Sniff Dominoes Game Rules

• Sniff Dominoes is a member of fives family of games. This game is very similar to Fives Dominoes in which players try to match all scoring ends of the layout on their turn so that its total is a multiple of five which is scored immediately by the player. The game differs in scoring mechanism.
• The game can be played by 2 to 4 players. A player gets 7 tiles in 2-players game, 6 tiles in 3-players game, and 5 tiles in 4-players game.Remaining tiles are set aside forming a boneyard.
• First turn or lead is decided by a draw of lot (each player draws one tile and highest tile starts the round). In subsequent rounds, player who dominoed in the previous round, starts first. If game was blocked in the previous round then lead is again decided by draw of lot.
• Turn can be started with any tile and then subsequent tiles can be played at the open ends of the layout.
• In Sniff Dominoes game, the first double is used as a sniff (or spinner) and tiles can be placed on all four edges of it.
• If a player can not play, then he/she must draw from the boneyard until either he/she gets a playable tile or the boneyard has no tile left.
• If player draws a tile which can be immediately played, then it must be played.
• If player can not play a tile and can not draw from the boneyard either, then he/she simply passes the turn to next player.
• Everytime a player plays a tile, all open ends of the layout are totaled and if the total is a multiple of five (5, 10 etc.), then player immediately scores that total.
• Sniff/Spinner double is worth total of its pips count if 2 or less of its sides are covered. If 3 sides are covered then pips at the open end is counted. Non-sniff doubles are worth its pips count at the end of an arm in the layout, otherwise zero once played on both sides.
• The open ends of the arms on all four edges of the sniff double are counted in the score.
• The round ends if a player has played all of his/her tiles. Round can also end if the game is blocked which means no tile can be played by any of the players.
• Once a round finishes, players count total pips on remaining tiles in their hands and round it up or down to nearest multiple of 5 (For ex; 3 rounds up to 5, 2 rounds down to 0) which is substracted from their respective scores.
• The game is played for multiple rounds and the player with highest score above 200 wins.
• Reference Rules: pagat.com