Domino ArtDomino Art
In a game of domino, each player begins with a double-six set and shuffles the tiles. The 28 pieces then form a boneyard or stock. Each player draws seven tiles from the stock and places them on the table, forming a line of play. The players then place a tile, called a “stake,” on one end of the line of play. The open end of the stake must touch another piece, usually a double, to begin play. After a player has placed a stake, the players then continue to lay dominoes until one player cannot play any more. This ends the hand and play passes to the other player. In some games, a player may chip out (place a single tile so that no other player can play it) before the score reaches zero, or he or she can choose to play for only a certain number of points.
Domino art is more than just a way to decorate your coffee table — it’s a skill that requires planning, calculation, and patience. Professional domino artist Hevesh, who has more than 2 million YouTube subscribers, creates elaborate displays for movies and TV shows and has even helped set a Guinness World Record for the most dominoes toppled in a circular arrangement: 76,017. Hevesh starts each project by thinking of a theme or idea that she wants to convey with the arrangement. Then she brainstorms images or words to use and calculates how many pieces she’ll need to achieve the desired effect.
She then draws out her plan for how the track will be laid out. Her designs can be as simple or elaborate as she likes, and can include straight lines, curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, stacked walls, or 3D structures such as towers and pyramids. Often, Hevesh will include arrows to show how the dominoes should fall.
In the United States, dominoes are commonly played on a standard, rectangular tile made of clay or plastic that measures 2 by 11 inches (5 by 28 centimeters). The identifying feature of a domino is an arrangement of spots on one face, similar to those on a die. The other face is blank or identically patterned. Most domino sets contain the numbers 0 through 9, though larger ones are sometimes available.
In most domino games, a player scores by counting the pips on the losing players’ remaining tiles at the end of the hand or game. This can be done with either the total of all pips or by counting only one side of each double (i.e., 4-4 counts as only four points). Other rules of scoring vary from game to game. For example, some games require players to count only the pips on all doubles and exclude the center of a triple.