How to Play Yahtzee™ (with/without Yahtzee Scoresheet.com)
What you need
- 5 Dice
- This website! ...or another scoresheet/scorecard/scorepad
- Optional: A cup to shake the dice in
Alternative Yahtzee™ Games
If you're at this page to spice up the traditional Yahtzee playing techniques try this new method:
- Each player rolls as usual (3 opportunities)
- At the end of the 3 rolls the OTHER player(s) get to decide where the score goes on the scoresheet.
- The goal is to score the LEAST amount of points
- Therefore, when placing the score on the scoresheet place it where it'd give the roller the MOST points
- When rolling, keep the dice that would give you the least amount of points
- The scoring and other game play continues with the same rules as the original Yahtzee game listed below
Score the most points by rolling the dice and completing the score sheet
Let's Play - Rules
Yahtzee can be played with any number of players. Once you get everyone together determine the order and who will go first. When it's your turn you can roll the dice up to three times to achieve one of the 13 possible scoring combinations. Each turn you can re roll 0 - 5 of the dice keeping the rest.
There are 13 possible scoring combinations and 13 rounds to a game of Yahtzee™. Once you've filled in a combination you cannot change your mind and clear it out or change it later. You only get to use each of the 13 combinations once and you MUST use each combination once. This means that if you can't fill in a box after your turn you have to put a 0 value somewhere. Thanks to this website it is impossible to make the mistake of entering a score more than once. Each of the scoring combinations has a different point value, some of which are fixed values and others of which have the cumulative value of the dice.
In the upper section, each box is scored by summing the total number of die faces matching that box. For example if a player were to roll three "twos", the score would be recorded as 6 in the twos box. If a player obtains or exceeds 63 points, a bonus of 35 points is added to the upper section score. Though 63 points corresponds to three-of-a-kind for each of the six die faces, the easiest and most common way to get the bonus is rolling four (or five) of a larger number so that not many of the lower ones are needed.
The lower section contains a number of poker-themed combinations
with specific point values:
- Three-of-a-Kind ~ sum all dice
- Four-of-a-Kind ~ sum all dice
- Full House ~ 25pts
- Small straight ~ 30pts
- Large straight ~ 40pts
- Five-of-a-Kind (Yahtzee) ~ 50pts
- Chance ~ sum all dice
A running tally of the games score is automatically calculated for you if you're using www.yahtzeescoresheet.com by summing up the 13 boxes as you enter your scores. It also keeps a running total of all of the games you've played if you're playing more than one game.
What is a Yahtzee™ Anyways?
You get a yahtzee when you roll each of the five dices such that
the value on the dice for all five dices is the same... a five of a kind!
Therefore, there are six possible Yahtzees:
- 1 1 1 1 1
- 2 2 2 2 2
- 3 3 3 3 3
- 4 4 4 4 4
- 5 5 5 5 5
- 6 6 6 6 6