Dominoes are cousins of playing cards and dice, and like their ancestors, they allow for a wide range of games that can challenge both the mind and the patience. Lily Hevesh has been playing domino since she was 9 years old, and her passion for the game has grown into a successful career as a professional Domino Artist. She creates spectacular domino setups for movies, TV shows, and even events such as Katy Perry’s album launch. Hevesh has a YouTube channel where she shares her creations, and her works have been featured in magazines and on television.
A domino is a rectangular tile with two matching ends that are identically patterned and marked. These markings are called pips, and they normally feature a number from one to six, but may also be blank or feature the value zero. Dominoes are usually twice as long as they are wide, which makes them easier to stack and re-stack after use. The sum of the pips on a single tile is its value.
Most sets of dominoes contain a variety of numbers and values, and are arranged into suits. Each suit contains all the numbers from one to six, and then there are doubles and triples that form a separate set. Each tile in a set also belongs to at least one of these suits, and can sometimes be part of both.
During the first few rounds of play, players take turns drawing and placing a domino on the table. The first player to place a domino that results in a chain of all the tiles bearing the same value is awarded the points for the entire chain of that number. Typically, the first player to score this amount wins. The number of rounds required to win varies between different games, and this is agreed upon by the players prior to the start of gameplay.
The next player then draws from the boneyard, and places a domino onto the table that either matches the value of the previous domino or adds to it. This process continues until each player has a hand that has the same value as the final result of a chain, or is unable to add to the existing chains due to space constraints or other limitations.
In a more general sense, the term domino can be used to refer to any situation in which one small trigger causes a series of events to continue until the desired result is achieved. This is often referred to as the Domino Effect, and is often used to describe political situations in which one country’s actions have the potential to cause other countries to follow suit. The Domino Effect is sometimes compared to the laws of gravity, in that it is virtually impossible to stop a series of events once they have started. This is especially true if the events are closely linked, and this can be seen in a number of real-life examples such as the physics demonstration of how a small object can knock over larger ones.