Farkle

How to play Farkle

Farkle (also called Zilch, Ten Thousand or Hot Dice) is a push-your-luck dice game for two or more players. You'll need six dice, a pencil, and the nerve to know when to stop.

A turn

1. Roll all six dice.
2. Set aside at least one scoring die. Every die you set aside must score.
3. Either bank the points you've collected this turn, or roll the remaining dice to try for more.
4. If a roll has no scoring dice at all, that's a Farkle: you lose every point from this turn and play passes on.
5. If all six dice have scored, you have hot dice and may roll all six again.

Farkle scoring chart

Dice	Points
Single 1	100
Single 5	50
Three 1s	1,000
Three 2s / 3s / 4s / 5s / 6s	200 / 300 / 400 / 500 / 600
Four of a kind	1,000
Five of a kind	2,000
Six of a kind	3,000
Straight 1-2-3-4-5-6	1,500
Three pairs (or four of a kind plus a pair)	1,500
Two triplets	2,500

Scoring combinations only count within a single roll. A 1 kept from one roll and two 1s from the next are three singles (300), not three of a kind.

Winning

When a player banks their way to 10,000 or more, everyone else gets one final turn. The highest score wins.

Farkle strategy

• You don't have to keep every scoring die. With 1-5-3-3-4-6, keeping only the 1 lets you reroll five dice instead of four.
• Know the odds. Rolling six dice farkles only about 2% of the time; one die farkles 67% of the time; two dice farkle 44%.
• Bank around 300–400 with one or two dice left, unless you're far behind.