Domino is a game of skill and chance that can be played on either the table or a board. The pieces are a little like playing cards or dice but have a much more complex structure. They are normally twice as long as they are wide and have a line down the center that divides them visually into two squares each bearing an arrangement of spots, or pips, similar to those on a die. A domino can be blank or ascribed to any number of values, but the more pips it has, the higher its value.
A player scores points by laying a domino such that its exposed ends match (i.e. one’s touch ones, two’s touch twos and so on). This can be done in a straight line or a chain or in an “L” shape, with the exposed ends counting as a multiple of five. The first player to reach this point wins the hand.
Besides the classic games of domino, there are many other uses for the dominoes, including artistic creations such as curved lines or grids that form pictures when they fall and 3-D structures such as towers or pyramids. The creative use of dominoes is sometimes referred to as domino art or domino sculpture.
Another common use is as a form of social entertainment, in which players take turns playing off each other. The players take turns choosing a domino to play, positioning it so that its exposed end touches the end of another domino that is already in place. In turn, the other player may then choose a domino to play on that side of the layout, and so on. The player who plays a domino that creates a domino chain that leads to the other players winning the hand scores the highest total of points.
The term domino effect has also been used as a metaphor to mean a series of events that cause other events, often with surprising or unforeseen results, as in “the domino effect of global financial crises” or the physical domino effect where a series of carefully set up dominoes will all fall with the simple nudge of one. This latter domino effect is exploited in mechanical devices such as Rube Goldberg machines.
A popular example of the domino effect in practice is the pizza delivery company Domino’s. In order to improve service, the company reorganized its business model and experimented with new technologies such as delivering pizza by drone and even self-driving cars. These innovations are not simply for show, but are intended to address the primary complaint customers had about the company. It is this core business that will determine whether or not Domino’s can recover from its financial crisis and continue to thrive in the future. To succeed, Domino’s must refocus its strategy and rebuild its brand. As a result, its CEO has taken to traveling the country and meeting with employees to hear their concerns directly.