Like countless millions of people from around the world, I have been playing Yahtzee my entire life. This classic Hasbro dice game was a mainstay of virtually every house in America, and it was always one of the go-to games whenever friends or family needed a quick cure for boredom.
Yahtzee was first produced by the E.S. Lowe Company in 1956, and was the signature game of that firm until Milton Bradley purchased the company and got the rights to the game. Milton Bradley is now a subsidiary of Hasbro, which has said that as many as 50 million copies of Yahtzee games are sold every year.
Yahtzee is a simple and fast-paced game that is perfect for two players, but can also be enjoyed solo or in larger groups. Let’s take a look at some of the great ways you can play Yahtzee online or live with your friends.
Where’s the Best Place to Play Yahtzee?
While there are tons of ways to play Yahtzee, I don’t think you can beat the joy of playing this game at home with friends and family. When you’re looking for something to do, you can open the game box, get started in a few moments, and play a few games in a half-hour or so before moving on to another activity, there’s nothing like it, and there’s a reason why Yahtzee has had so much staying power over the last 70 years!
But that fast gameplay makes it ideal no matter where you want to play. Yahtzee is a great coffeeshop game that you can take with you to play with a friend over a drink and a snack, as it takes up very little room and can easily be played between bites and sips. The same goes for playing online: just visit any of the many, many websites or apps that offer Yahtzee, start a game with a friend (or a stranger, or a bot), and begin playing at your own pace. It’s that simple!
Getting the Most out of Yahtzee at Home
You might think that this is an easy question: What do you need to play Yahtzee at home? Obviously, you just need a copy of the game, a table, and a pencil or two to keep score.
But you might not realize just how many versions of this game are available to choose from. Hasbro makes tons of variants, from the original Yahtzee to games designed for children (like Yahtzee Jr.), travel versions, retro artwork packages, and a version that uses letters known as Yahtzee Words.
You can also find numerous themed Yahtzee games that are based on various media properties. Do you have kids who love Hello Kitty, Disney, Doctor Who, or Star Wars? There’s a version for you. That’s just scraping the surface of these licensed Yahtzee properties, and finding one based on characters or themes your friends, family, or children enjoy could be a good way to get otherwise reluctant players in for a game.
Finding More Friends to Play Yahtzee With
This may shock you, but there aren’t exactly thriving Yahtzee clubs in every city, nor is there a World Yahtzee Tour or an American Yahtzee Association. No, this is a same that is pretty much entirely played casually with very little organized play, outside of the occasional tournament such as the charity events run by Yahtzee Nation.
That’s not to say it’s impossible to find fellow Yahtzee players to toss the dice with. After all, occasional tournaments do exist, which is more than I can say for a lot of board and card games. And while there might be some board game snobs that see you as a casual for bringing Yahtzee to a board game night or a local board game meetup, it’s almost certain that just about everyone will know the rules. If nothing else, Yahtzee is a great game to pull out for a quick break between more complicated games.
Where to Play Yahtzee Online
You won’t be surprised to learn that there are numerous versions of Yahtzee available to play online today. These range from the official offerings to countless unofficial versions, many of which provide an authentic Yahtzee experience.
Let’s start at the top by looking at Yahtzee with Buddies. Available both via an app and on a website, this is an officially-licensed version of Yahtzee you can play online. As you might expect, this comes with some advantages: there’s clearly been a lot of money poured into the app, with great graphics and sound, and the basic gameplay is true to the original.
However, I didn’t find a lot of joy in playing this version of online Yahtzee. Like many mobile games of this type, it is bloated with rewards, bonuses, and special features – all things that may appeal to some players, but which get in the way of my enjoyment of the game I want to play. The fact that you can sometimes get bonus rolls or restart a turn can help you get big scores, but it’s just not the same as playing the game straight up.
So while Yahtzee with Buddies is a fine way to play against friends who already have that app, I think there are simpler and easier options out there. For instance, the popular website CardGames.io has a bare bones version of Yahtzee that incorporates all the classic rules. You can play against a computer opponent, or challenge opponents who are also logged into the site. It’s not the most straightforward way to challenge a friend, but if you both log into the game, it’s easy enough to find each other – and I love the delightful cartoonish look of the Yahtzee layout.
That said, I still haven’t mentioned my favorite place for solo Yahtzee play online. That honor goes to The Yahtzee Manifesto, which feels like the most in-depth site devoted to this game in the world. While it only offers solitaire play, the gameplay is smooth and intuitive. You can also make an account to track your stats and climb leaderboards based on how well you score, or read strategy, history, and culture articles all about Yahtzee.
