How to play Yacht Dice
Yacht Dice is a five-dice game of luck and quick decisions. A game is twelve turns long, and each turn works the same way:
- Roll all five dice.
- Keep any dice you like by tapping them — a kept die zooms up onto a teal pad — then re-roll the rest. You get two rolls per turn (one opening roll and one re-roll).
- Bank the hand into one of the twelve categories on the scorecard. Each category can only be used once, so choosing well is the whole game.
You do not have to re-roll — bank early whenever the opening dice are good. And every category must eventually be filled, so sometimes you will “scratch” a weak hand into a category you were never going to hit.
The twelve categories
Numbers — score the sum of the matching dice:
| Category | Scores |
|---|---|
| Ones – Sixes | Sum of all dice showing that number |
Combinations:
| Category | Scores |
|---|---|
| Full House | A three-of-a-kind plus a pair → the sum of all five dice |
| Four of a Kind | Four dice the same → the sum of those four dice |
| Little Straight | 1-2-3-4-5 → a flat 30 |
| Big Straight | 2-3-4-5-6 → a flat 30 |
| Choice | The sum of all five dice (a safe dumping ground) |
| Yacht | All five dice the same → a huge 50 |
Your total is the sum of every category. There is no upper-section bonus here — every point is earned in the boxes.
Tips and strategy
- Chase the Yacht early. Fifty points is a quarter of a strong game. If you open with three or four of a kind, it is often worth gambling your re-roll to complete the Yacht rather than banking a safe Four of a Kind.
- Protect your sixes and fives. The number boxes reward high faces most, so a hand full of sixes is worth banking there rather than in Choice.
- Keep Choice as an escape hatch. Because Choice takes any five dice, save it for a turn where nothing else lines up instead of wasting a strong hand on it.
- Straights are all-or-nothing. Little and Big Straight score 30 or zero, so once you have four in a row, hold them and fish hard for the fifth.
- Fill the cheap boxes on bad turns. A hopeless roll is the moment to scratch Ones or Twos — you lose the fewest points writing a small number off there.