Can you pass in dominoes?
Passing in dominoes is never a free choice - it's a forced admission that neither open end fits your hand, and it hands your opponent real information.
When passing is allowed
You may never pass while holding a playable tile. In Block, a player with no legal move passes at once. In Draw, All Fives and the other drawing games, you must first dig through the boneyard until you pull a tile that fits; only with the boneyard empty can you pass. Two passes in a row block the hand.
Knocking on the table
Tradition asks a passing player to rap the table - knocking - so everyone knows the turn moved on. The habit survives from pub and domino-hall play, where a silent pass could be mistaken for slow thinking. Online, a pass is announced for you, but the old word lives on in the glossary and in every domino hall on earth.
What a pass tells your opponent
Every pass is a leak: it announces that you hold neither of the open-end suits at that moment. A sharp opponent files that away and steers the ends back to those numbers again and again. It works in reverse too - when the computer or your rival passes, remember which two numbers were open and lock them out of the hand. Passes decide blocked hands before they happen.
Related questions
What is the boneyard in dominoes?
The boneyard is the pile of face-down tiles left over after both players draw their hands - 14 tiles in a two-player double-six game. In Draw-family games you take from it when you can't play; in Block it sits untouched, which means those tiles never enter the hand at all.
What happens when dominoes is blocked?
A hand is blocked when neither player can add a tile and there's nothing left to draw. Both players then count the pips in their hands, and the lighter hand wins, scoring the difference - rounded to the nearest five in All Fives. Forcing a block with a light hand is a legitimate way to win.
What is the difference between Draw and Block dominoes?
The two classics differ by a single rule. In Draw, a player who can't play must take tiles from the boneyard until one fits. In Block, there's no drawing - you pass and the turn moves on. Draw is more forgiving; Block is tighter, blockier, and more about counting.