Yahtzee dice roller with score sheet

How to use this Yahtzee dice roller

1. First roll. Press Roll, or pick the dice up with your finger or mouse and drop them in the tray. All five are thrown together.
2. Hold the dice you want. Tap a die to keep it; it is marked and stays put on the next roll. Tap it again to release it.
3. Second and third rolls. Roll again and only the free dice move. You can hold a die on the second roll that you released on the first, and the other way round.
4. Score. The score sheet shows which open boxes the roll fits and how many points each would be worth. Pick one and the next turn starts. You do not have to use all three rolls: if the dice already give you what you want, score straight away.

Use it to play solo, to pass a phone round the table for a group game, or simply as a stand-in when the dice or the cup have gone missing. Every roll is independent; the dice have no memory, just like a well-made physical set.

Yahtzee rules

Yahtzee is played with five six-sided dice and a score sheet. A game lasts 13 rounds. On your turn you may roll up to three times, setting aside any dice you like between rolls, and at the end of the turn you must enter the result in one empty box. Each box is used once. When every box is filled, you add up the sheet and the highest total wins.

The Yahtzee score sheet

The 63-point bonus

The target of 63 is exactly three of each number: 3 + 6 + 9 + 12 + 15 + 18 = 63. Reach it in the upper section and you add 35 points. You can get there in other ways, for instance with four sixes and four fives making up for a weak Aces box.

Extra Yahtzees and the Joker rule

If your Yahtzee box already holds 50 and you roll another Yahtzee, you get a 100-point bonus for each one. You also score the roll as a Joker. Hasbro's instructions ask you to put it in the matching upper box if that box is still open; if it is not, you may use it in any open lower box at full value, so 25 for a Full House or 40 for a Large Straight. If you have already scored a zero in the Yahtzee box, there is no 100-point bonus. The wording of the Joker rule has changed between editions, which is why families who learnt from older boxes sometimes play it differently.

Scratching a box

If your final roll fits nothing useful, you must still fill a box, so you enter a zero somewhere. Most players sacrifice Aces, which can only ever be worth 5, or the Yahtzee box late in the game when the odds of filling it have gone.

The highest possible Yahtzee score is 1,575, which needs 13 Yahtzees in 13 turns and every bonus. A regular game without extra Yahtzees tops out far lower.

Yahtzee, Yatzy, Kniffel, Yams and Generala compared

These games share the same core: five dice, three rolls, a sheet of boxes filled once each. The score sheet is what changes from country to country.

Not the same as Poker Dice

Poker Dice, the traditional English game, uses dice with card faces (A, K, Q, J, 10 and 9). You still get up to three rolls, but each round is won by the best poker hand on the table, from one pair up to five of a kind. There is no score sheet to fill across the game.

A short history of Yahtzee

Dice games where you fill categories one by one are older than Yahtzee. Yacht is described in 1938 in The Complete Book of Games by Clement Wood and Gloria Goddard: five dice, three rolls, twelve categories and 50 points for five of a kind. Poker Dice and Latin American Generala belong to the same family.

According to the story told by its publisher, a Canadian couple played a game they called "The Yacht Game" on board their boat. In 1956 the New York toy maker Edwin S. Lowe, already known for making Bingo popular in the United States, bought the idea in exchange for 1,000 sets to give to their friends. He renamed it Yahtzee and put it on sale. The couple's names have never been made public.

Lowe sold the game until 1973, when Milton Bradley bought his company. Hasbro bought Milton Bradley in 1984 and has owned Yahtzee ever since.

In Germany, Schmidt Spiele brought out Kniffel in 1972 with rules very close to Yahtzee. East Germany had its own version, Pasch, sold until 1990; it was closer to Scandinavian Yatzy, with pair boxes and a 50-point bonus.

Yahtzee was solved by computer in the early 2000s. With perfect play, a solitaire game averages about 254.6 points, a figure first published in 2003. Human players usually score well below that.

Yahtzee and Kniffel are registered trademarks of their publishers. This page is an independent dice roller and has no link with Hasbro or Schmidt Spiele.

Yahtzee odds, worked out

These figures come from working through all 7,776 possible rolls of five dice (6 × 6 × 6 × 6 × 6). The single-roll column is exact. The two- and three-roll columns assume you always hold the dice that bring you closest to that one combination and ignore everything else.

• Going all out for a Yahtzee in one turn works roughly once in 22 attempts.
• Chasing three of one number succeeds a little over a third of the time, which is why the 63-point bonus is never a sure thing.
• A Small Straight within three rolls is more likely than not; a Large Straight comes off about one turn in four.

When you already have part of it

Basic Yahtzee strategy

When to go for the upper section

• Treat 63 as "three of each". Keep a running tally of how far above or below par you are: four fives is +5, two sixes is −6. An extra die in the high numbers covers several misses in Aces and Twos.
• Three or more of a 4, 5 or 6 on the first roll, with the box still open, is usually worth chasing in the upper section. Three gets you to par for that box; four puts you ahead.
• Do it early. The bonus is easier to secure while several upper boxes are still open and you have room to make up shortfalls.

Managing the lower section