During the mid-18th century, dominoes became popular in Italy and France. French prisoners of war brought them to England. They were also introduced in southern Germany and Austria.

Dominoes are rectangular, black and white pieces used in a variety of games. They are made of wood or plastic. The pieces are usually twice as long as they are wide. A domino’s shape is also divided into two squares with a line in the middle. Each domino’s end is marked with its number of spots. They can be lined up in long rows or stacked on end. They are also referred to as tickets or bones.

Dominoes can be played with any number of people. The objective of the game is to draw a certain number of pieces from a draw pile and line them up in a row, with the goal of blocking the opponent’s hand. The person who has the least number of pips wins the game. In some domino games, the score is determined by counting the number of pips in a player’s hand that has been removed from the game.

The most common domino games are blocking games. The object is to block the opponent’s hand and empty your hand. There are also scoring games and layout games. These games are played with the double-six domino set. In the Concentration variant, each domino in the draw pile must have at least 12 pips. The player who is not blocked draws the lead piece, which has the highest total pip count.

In China, dominoes were known during the 17th century. They were used in traditional Chinese games like Pai Gow and Che Deng. They are more similar to Western card games than Chinese games. In China, players don’t match the numbers of their dominoes to the faces of the dice. However, Chinese dominoes are marked with Chinese suit designations, and there are no blank faces in Chinese dominoes.

In European-style dominoes, the tiles are traditionally made of dark hardwood such as ebony, or ivory. Traditionally, they were also made from silver lip ocean pearl oyster shell. Other types of dominoes are made of bone.

The Western style of dominoes first appeared in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. The Western dominoes are mostly used for positional games, such as 5s and 3s. They are also used in some block and draw games. Most domino sets have at least twenty-eight tiles. Some large domino sets use Arabic numerals instead of pips.

The dominoes are also called pieces, cards, bones, and men. The word domino is derived from the French word dominus, which means masquerade mask. It is thought to have been named because of the black undersurface.

The game of domino was originally a fad in France, and it spread to Austria and Germany during the mid-18th century. A variant of the game was also published in the United States in the 1860s. These games are also known as Hector’s Rules.