The goal
Fill 13 boxes on your score sheet, and finish with the highest total.
Setup
Five dice, a cup and a score sheet for every player. Everyone rolls once; the highest total starts, then play goes left.
The first roll
There is no deal. Each turn you have your own dice.
A turn
- Roll all five dice. Set aside any you want to keep.
- Roll the others, up to three rolls in all.
- Write your result in one box. Each box is used once; if nothing fits, write a 0 (scratch).
Special rolls
- Yahtzee: five of a kind, 50 points. Another Yahtzee later scores a 100-point bonus if your Yahtzee box has 50, and is placed using the joker rule.
- Upper bonus: 35 points if the ones to sixes add up to 63 or more.
Scoring
- Ones to sixes: the total of those dice.
- Three or four of a kind, Chance: total of all five dice.
- Full house 25, small straight 30, large straight 40, Yahtzee 50.
Winning
After 13 turns, add up everything. The highest total wins.
House rules
- Forced Joker. The official joker rule, and the one the practice table keeps to: if you roll another Yahtzee and the matching upper box is free you must use it. If not, you may score in any open lower box, and if all of those are full you must put a zero in an open upper box. It applies even when the Yahtzee box holds 0.
- Triple Yahtzee. Play three score sheets at once. Everyone fills one sheet at a time, or all three together.
- Solo challenge. Play alone and try to beat 250. It is a quick way to learn the odds.
