Lynda Russell, a member of the Alpena Senior Center, decided to bring those tiles to the center to teach a few other colleagues how to play one of the many games played with dominoes: Mexican train dominoes.

Russell learned of the game from her time with the Association of Lifelong Learners, where a few members there taught others.

“The competition doesn’t matter if you win or lose,” Russell said. “I always say the prize is the same: nothing except some fun. You know, unless you’re playing for money.”

It’s a game that’s brand new to most, but it follows similar rules to other games people may have played.

News Photo by Mike Gonzalez Lynda Russell, a member of the Alpena Senior Center, picks up one of her dominoes during a game of Mexican train dominoes on Tuesday.

The entire goal of Mexican train dominoes is to get the least amount of points. It’s a twelve-round game in which players attempt to connect matching-dotted dominoes on each player’s individual lineup of dominoes.

Once the last domino in a player’s hand is dealt, the round is over and the other players with dominoes must count their total dot count.

Of course, there are a lot of stipulations in the middle of the game. If a player can’t connect matching-dotted dominoes, they must draw one domino from a pile and see if it can connect.

If it is still not possible, a train will go on the player’s lineup, indicating to other players that they can utilize that player’s lineup to connect their dominoes and reduce the number of tiles they have left.

“When you’re in a game, you can’t tell the other person to take off their train,” Russell said. “If someone forgets, everybody just holds their breath because they know they can’t say anything when they really want to. Sometimes, you want them to forget and leave it so you can keep playing on their line.”

On Tuesday, Russell may not have had the game on the Senior Center’s bulletin board, but she still wanted to introduce the game to colleagues.

Most games played there are card-based, such as Spitzer and Bridge, so she figured it would be a nice change of pace to get a new game on the table.

“My family, when they come we play this with everybody,” Russell said. “You can play with two people or you can play with eight. Lots of people play this at their house to have some fun with their families.”