How to Organize Your Tiles in Mexican Train Dominoes

Mexican Train Dominoes is a game of strategy and there are ways to arrange your opening hand to maximize your chances of winning. Once you have drawn your tiles and have your hand, it's important to strategically arrange your tiles.

The domino racks are great for organizing your tiles because you can see your tiles at a glance.

First, look at which tiles you have that match the opening tile. For example, put all of your 12's on the top row.

Then, look which tiles match the other half of those twelves and arrange them in a way that maximizes your ability to play the most tiles.  Your goal is to arrange them to make the longest train possible

Second, look at the tiles that don't match anything - sometimes called "stragglers" which are the most at risk for catching you with points at the end of the game.  Arrange them in order of point value and watch the community train for openings to play these tiles.

You can arrange your hand perfectly but if you are playing chickenfoot dominoes where you have to answer the double three times before you can proceed, even the best laid hands will be side railed.