Four players, two teams, twenty-eight tiles, and a table that never goes quiet. That's Latin dominoes. Most people learn it by watching their elders play, and it travelled with families to every city they moved to.
Play against the AI →You'll find it in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, the Dominican Republic and across the diaspora. Every table has its own habits and its own slang. The core of the game is close enough from place to place that two strangers can sit down together and just play.
Nearly all the strategy grows out of those four rules. Count the tiles and pay attention to what each pass gives away. Above all, don't leave your partner stranded. For the full detail on who starts, how a hand is won and how it scores, read how to play Latin dominoes.
Before the shuffle, someone always asks what you're playing to. The usual answer is 200 points. Some tables play to 100 or 150 for a quick game, and some go all the way to 500 when nobody has anywhere to be.
The other question is whether you play with the patio bonuses. At some tables a capicúa or a pase corrido earns extra points. Others keep it plain and only count the hand. Neither one is wrong. It's a house custom, so settle it before the first tile goes down.
On La Mesa you pick your rules before the game starts. Patio plays with the patio bonuses, capicúa and pase corrido included. Regla General leaves the bonuses out and scores the hand straight. You also set the target: 100, 150, 200 or 500.
Practice against the AI at your own pace, or play online against real people. Ranked games are played to 200.
The game's vocabulary is Spanish, and you'll hear it at any table. Words like tranque, data and zapato are explained in our Latin domino glossary (Spanish).