Blind Hughie Domino Rules

How To Play Blind Hughie Dominoes

Number Of Players: 2 to 4
Domino Set Required: Double-Six

Blind Hughie is also known as "Blind Dominoes", "Secret Dominoes", "Blind-Man Block, and "Billiton". It uses the same basic gameplay as Block Dominoes, but it is completely a game of chance. Players do not know what tiles are in their hand, hence the name. Blind Hughie is a favorite among children for its simple play.

Setup

After shuffling the dominoes, each player draws a single tile to determine who goes first; the lead goes to the heaviest tile (this is known as "drawing lots". These tiles are then returned to the stock and reshuffled.

Each of the player then draws tiles to make up their hand. In subsequent hands, the first player rotates to the left. The number of tiles drawn depends on the number of players:

2 players draw 14 tiles each
3 players draw 9 tiles each (with the remaining tile automatically placed to start the game)
4 players draw 7 tiles each

Title are drawn and arranged out before the player, face-down and edge-to-edge, to form a long row or column. The players must decide among themselves how to arrange their tiles, and in what order to play them. For example, they may decide to create a long row, played left-to-right. In this case, the left-most tile is the "first" domino, and the right-most tile is the "last" domino.

The tiles must remain face-down until played - don't peek!

Gameplay

The first player turns over his first domino and places it in the center of the table. He then turns over his second tile, and plays it if he can. He continues to turn them over as long as he can make a play. As soon as he encounters a tile he can't play, he turns it back over and moves it to the end of this row. If the tile happens to be a double, he leaves it face-up.

The turn passes to the next player, who plays in exactly the same manner, turning over his tiles in order, playing as long as he can, and putting an unusable tile into the last position.

Ending A Game

A game ends either when a player plays all his tiles, or when a game is blocked (no more plays are possible). If the game is blocked, then the winner is the player having the fewest dots (or the "lightest hand").

Variations

A player may choose to play one of his exposed doubles, rather than the first tile in his row.
Play only one domino per turn, rather than allowing a player to continue as long as he's able.
The first double is a spinner (can be played on all four edges).
Rather than turning over tiles in order, allow the players to select tiles of their choosing. If played in this manner, gameplay becomes a memory exercise, and less a game of chance, since you'll be able to make optimal plays if you can only remember what tiles are in which location in your hand.
Pagat.com describes a version of the game with fewer tiles initially drawn.