Guide

Five dice games worth learning.

Last updated: August 24, 2026

All you need for any of these is a handful of dice — or the dice roller if you don't have any within reach. Each one rewards a different kind of decision, from pure luck to genuine push-your-luck strategy.

Yahtzee — build the best 13-round scorecard

Five dice, up to three rolls per turn (re-rolling any subset between rolls), and thirteen scoring categories to fill across the game — things like three-of-a-kind, a full house, a small or large straight, and the namesake Yahtzee (five of a kind).

• Upper section (Ones through Sixes): score the sum of just that number's dice. Fill all six with at least 63 total points and you get a 35-point bonus — this is the quiet engine of a good Yahtzee score.
• Lower section: Three/Four of a Kind (sum of all five dice), Full House (25), Small Straight — four in a sequence (30), Large Straight — five in a sequence (40), Yahtzee — five matching (50), and Chance (sum of all five dice, the flexible catch-all).
• Strategy: chase the upper-section bonus early, and hold Chance in reserve for a turn where nothing else lines up rather than burning it on an average roll.

Roll 5d6 on the roller to simulate any turn.

Farkle — push your luck or bank your points

Six dice, rolled together each turn. Certain combinations score points (single 1s = 100, single 5s = 50, three-of-a-kind = the number ×100, except three 1s = 1000); after each roll you set aside at least one scoring die and can choose to re-roll the rest for more, or bank your turn's total and pass the dice.

• The catch: if a roll produces zero scoring dice — a "Farkle" — you lose every point banked that turn, not your running total, but it still stings enough to shape every decision.
• Hot dice: score with all six dice in a turn and you get to roll all six again, stacking more points onto the same turn instead of stopping.
• Strategy: the correct move is almost always mathematical, not gut feeling — the fewer dice you have left to re-roll, the higher your Farkle risk, so banking with 1–2 dice remaining is usually right unless you're chasing a specific target.

Roll 6d6 on the roller and tally scoring combinations by hand to play.

Bunco — loud, social, and pure chance

Bunco trades strategy for pace: it's a party game built for large groups rotating between tables, using three dice per turn.

• Each round has a target number (round 1 targets 1s, round 2 targets 2s, and so on through round 6).
• Roll three dice — every die matching the round's target number scores 1 point, except rolling all three dice as the target number, which is a "Bunco" worth 21 points (and traditionally ends your turn with a shout of "Bunco!").
• Rolling three of a kind that isn't the target number is a "Baby Bunco" worth 5 points in many house rules.
• Keep rolling as long as you score at least one point; a scoreless roll passes the dice to the next player.

Bunco has effectively no decision-making — it's a social pacing game, not a strategy one, which is exactly why it works for mixed-skill groups. Roll 3d6 on the roller to play a round.

Pig — the simplest push-your-luck game that still teaches probability

One die, one simple rule, and a surprising amount of decision-making depth for how little there is to it.

• On your turn, roll one die repeatedly. Each roll adds its value to your turn total — unless you roll a 1, which wipes your entire turn total and ends your turn immediately.
• At any point before rolling again, you can choose to "hold," banking your turn total onto your running score and passing the die.
• First to 100 total points wins.

Because a 1 has exactly a 1-in-6 chance on every roll, the math behind "should I roll again?" is genuinely calculable — the well-known optimal strategy is to hold once your turn total reaches around 20, since the expected value of one more roll turns negative past that point. It's a favorite in classrooms for exactly this reason. Roll 1d6 on the roller to play.

Liar's Dice — bluffing, not arithmetic

Every player rolls a set of dice (traditionally five) hidden under a cup, and the game is played entirely through claims about the combined table, not visible results.

• Players take turns making a bid: a quantity and a face value, claiming that at least that many dice showing that face exist across every player's hidden dice combined (1s are often "wild," counting toward any face bid).
• Each bid must raise the previous one — a higher quantity, or the same quantity on a higher face.
• Instead of bidding, a player can challenge the last bid ("liar"). All dice are revealed: if the bid holds true, the challenger loses a die; if it doesn't, the bidder loses a die.
• Players are eliminated as they run out of dice; last player standing wins.

Unlike the other four games here, Liar's Dice rewards reading people as much as reading probabilities — knowing the rough odds of a bid being true (based on how many total dice are in play) helps, but so does knowing whether the player across from you bluffs often. Roll 5d6 privately on the roller for each player's hidden hand.

Picking one for tonight

For a quick, no-strategy icebreaker with a big group, Bunco is hard to beat. For genuine push-your-luck decision-making, Farkle and Pig both hold up — Pig if you want something teachable in two minutes, Farkle if you want more depth per turn. Yahtzee remains the standard for a longer, scorecard-driven session, and Liar's Dice is the one to reach for when the table wants bluffing over math.