How to Play All Fives Dominoes

All Fives — sometimes called Muggins or Five-Up — turns dominoes into a scoring race instead of a shedding race.

Play as normal, matching open ends. After each play, add up the pips on the open ends of the layout. If that total is a multiple of five, you score it. Ends showing 5 and 5 score 10; 6 and 4 score 10; 3 and 2 score 5.

Doubles count as their full value and are played crossways, so a double five sitting at an end contributes 10 to the count.

When a player goes out, the remaining pips in the other hands are totalled and rounded to the nearest five, and the winner scores that too. Games usually run to 150 or 250 points.

The strategy shift is big: you sometimes hold a tile that would empty your hand faster in order to set up a fifteen or twenty-point play instead. Greedy is good in All Fives.