Yahtzee Rules
If you’ve never played Yahtzee before, the game is deceptively simple. You’ll be given five dice to roll on each round. After your first roll, you can hold as many dice as you like, rerolling the rest. After your second roll, you’ll again be able to hold any dice you want to keep, again rerolling the rest. After that third roll, your dice are finalized, and it’s time to score them.
There are 13 scoring categories you can choose to score your dice in; however, you can only use each category once, and can only choose one category per round. The categories are divided into an “upper section” and “lower section” as follows:
Upper Section
- Aces: One point for every die with the number one.
- Twos: Two points for every die with the number two.
- Threes: Three points for every die with the number three.
- Fours: Four points for every die with the number four.
- Fives: Five points for every die with the number five.
- Sixes: Six points for every die with the number six.
As a bonus, if you get 63 total points or more in the upper section, you’ll earn an additional bonus of 35 points. This can be done by getting three of each die in each category.
Lower Section
- Three of a Kind: Requires at least three of the same number, and scores the sum of all five dice.
- Four of a Kind: Requires at least four of the same number, and scores the sum of all five dice.
- Full House: Requires three of one number and two of another, scoring 25 points.
- Small Straight: Requires four sequential dice, such as 1-2-3-4, scoring 30 points.
- Large Straight: Requires five sequential dice, such as 2-3-4-5-6, scoring 40 points.
- Yahtzee: Requires all five dice to be the same number, scoring 50 points.
- Chance: Any five dice, scoring the sum of all five dice.
If you have already scored a Yahtzee, then any additional Yahtzees are worth 100 points each. Each time you get an extra Yahtzee, you must also use it to fill the corresponding upper section if possible. If you’ve already used that section, you can use it to fill any lower box section and get the corresponding points, even if a Yahtzee wouldn’t normally fill that category, such as a large straight.
You may choose to score your dice at any time, even if you don’t take your second or third roll. If you have used all three rolls and can’t score your dice anywhere, you may take a zero in any category instead.
Because of these rules, at the end of 13 rounds, all your categories will be filled (either with points or zeroes). Total up your points, including any upper section or Yahtzee bonuses. The player with the most points wins the game!
Ed’s Basic Yahtzee Strategy
There’s a lot of luck in Yahtzee, but even when I played this game as a child, it was clear some people were better at manipulating their rolls and the scoring system than others. There are a few basic tips new players can use in order to maximize their points and improve their chances of winning.
First, it’s easy to overlook the upper section, but this is a huge mistake. While you won’t be adding up points quickly here, the section as a whole is often worth 100 points or more by the end of the game. The key here is to try hard to get the 35 bonus points. The best way to achieve this is to lock in an extra die (meaning four or more) in the fours, fives, or sixes category. This will allow you to come up a die short in a couple of the smaller values and still hit that 63-point target.
Another key tip is to strategically think about when you want to put a zero into a category. It’s usually a good idea to keep more flexible and easier to achieve categories like Chance, Three of a Kind, and Small Straight open longer, as they can be good places to bail out an otherwise poor set of dice. Even though Large Straight and Yahtzee offer a lot of points, it can be better to put a zero there, since a fair number of games will end without you ever being able to score in those positions.
Full House is another category you might not want to fill immediately if you get it in your first few rounds. It may be better to use your three dice in the upper section, or pushing for a Four of a Kind or Yahtzee while keeping a Three of a Kind as a backup option. If you have many rounds left, chances are you’ll get another chance to get your Full House points later in the game.
Variations on Yahtzee
Before I wrote this article, I knew that Yahtzee has some roots in poker – that much is obvious from some of the scoring combinations. But I never realized that there is a whole family of games that are similar to Yahtzee, only featuring a few unique rules that are different than the classic we know and love.
First, there is the game of Yacht, which outdates Yahtzee and shares similarities with games like Poker Dice and Generala. While the gameplay is similar to Yahtzee, there is no upper section bonus or Three of a Kind category. In addition, both straights are worth 30 points, while the Four of a Kind only counts the matching numbers when it scores.
In Nordic countries, many players are more familiar with the game known as Yatzy. While the two games are similar, this isn’t just an alternate spelling, but a distinct dice game that has some of the rules of Yahtzee and some rules from Yacht.
The upper bonus appears in Yatzy, and is worth a massive 50 points. There are also categories for One Pair and Two Pairs, while the Three and Four of a Kind categories only score the matching dice. Interestingly, a Small Straight is exactly the numbers 1-2-3-4-5, while a Large Straight is exactly 2-3-4-5-6.
Chances are that you could sit down at a table with someone playing any of these variants and pick up the rules quickly. And with many people playing with slight changes to rules in all of these versions, your personal Yahtzee experience may be different than anything I’ve discussed here today!
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