Scoring With Sticks

Bone scoring sticks or ‘bones’ came in sets having eight sticks with six red and six black dots, 36 sticks with two red dots, 32 sticks with eight red dots and 40 sticks with one red and three black dots, making 116 in all. The six red and black eyes (double six) symbolised perfection (500 points), the two red eyes (double one) symbolised harmony (100 points), the red eyes (double four) represented the eight immortals (10 points) and last stick with one red and three black eyes on a diagonal (three and one) symbolising the harmony in imbalance (2 points). Their value and names were related to the established game of dominoes, the tiles of which are indicated in the brackets following each description.

In sets made for export the markings and values were adjusted to represent higher values, as the point system devised for the American game involved more points. These sets had 84 sticks in total. Four with five red and two black dots worth 1000 points each, eight with five red dots worth 500 points, 32 with one red dot, worth 100 points and 40 with eight black dots worth 10 points each.

Old bone scoring sticks with hand carved dots

With the counting sticks in use today much of the traditional symbolism has been lost. They are no longer particularly popular in China, with roulette style chips taking the place of bones. They do remain popular in Japan, where the values have been adapted to the scoring system of Japanese mahjong