Players sit in a large circle. Give each player 3 dice (could be 4). Also give each player a paper or styrofoam plate to roll dice on. Play occurs in rounds. A typical round goes as follows:
1. All players roll dice.
2. One player begins by placing a "bid". A bid is a guess of how many of a certain number of dice were rolled by the WHOLE GROUP which we will call the "collective estimate". An example bid would be "I think there are 5 ones rolled by the whole group". A bid is the combination of dice number and a collective estimate.
3. At that point, any one in the group can "Call" which means they think the person's bid is too high.
4. If no one is willing to call then the next player to their right can place a new bid. The new bid must either be higher in the collective estimate (for example the new player might now bid 6 ones rolled by the whole group with 6 being the collective estimate, but the player cannot bid 4 ones rolled by the whole group) or the player can move to a new dice number (on any given die there are dots numbering 1 to 6. This is what we mean by "dice number" with six being the highest possible dice number.) If the player moves to a new dice number such as 2's, they can start the collective estimate as low or as high as they want (for example they might bid 2 twos rolled by the whole group.)
5. A new bidder does not need to go up in consecutive order for collective estimate or dice number. For example if the previous bid as 4 two's, the next player might choose to bid 7 two's - they didn't have to bid 5 or 6 first, or they might bid 4 sixes next skip all the dice numbers in between. This is OK and is actually part of the strategy.
6. The bidding continues around the circle until someone "calls". When this occurs all players hold up fingers for the number of dice they have with that number. For example, if you have 3 dice and rolled 2 fours and 1 three, and if the bid which was called was 5 fours, then you would hold up two fingers. If you have no dice for that dice number in the bid then you simply don't hold up any fingers. The group counts the total number of fingers.
7. If the number of fingers (dice) is greater or equal to the bid, the person who called must throw a dice away. However, if the number of fingers (dice) is less than the bid, the bidder must throw a dice away.
8. At this point a new round begins and the first bidder is the person to right of the old bidder.
1. Since each round starts with one dice less than the previous round, players must try to keep track of how many are out there. An opening bid of 6 fives might make sense if there are roughly 40 dice in play, but would never make sense as an opening bid with just 15 dice in play.
2. Players are free to conceal their dice to prevent others from knowing how many you have.
3. Starting an open bid in the low sixes can be used to force a player one or more seats to the right into a situation where they either have to increase the bid or call. Since six is the highest dice number, there will come a point when the group will want to call because the collective estimate will get too high to be reasonable based on how many dice are in play..