ARTICLES - What is the Mexican Train Dominoes Game?

The domino game is a pretty addictive game. It has been known for centuries and many people have spent thousands of hours enjoying it. There are different dominoes games and one of the most widely spread is the Mexican train.
In this version of the game there is not so much counting and mathematics as in other types of dominoes but it still possesses some strategic elements which make the game a very appealing one. The name of the game comes from a real train known as the “Mexican train” which was a sort of public train on which anyone could get on.

The purpose of the game in order to win is to be the first player who releases all of their tiles. As with the other dominoes games the Mexican train is usually played until one of the players achieves certain number of points, i.e. 500. The numbers of tiles distributed to all the players at the beginning of the game depends on the overall number of tiles available.

Usually there are 7 to 15 tiles at a each player's hand. Any tiles that remain undistributed form the boneyard and there could be as much as 16 players with a big enough number of tiles sets.

At the beginning of the game the player holding the double tile with the largest number of dots starts the game by placing the first tile on the table afterwhich the other players place matching tiles to the first one, each one in his own turn. In the first round players need to place as many tiles as they can so the best strategy for them is to place as many tiles as possible. The players can start their own "trains" or place tiles in the Mexican train where the other players can also place tiles. The other trains are personal and only their owners can match tiles to them.

After the first draw everyone can place only one tile, if no player has a matching tile, the players would have to draw from the boneyard.
At this point, their train becomes "public" and any of the other player can match tiles to it.
In the next round, that player can either draw or place a tile in the Mexican train or his own, in which case the train will cease to be "public".

There are several strategies when you play dominoes. The most common one is to try to place your highest-valued tiles first. Thus if the current game ends and you still have cubes at your disposal then there is a chance that you'd get a lower number of points upon calculation of the dots on the tiles.

The Mexican train is not only one of many great games that can be played with dominoes, it has also become the national celebrities' pastime, Hollywood stars like Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher have introduced this variant of the classic game to their friends: Penelope Cruz, Sharon Stone and Gwen Stefani, who are now regular attendants at group games where they play with a double-12 set of dominoes, making it more intense than the regular version.