Yacht Dice
DiceHow to Play
Goal: Fill all 13 categories with the best scores you can. Highest total wins.
Each turn: Roll up to three times. After a roll, tap dice to hold them, then roll the rest. Score any open category when ready, even a zero if you must.
Scoring: Number rows pay the sum of matching dice. Full House pays 25, Small Straight 30, Large Straight 40 and a Yacht (five of a kind) pays 50.
About Yacht Dice
Yacht is the classic five-dice game that inspired the famous boxed scorepad game of the 1950s, and its public-domain rules go back further still, sailors reputedly played it on ocean liners, hence the name. Five dice, three rolls a turn, thirteen categories, and a scorepad that fills whether your luck cooperates or not: it is one of the most perfectly balanced luck-and-judgment designs in gaming history.
The judgment lives in the sacrifices. Rolls rarely fit the category you want, so every turn ends with a real decision: cash a mediocre score now, or burn a category you were saving? Two players with identical dice will finish thirty points apart on those choices alone, which is why the game has survived a century of imitators essentially unchanged.
Yacht Dice tactics that add points
- Fill the sixes, fives and fours early when the dice offer them, the big number rows are the backbone of a good total.
- Keep pairs and triples after the first roll and reroll the rest, three of a kind converts to Four of a Kind or a Full House more often than intuition suggests.
- Save Choice as a shock absorber for a great roll that fits nothing else, spending it early on a middling sum wastes its whole purpose.
- Burn the Yacht row with a zero when the game forces a sacrifice, its 50 points are the least likely to ever arrive.
- Chase straights only when four of the five dice already cooperate; drawing to a two-gap straight is the pad's classic sucker bet.
FAQ
How is Yacht different from the boxed dice game everyone knows?
Yacht is the public-domain ancestor: same five dice, three rolls and category scorepad. The trademarked descendants added bonus rules like upper-section bonuses and multiple five-of-a-kinds; classic Yacht keeps the cleaner original pad.
What is the best category strategy?
Anchor on the high number rows, keep pairs and triples between rolls, hold Choice for an orphaned great roll, and when a bad turn must be buried, zero the Yacht row first, fifty points that mostly never come.
Do I have to score every turn?
Yes, every turn ends by filling one open category, even for zero. Forced sacrifices are the strategic heart of the game: managing which rows you can afford to lose is what separates scores.
Does the game save my best score?
Yes, your best total is saved in your browser on this device and shown above the dice, the built-in rival for every new game.
