What is the goal of dominoes?
Dominoes has two goals stacked on top of each other: win the hand in front of you, and win the race to the match target across hands.
Empty your hand
The first goal never changes: get rid of your tiles. Playing your last tile - going out, or dominoing - ends the hand immediately and usually earns you the pips your opponent is still holding. In Draw and Block, that is essentially the whole game: shed tiles efficiently and don't get stranded with a heavy hand.
Reach the target score
The scoring games add a running race. All Fives plays to 100, 150 or 250 points earned by making the open ends total a multiple of five. All Threes does the same with threes, to 100. Fives and Threes counts both and races to 61, while Bergen plays to just 15. In these games a hand can be worth winning even if you don't go out first, as long as you out-score your opponent along the way.
Why the goal shapes strategy
Knowing what you're playing for changes every decision. In a shedding game you dump heavy tiles early and keep flexible suits. In a scoring game you sometimes hold a heavy tile because it makes the count land on a multiple of five - see how All Fives scoring works. The best players read both goals at once.
Related questions
How do you play dominoes?
In a two-player game, each player draws 7 tiles from a shuffled double-six set of 28, and the rest form the face-down boneyard. Players take turns adding a tile whose end matches an open end of the line. Empty your hand to win the hand, or hold the fewest pips if play blocks.
How do you score in All Fives?
You score during play whenever the open ends of the layout add up to a multiple of five - ends of 3 and 2 score 5, a 6-6 double plus a 3 scores 15. When a hand ends, the winner also adds the opponent's leftover pips, rounded to the nearest five. First to the match target wins.
Why do you count pips in dominoes?
Pips - the dots on each tile - decide everything the last tile doesn't. Blocked hands go to the player holding fewer pips, hand winners score the loser's leftover pips, and tracking which pips have been played tells you exactly what remains unseen. Counting them is the core skill of the game.