponent has touched a bone. The 3-2 pays a nick and leaves a board with almost no answers. At the other end, the 6-3, 4-2, and 4-3 lost between five and six points a hand as openers. Heavy, but they pay nothing and they hand the other side an easy board.

5. Shed doubles early

A double matches one number. Everything else in your hand matches two. So the longer a hand goes, the more likely that number has been cut off the board and your double is a rock in your pocket. Getting caught with the 6-6 when the other side dominoes is 12 pips, which rounds to 10 for them before you count anything else you were holding.

The simulation put a number on this. When the opener was a double, the opening player went out first in 57 to 59 percent of hands. When it was a non-double, about 50 percent. That's the shedding effect: a double out of your hand on play one is a double that can never strand you on play twelve. It's also why the first double you play becomes the spinner, and the spinner is the one bone that pays you for placing it in the middle of the board. Full treatment in The Spinner in Dominoes.

6. Count the suits, not the bones

There are seven bones carrying each number in a double-six set. Seven sixes, seven fives, seven blanks. That's the only fact you need to memorize, and it turns the whole board into a running tally. Don't try to remember which bones are out. Remember how many sixes are out. If five sixes are on the board and you're holding a sixth, there is exactly one six left in the world, and it's either in their hand or the boneyard.

That count answers Tip 2 for you. The board's answer is the 6-1? You know how many sixes are gone and how many ones. Most of the time the arithmetic tells you the 6-1 is already played, or that you're holding it. The rest of the time you know you're gambling, which is also worth knowing. We wrote the whole method up in How to Count Dominoes.

7. Control the spinner's arms

Once both long sides of the spinner have been played on, its top and bottom open up. That takes the board from two ends to three, then four. More ends means bigger totals, and bigger totals means bigger scores for whoever hits them. The player who opens an arm isn't just making a play. They're changing what the board can pay.

So open an arm when the count is yours. If the two ends read 3 and 2, a total of 5, and the spinner is the 5-5, playing any bone with a 5 on it off the top adds a third number to the sum. Do it when that third number lands you on a five: the 5-0 off the top makes 3 + 2 + 0, a nick, and the board is now yours to shape. Don't do it when it hands the other side a board with more answers than you can track. A three-ended board with a 6-6 on one arm is a 12 sitting in every total, and that's how twenties happen.

8. Light hand, lock it. Heavy hand, run.

About one hand in six ends blocked: 17.2 percent in the simulation. When the boneyard is empty and nobody can play, the lighter hand wins the difference, rounded to five. So the pip count in your hand is a strategy, not a scoreline.

Holding 8 pips against a hand you've counted at 20-something? Stop chasing the count and start cutting: steer both ends onto numbers they can't play. Holding the 6-6 and the 6-5 with the sixes still live? Play them now, take whatever the board gives, and get out before it locks. The rules and the tactics are in Blocked Dominoes: Who Wins and How It's Scored.

9. The draw is information

Hands average about four and a half draws. Every one of them tells you something. When your opponent goes to the boneyard with the ends showing 6 and 2, you have just learned that nothing in their hand carried a six or a two at that moment. Every unseen six and two was in the boneyard, or is the bone they just pulled. That's two whole suits you can play toward with confidence for the next several turns.

Your own draws work the same way in reverse. A bone you pull is a bone they can't have. Painful, but it sharpens the count. Fold every draw into your suit tally before you decide what to play.

10. Plan the exit with three bones left

Most players play their last three bones the same way they played the first three: whatever scores now. That's how you end up holding one bone that matches nothing while the other side dominoes on you. With three left, stop and sequence them. Which bone is going to be your last one, and does it match a number that will still be on the board when you get there? Can you make the last play score too? A domino that lands on a dime is a dime plus their leftover pips. A domino that lands on nothing is just their leftover pips.

Tip 6 makes this possible. Once the boneyard is empty, you can name their hand exactly: 28 bones, minus the board, minus yours. At that point the last three plays aren't a guess. They're a puzzle with a right answer.

11. Go-out math: make them hold the big six

The domino bonus rounds their leftover pips to the nearest five. That rounding has edges you can play. Three pips left in their hand pays you 5. Two pips pays nothing. Thirteen pays 15. So when you're about to go out and you have a choice of which bone to strand them with, the arithmetic isn't "more is better." It's "which side of the round does it land on?" Stranding them with a 6-6 (12 pips, pays 10) is worse for you than stranding them with a 6-6 and a 1-0 (13 pips, pays 15). Cut the suit that would let them dump the heavy bone, and leave them the one that lets go of the light one.

Only 5 percent of simulated games ended with the loser under 50, and a quarter of them ended with the loser at 130 or better. Games are close. A hand's rounding is often the game.

12. Tempo and tilt

The talk is part of the game and you should enjoy it. But the count doesn't hear it. The most common way strong players lose to weaker ones is speed: they slam a nick because the table is loud and the moment feels right, and they leave a dime on the board they'd have seen in two more seconds. Slow down when the ends change. Nobody at a real table will begrudge you a breath before a play, and the ones who try to rush you are telling you something.

Dominoes is more skill than it looks. In our simulated games to 150, the player who won the first hand won the game only 51.3 percent of the time. Good cards don't carry a game. Good play does.

The 30-second check before you play

1. Total the ends. Old total, minus what you cover, plus what you expose. Do it for every legal bone.
2. Find the answers. For the board each play leaves, what scores for them? Do you hold it? Is it out?
3. Weigh the money. A smaller score that leaves a dead board beats a bigger one that leaves a dime.
4. Check your weight. Light hand and the yard is thin? Cut, don't chase. Heavy? Run.
5. Count the exit. Three bones left: which one is last, and does it match anything that will still be there?

Then play the bone, and talk as much as you like.

Questions people ask

What is the best strategy for dominoes?

In Fives, count before every play and know what the board pays your opponent next. Score when you can, but never leave a bigger score open than the one you took. Open with a bone that pays (5-5, 6-4, 3-2), shed your doubles early, count the suits, and lock the board when your hand is light.

Should you play doubles first in dominoes?

Early, yes. Doubles are hard to play late because they only match one number, and a double sitting in your hand when the other side goes out is expensive. In our simulations a hand that opened with a double went out 57 to 59 percent of the time, against about 50 percent for non-double openers.

How do you win at All Fives?

Points come from three places: the count after your plays, the domino bonus, and blocked hands. Winners take the count when it's safe, plan their last three bones so they go out clean, and lock the board when they're holding light. Most hands are decided by who gave away fewer points, not who took more.

What is the best domino to start with?

When the open is your choice, the 5-5. It scores 10 on its own, and it netted +9.6 points per hand in our simulation, ahead of the 6-4 (+9.0) and the 3-2 (+6.7). The worst leads were the 6-3, 4-2, and 4-3. Leading your heaviest bone, the old folk rule, was the weakest deliberate policy we tested.

Is dominoes luck or skill?

Both, in a ratio that shifts with how well you count. The deal is luck. What you do with it is arithmetic and memory. In a simulated game to 150, the player who won the first hand won the game only 51 percent of the time, which tells you a good hand doesn't carry a game. Good play does.

How do you block someone in dominoes?

Make the open ends show numbers they can't play. That means counting: if all seven bones of a suit are on the board or in your hand, an end showing that number is dead to them. Hold the last bone of a suit, steer both ends onto numbers they're out of, and let them draw until the boneyard is empty. With a lighter hand than theirs, the block pays you the difference.