Play Dominoes Like a Champion

Book excerpt: Improve your game so you can run your mouth Play Dominoes Like a Champion is the first comprehensive strategy about the Fives game of dominoes from 3-time World Domino Champion Travis Newsome and Trevor Born. Through a mix of principles, checklists, and turn-by-turn breakdowns, this book brings you inside the mind of an elite player to help you win more, have more fun, and talk better trash. About the book For those who play seriously, no game compares to dominoes. It's easy to learn but difficult to master. Its rules are simple and elegant but its complexity runs deep. It lets you nerd out but it makes you feel cool. It rewards logic and creativity. When you watch people who love dominoes playing, you see people who are at once having a great time - laughing, joking, smiling - and deadly serious, like nothing matters more in the whole world than the hand at play. Unfortunately, it's hard to just figure out the finer points of the game by playing other beginners. If you ask a good domino player how they learned, almost all of them credit a mentor of some kind, be it a grandparent or neighbor. This book is the first attempt to capture and share how advanced players think about the game so players who want to level up at least have a road map to follow. Through a mix of principles, checklists, and turn-by-turn breakdowns, this book will bring you inside the mind of an elite player to help you win more, have more fun, and talk better trash. Travis Newsome is a 3-time world champion dominoes player who has spent more than 40 years as a domino educator, organizer, and competitor. Travis spent most of his career in Kansas City and currently lives in Chicago. Trevor Born is a writer, musician, and halfway decent dominoes player in Minneapolis. He's a co-founder of the Six Dot Domino Club. Cover art by Paul Novak.