Red Dead Redemption 2 – How to Play Dominoes and Win

With all of Red Dead Redemption 2’s new open-world activities, it’s sometimes nice to sit a spell. You could get out a deck of cards, but why not a change of pace? Why not play Dominoes, a minigame new to the Red Dead Redemption series. With this overview, you’ll know all you need to play Dominoes and win in RDR2. Stack ‘em up and break ‘em down.

Red Dead Redemption 2 features four distinct flavors of dominos action. No matter what you choose, you have a hand of dominoes that you’ll want to whittle down to nothing by the end. How you place the dominoes and how many you’ll need to get on the board will depend on what variant you’re partaking in.

Red Dead Redemption 2 – How to Play Draw

In Draw, you follow what the name says by drawing seven random dominoes from the set of 28. Any extra dominoes after hands are dealt go to the boneyard. The player who possesses the highest double piece places their domino on the board and play continues from there around the table. A double is a domino with the same number on both sides. If no player has a double for whatever reason, the duty falls to the player with the highest value tile.

Placing the first tile down starts what’s called the line of play. Each player after the first expands it by matching one side of a tile they have with the end of the line and placing their tile down. In Draw, if you can’t place a tile down yourself, you have to grab one from the boneyard if there are any dominoes left there and pass play to the next player.

Once every player passes once, the round is considered blocked. Players count the numbers on their dominos (known as pips), and the winner is the person with the lowest total remaining in their hand. The winner’s total score comes from the combined totals of each other player at the table, and play continues until one player achieves 60 points.

The second type of game is called Block. This is very similar to Draw. In fact, the only difference is that there’s now no boneyard to draw from. Players just go around the table with their initial hand until there are no moves to make and then score their hands as described above.

Red Dead Redemption 2 – How to Play All Threes

In All Threes, players can score at the end of every turn. If the pips on the end of the chain of dominoes add up to a multiple of three then that player gets that number of points for their score. In this mode, the total score you’re looking for is 90, and play continues in a similar manner to Draw for each round.

At the end of a round, if you have the least remaining pips in your hand, you’re still scored based on the remainder of each opponent’s hand. Your points are rounded up or down to the nearest interval of three and then the round resets.

All Fives is the last variant of dominoes, and it’s similar to All Threes in many ways. You can score during the round by achieving a multiple of five with the edges of the line of play. Similarly, the end of the round score is rounded to the nearest interval of 5 before being added to your score. You win in this mode when your score reaches 100.

Red Dead Redemption 2 – Dominoes Strategy

No matter what style of dominoes you’re partaking in, you’ll want to pay attention to every move your opponents make. Since there are only six numbers at play, keeping up with when players pass or draw tells you a lot about what they have in their hand. With some luck, you should be able to create scenarios where opponents can’t make a move, putting you in scoring positions over and over.

Double tiles are always placed perpendicular to the other dominos. In All Threes and All Fives, once both sides of a double are utilized, play can continue in four directions instead of just two. This creates more scoring opportunities and another layer of strategy for playing dominoes.

When playing either All Threes or All Fives, you may not want to play every round with your best move. Holding back and scoring less could allow you to bluff other players around the table. It also could let you save dominoes for future opportunities where you could get more out of them score-wise.