Domino is a game in which players place domino pieces end to end on a surface, such as an outdoor table. The players then score points by laying matching dominoes (the exposed ends must match: one’s touch one’s, two’s touch two’s, etc.). The player with the most points after a set number of rounds wins. Domino can be played alone or with a partner and many games exist.
Lily Hevesh began playing with dominoes when she was 9 years old, when her grandparents gave her a classic 28-pack of the little plastic tiles. She loved setting them up in straight or curved lines and then flicking the first one to watch it fall, causing the rest to follow suit in a cascade of rhythmic action. Today, Hevesh, who has more than 2 million YouTube subscribers under the name Hevesh5, is a professional domino artist, creating intricate designs for films, TV shows, and events. And while she’s worked on setups involving up to 300,000 dominoes, it’s still the same basic principles that govern how her work unfolds.
When Hevesh designs her projects, she starts by planning out the track — which is usually drawn on paper or cardboard — before she sets out any of the actual pieces. She’s looking for patterns, arcs, grids that form pictures, and even 3D structures like towers or pyramids. But there’s also a certain amount of science behind her creations. “Gravity is the main thing that makes my projects possible,” she explains in a video. “When you knock over a domino, it’s pulled down toward Earth by gravity, which is what causes the rest to fall.”
She then uses the directional arrows on the design to determine which way to position the actual dominoes. This helps her plan out the layout and make sure that all the pieces are evenly spaced and lined up correctly. Depending on the track, she may also need to account for the movement of air or wind, which can influence how the dominoes fall.
Once the track is in place, she begins to play tiles — dominoes with a certain number of dots on each half of their face — in order to fill it out. Generally, each tile belongs to a suit of some kind. A double domino has a different number of dots on each of its ends and can belong to one or two suits. For example, a 6-6 domino can either belong to the three-suit system or the five-suit system.
In addition to blocking and scoring, some domino games involve adding or subtracting pips to or from the exposed ends of other pieces. These types of games often involve a large amount of mental calculation, and are popular in areas that prohibit gambling or where card-playing is forbidden.
Most domino games stop when a single player is unable to continue, although some require that all players “chip out” before this occurs. The winner is the player with the most remaining pips in total after all of the opposing players have chipped out.