Farkle Rules: How to Play, Score, and Win
Farkle is a push-your-luck dice game for two or more players using six dice. On your turn you roll all six, set aside any scoring dice, then choose to bank your points or roll the rest. Roll nothing scoring and you farkle, losing everything from that turn. First to 10,000 triggers the final round.
Roll six dice for Farkle
Press Roll to throw the dice.
Press Space to roll again. Type notation like 2d6+3 or 4d6dl1 straight into the box.
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What you need
Six dice, a pen, and paper. That’s the whole kit.
You can play with a printed scoring table in front of everyone, which I’d recommend for the first few games, because the middle of the table is where arguments start. Grab six dice from the dice roller if you’re playing over a video call or you’ve lost half a set to the couch.
Two players works. Six players works better. The game gets funnier the more people are watching you decide whether to roll again.
How a turn works
Roll all six dice.
Look at what came up. Any dice that score on their own or as part of a combination can be set aside. You have to set aside at least one scoring die every roll, but you don’t have to set aside all of them. That choice is the whole game.
Now you pick. Bank the points you’ve accumulated this turn and pass the dice, or roll whatever’s left and try to add more. If that next roll produces nothing scoring at all, you farkle: your entire turn total goes to zero and play passes left.
Say you roll 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 6. The two 1s score 100 each. Nothing else does. You set aside both 1s for 200, and you’re left with four dice. Roll them and you might get another 1, or a 5, or three of a kind. Or you might get 2, 3, 4, 6 and lose the lot.
Hot dice
If all six dice end up scoring, you have hot dice. Pick all six back up and keep rolling, carrying your turn total with you. There’s no cap on this. Long hot-dice runs are how someone jumps from 800 to 4,500 in a single turn, and they’re the reason nobody leaves the table.
Getting on the board: the 500-point rule
Most groups add an entry threshold. You can’t bank anything until you score 500 or more in a single turn, so until then you’re at zero no matter how many 100s you’ve walked away from.
This is a variant rather than part of the core game. Wikipedia and Dice Game Depot both list it that way, and both note that 1,000 is a common alternative threshold. Some tables skip it entirely.
Keep it if you want the early turns to have teeth. It makes the opening minutes pure gambling, because a cautious 300 gets recorded as nothing.
Farkle scoring table
| Combination | Points |
|---|---|
| Single 1 | 100 |
| Single 5 | 50 |
| Three 1s | 1,000 |
| Three 2s | 200 |
| Three 3s | 300 |
| Three 4s | 400 |
| Three 5s | 500 |
| Three 6s | 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 | 750 |
| Two triplets | 2,500 |
Only 1s and 5s score as individual dice. A lone 3 is worth nothing. A lone 2 is worth nothing. That’s why a roll of 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6 is a farkle even though it looks busy.
Three of a kind is worth the face value times 100, with 1s as the exception at 1,000 rather than 100. Sets of three must come from a single roll. You can’t build a triple across two rolls by setting aside one 4, then another 4, then a third.
The variants worth knowing
Farkle is a folk game, so the scoring table above is one common version rather than an official one. Published rule sets agree on the 1s, the 5s, and three of a kind, then split on everything made from all six dice.
| Combination | Values in print |
|---|---|
| Straight 1-6 | 1,000, 1,500, 2,500, or 3,000 |
| Three pairs | 750, 1,500, or 2,000 |
| Two triplets | 2,500 or 3,000 |
The rules at farkle.games put a straight at 1,000 and three pairs at 750. Dice Game Depot’s rules put a straight at 3,000 and three pairs at 1,500. Wikipedia’s standard table uses 2,500 and 1,500. None of them is more official than the others, so pick a column and write it on the score sheet.
Four, five, and six of a kind change too. The table above uses flat values. Plenty of groups instead double the three-of-a-kind score for each extra matching die, so four 4s is 800, five 4s is 1,600, six 4s is 3,200. Both methods are common.
Stealing the previous player’s points. In this variant, if the player before you banked, you can pick up their remaining dice and continue their total instead of starting fresh. It speeds things up and makes the endgame nastier.
Agree on all of these out loud before the first roll. Farkle house rules are inherited from whoever taught you, and two people at the same table often learned different games.
Winning
Once a player banks a total of 10,000 or more, everyone else gets one final turn. Highest score after that final round wins, so reaching 10,000 first doesn’t guarantee anything. A rival sitting on 8,200 with hot dice can still take it from you.
Shorter game? Play to 5,000. It cuts the running time roughly in half without changing how any turn feels.
Strategy: when to stop rolling
The honest answer is that most people roll too much.
Every roll risks the whole turn total. With one die left you need a 1 or a 5, and each of those lands 16.67% of the time, so most single-die rolls end the turn with nothing. Two dice left is still a real gamble. The more dice you have left, the safer the roll, which is why hot dice are so tempting: six fresh dice farkle rarely.
A rough guide that holds up: bank at three dice or fewer once your turn total is above 750, unless you’re chasing the leader in the final round. Push harder when you’re behind and softer when you’re ahead. That’s it. Farkle isn’t a deep game and pretending otherwise makes it less fun.
One more thing. When you roll 1, 1, 5, and you need 500 to get on the board, you’re at 250 with three dice left. Rolling is correct there. Banking gets you nothing.
Six dice produce 46656 equally likely outcomes, and rolling all six as 1s hits exactly one of them: 1/46656, or 0%.
If you want to see how the numbers behave as you add dice, the dice probability guide covers it. For other games in the same family, the dice games overview lists what each one needs, and you can roll dice online for any of them without hunting down a physical set.
FAQ
How many dice do you need for Farkle?
Six dice. Standard six-sided dice, nothing special. One shared set works for any number of players since only one person rolls at a time. Some retail versions include a cup and a scorepad, but neither changes the rules. A pen and paper covers scorekeeping fine.
What is a Farkle?
A farkle is a roll that produces no scoring dice at all. No 1s, no 5s, no three of a kind, no straight, no three pairs. When it happens, every point you’d accumulated during that turn is wiped out and your turn ends immediately. Points already banked in earlier turns are safe.
How many points do you need to get on the board in Farkle?
500 points in a single turn at most tables. The threshold is a popular variant rather than a core rule, and 1,000 is the common alternative. Some groups drop it entirely for a quicker game. Once you’re on the board, you can bank any amount on later turns.
What are hot dice in Farkle?
Hot dice happen when all six of your dice score in a single turn. You pick up all six and roll again, keeping your running turn total. There’s no limit to how many times this can chain. Hot-dice streaks are the main way players post four-figure turns.
Do three pairs score in Farkle?
Usually yes, and it’s the most disputed value in the game. Published rule sets score three pairs at 750, 1,500, or 2,000, and a few groups don’t score it at all. The farkle.games rules use 750, Dice Game Depot uses 1,500. Settle it before the first turn, not mid-game.
What score do you play to in Farkle?
10,000 points. When someone reaches it, every other player takes one more turn, and the highest total after that final round wins. Playing to 5,000 makes a noticeably shorter game and is a good choice with more than four players or with kids.