Traditional Table Games: Dominoes, Dice and Tile Play

Not every table game uses cards. Dominoes, tiles and dice have their own ranking systems, their own rhythms and their own places in the casino.

Dominoes and their ranking

Chinese dominoes differ from the Western set: instead of blank-to-six, they pair the numbers one to six in every combination, producing 21 tiles rather than 28. Tiles are divided into civil, military and mixed categories, and each tile has a specific rank rather than a simple pip count.

This ranking system is the foundation of Pai Gow, where four tiles are split into two pairs. A tile can be strong in one combination and weak in another, which is where the game's depth comes from.

Dice in the casino

Dice appear in three distinct roles on a casino floor. As the primary randomiser in Sic Bo and Craps. As a bonus trigger in board games and bonus wheels. And as a betting object in arcade games such as Fish-Prawn-Crab.

Craps deserves a special mention: no other game offers such a wide spread of house edges, from around 1.4% on the pass line with full odds down to double digits on the proposition bets. It is also one of the loudest games in the building.

Traditional tile and board games

Beyond mahjong and dominoes there is a long family of Asian tile games – including variants played with three-tile hands, twelve-tile sets and mixed tile-and-card formats. Many of them run on the same furniture as card tables and share the same four-seat structure.

In online lobbies these games appear in the table-games and arcade sections rather than the live section, since they rarely justify a studio production.

Frequently asked questions