Introduction to How Yahtzee Works
Aboard a yacht in 1954, a couple of Canadians looking to pass the days at sea got creative with a handful of dice. Almost 60 years later, 100 million people around the world play The Yacht Game, only they call it Yahtzee [source: WMW].
The Canadians sold their dice game to entrepreneur Edwin S. Lowe, who changed the name, marketed it to popularity and sold it (along with the rest of his company) to Milton Bradley in the 1970s.
The game is still selling today. Judging by advertising gusto alone, it would seem like first-person shooters and second lives have far surpassed such low-tech fun as Yahtzee, but board games are actually the more popular pastime, at least among adults: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2003, 17.7 percent of adults in America played board games, while 14 percent played video games [source: Census].
(A day at the zoo is slightly less popular form of entertainment, coming in at 12.3 percent, and surfing the Web is way up there at 28 percent.)
Technically speaking, Yahtzee is more of a dice game than a board game, but it's in the same aisle of the store. It's astonishingly low-tech for how much play it gets these days: Open the box and you'll find five dice, a cup, some little plastic discs and a paper score pad. In a nutshell, the point is to roll an assortment of combinations, each of which carries a different number of points. In the end, the player with the highest score wins.
There's a bit more to it, but that's the gist. In this article, we'll see what Yahtzee is all about. We'll find out how to play and how to win, and check out some strategies that make winning a bit more likely.
We'll begin with some Yahtzee basics: What's the goal and how do you get there?
Yahtzee Rules
The Yahtzee goal is pretty straightforward: You're trying for 12 different combinations of the five dice, and you get a certain number of points for each combination you roll. Each combination has a slot on the score card, and the goal is to fill each slot with the maximum number of points available for that combination.
The 12 rolls and their corresponding point totals are:
- Ones --The best roll is five 1's. You get one point for each 1.
- Twos -- The best roll is five 2's. You get two points for each 2.
- Threes -- The best roll is five 3's. You get three points for each 3.
- Fours -- The best roll is five 4's. You get four points for each 4.
- Fives -- The best roll is five 5's. You get five points for each 5.
- Sixes -- The best roll is five 6's. You get six points for each 6.
- Three of a kind -- Add up face values of all five dice.
- Four of a kind -- Add up face values of all five dice.
- Full house -- Three of any number along with two of any number will get you 25 points.
- Small straight -- Any four consecutive numbers gets you 30 points.
- Large straight -- Any five consecutive numbers gets you 40 points.
- Yahtzee (five of a kind) -- Any five of a kind gets you 50 points.
You have three rolls on each turn to get the combination you want, and you can keep as many dice from each roll as you want. So if, on one turn, you roll a 2, three 3's and a 6 on the first roll, you might decide to keep the 3's and roll the other three dice again. If on that second roll you get, say, a 3 and a 5, you'll keep the 3. On the third roll, you're aiming for one more 3 so you can get the maximum number of points for the combination, which is 15 (or, of course, a 50-point Yahtzee). If you roll a 2 on that last roll, you'll enter a "12" in the threes slot; or, if you would rather score for your Four of Kind, you could tally up the sum of the dice.
There's also a "Chance" slot on the score card. Let's say you decided to keep the 2 and the 6 from that first roll and go for your Large Straight, because you already got your 3's and your Three of a Kind on a previous turn. And let's say you roll three 3's on your second and third rolls. That means you're left with no useful combination. In that case, you'll fill in your Chance slot. The point total for Chance is the total of all dice.
That's the basic game, but there's more to it. If you're running out of time and you can't score for the boxes you have left, or if you don't want to use up a potentially high-scoring box with a measly roll, you can enter a zero in any slot. You'll have to decide when to sacrifice a box, or when to hold out and go big. This is where strategy comes in.
Yahtzee Strategy
The roll of the dice is all up to chance, but winning Yahtzee doesn't have to be. There is some strategy you can apply to the game.
There are two main strategic angles: Get the highest number of points available, and get enough points in the upper level to score a bonus.
The score card is divided into two sections. The upper level consists of the single-number slots, Ones through Sixes. There's a 35-point bonus if the total of all points in that level is 63 or greater, which is something to keep in mind when deciding which slot to fill with a roll that applies in more than one place. For instance, if you roll three 2's and two 6's, you might automatically apply that to your Full House (25 points) instead of your Sixes (12 points). But, if 12 points will get you to the 63-point mark in the upper section, the 35-point bonus is even better than the 25-point Full House.
There's also the more obvious, overarching strategy of filling up the most valuable slots early so if you end up having to take any zeroes at the end of the game, you're out fewer points. This basically means that if, at the beginning of the game, you roll three 5's, a 6 and a 2, put 23 in the Three of a Kind box instead of 15 in the Fives box.
One more strategy tip: Go for the Yahtzee! Your first Yahtzee is worth 50 points, and any additional Yahtzee is worth 100. You can win a game on that second Yahtzee alone. So by all means, if you roll five 6's and each slot is filled except for Sixes, ignore the open slot and call it a Yahtzee.