Dominoes 03-01 (reversed) pairs, and generic backsides. Dominoes Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with rectangular "domino" tiles. Each domino is a rectangular tile with a line dividing its face into two square "ends". Each end is marked with a number of spots (also called "pips", "nips", or "dobs") or is blank. The backs of the dominoes in a set are indistinguishable, either blank or having some common design. The domino gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a "deck" or "pack". The traditional Sino-European domino set consists of 28 dominoes, featuring all combinations of spot counts
Chinese dominoes Chinese dominoes Chinese dominoes are used in several tile-based games, namely, Tien Gow, Pai Gow, Tiu U and Kap Tai Shap. In Cantonese they are called "gwat pai" (), which literally means "bone tiles"; it is also the name of a northern Chinese game, where the rules are quite different from the southern Chinese version of Tien Gow. Ming author Xie Zhaozhe (1567–1624) records the legend of dominoes having been presented to Song Emperor Huizong in 1112. However the contemporary Li Qingzhao (1084 – ) made no mention of dominoes in her compendium of games. The oldest confirmed written mention