Dominoes and Variations of

Dominoes evokes the image of an interconnected system, the elements of which aid and determine one another. The image was given shape by an idle variation of the game of Dominoes in which rectangular tile pieces are put on edge in long lines, then the first tile is toppled causing the rest in line to fall in a precise and predictive manner. The outstanding legacy of this image in the 20th century, besides a common analogy referred to as the domino effect (often quoted in the context of global warming, for instance), meaning a chain of small events that cause similar events leading to catastrophes, is the so-called domino theory. A geopolitical theory [Page 181]that emerged in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, from the analogy first proposed by President Eisenhower in 1954 to justify military intervention in Vietnam (and reiterated in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan to justify intervention in Nicaragua), the domino theory states that if one country comes under Communist control, the neighboring countries will also come under Communist control. Needless to say, the fall of Communist regimes in eastern Europe after 1989 illustrated a reverse of the pattern. These theoretical applications do have a connection to the games of strategy encompassed by Dominoes in their different variations and demonstrate that sometimes games have the role to synthesize real-life situations on a larger scale. Granted, the correlation of matching numbers is replaced by physical implications, but this goes to show how a certain tradition (in this case Asian) is usually translated into the Western canon.

The logical effect wanted by the individual or collective games played with Dominoes (the deck or pack of a domino set) is matching one end of a piece (also called bone, card, tile, ticket, stone, or spinner) to another piece identically or reciprocally numbered. The standard set comprises 28 pieces, marked from double six (six-six) to double zero (0–0). The pieces having a common end constitute a suit, and the quality of the pieces is expressed in weight: the bone with most dots is the heavier. The game is known throughout the world in different variations.

In China Dominoes are known as early as the 12th century, but the dotted cards of the Chinese had no blank faces, as do the ones familiar to contemporary players. On the European continent, dominoes first appear in the middle of the 18th century in Italy and then in France. It is difficult to determine what the connection is between the modern game of Dominoes and these initial manifestations or whether the Chinese model was “borrowed” by Italians. Keeping in mind that the missionary activity of the Catholic Church to China developed in the 17th century and was very intense in the first half of the 18th century, as well as the visits of secular Europeans to the Asian continent, it is not improbable that this is the channel through which the Domino game entered Europe. The game is not characteristic of European types of card-games; based on principles of numerology and mathematics, the Domino game is an Asian heritage, inspired by the Indian cubic dice. The principles of this “matching” game have generated, as shown above, deterministic clichés.

...