How to Play Yahtzee

The Short Version

Yahtzee is poker dice played against a scorecard. Thirteen turns, thirteen boxes, and on every turn you roll five dice up to three times, keeping what helps and re-rolling the rest, trying to match one of the scoring categories still open on your card. The upper section rewards steady collecting of each number; the lower section pays flat values for poker-style combinations. The tension is permanent: every box can be scored exactly once, so a roll that fits two boxes forces a choice, and a roll that fits none forces a painful zero somewhere. Highest total after everyone has filled all 13 boxes wins.

What You Need

Five standard dice, one official-style scorecard per player (any printed scorepad or a hand-drawn grid with the 13 categories works), and a pencil. A cup for shaking is traditional and keeps dice off the floor. Solitaire Yahtzee against your own best score is fully legitimate — the official game supports one player.

Set Up

Give everyone a scorecard and decide who rolls first (highest single-die roll is the usual method). Write names across the cards if sharing a pad. Agree on two things before play starts: whether the official joker rules (explained under Scoring) are in force — they should be, they’re part of the real game — and who keeps the running totals. Everything else is printed on the card.

How to Play

On your turn:

Roll. Shake and roll all five dice. Look at what you’ve got and decide which category you’re hunting.

Re-roll, up to twice. Set aside any dice you want to keep and re-roll the rest. You may change your mind between rolls — dice set aside can be picked up and re-rolled on the third roll, and you may re-roll everything, including on your first re-roll. You may also stop early and score after the first or second roll.

Score, always. After your final roll you must write a score in exactly one open box on your card. If the dice fit a category, you may take it. If they fit several, choose one. If they fit nothing you want to use, you must still pick a box and write 0 — this is called scratching, and nobody finishes a game without at least considering it. Play passes left; after 13 turns every card is full and the game ends.

Scoring

Upper section — Ones through Sixes. Score the total of the dice showing that number only: three 4s in Fours is 12, five 6s in Sixes is 30. Upper bonus: if your six upper boxes total 63 or more, add a flat 35 points. (63 is exactly three of every number — a useful target to pace yourself against.)

Lower section — flat or dice-total values:

• Three of a Kind: at least three matching dice — score the total of all five dice, or 0.
• Four of a Kind: at least four matching — total of all five dice, or 0.
• Full House: exactly three of one number and two of another — 25 points, flat.
• Small Straight: a run of four (1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-5, or 3-4-5-6) — 30 points, flat.
• Large Straight: a run of five — 40 points, flat.
• Yahtzee: all five dice equal — 50 points.
• Chance: any five dice — total of all five. Your pressure valve.

Yahtzee bonus and joker rules — the part tables get wrong. Roll a Yahtzee when your Yahtzee box already holds 50, and you earn a +100 bonus for each additional one. Then the dice must be scored under the joker rules, in this order: (1) if the upper box matching the number is open, you must score it there at full value; (2) if it’s filled, you may use the dice as a joker in any open lower box — full house scores 25, small straight 30, large straight 40, and three/four of a kind or Chance score the dice total; (3) if no lower box is open either, you must take a zero in any open upper-section box. The +100 is yours regardless. One catch: if your Yahtzee box holds a 0 (you scratched it earlier), extra Yahtzees earn no bonus and get no joker privileges at all.

Winning

After 13 rounds, total each card: upper section subtotal, plus the 35-point bonus if earned, plus the lower section, plus 100 for each Yahtzee bonus box ticked. Highest total wins. A strong club score is 300+; anything over 250 beats most kitchen tables. Tied scores are simply a tie — play a deciding game rather than inventing a tiebreak nobody agreed to.

Variations Worth Knowing

Triple Yahtzee (official variant): each player runs three scorecards at once, and every score is multiplied — the second card counts double, the third triple, including bonuses. Games run longer and the joker decisions get genuinely thorny. Challenge Yahtzee uses a shared set of dice rolls everyone scores from — pure card management, no luck gap. Painted Yahtzee and travel apps follow the same 13 categories, but check whether your app applies the joker rules: several digital versions quietly omit them, which changes how a second Yahtzee should be played.