Yahtzee Rules: Full Scorecard, Scoring, and Bonuses
Yahtzee uses five dice and runs for 13 rounds. On each turn you roll up to three times, keeping the dice you want between rolls, then you must fill exactly one empty box on your scorecard. Five of a kind is a Yahtzee, worth 50 points. Highest grand total after 13 rounds wins.
What a turn looks like
Roll all five dice.
Look at what you got, decide which dice to keep, and reroll the rest. You get two rerolls, so three rolls total. You can keep and release dice however you like between rolls. Set aside three 4s on the first roll, then change your mind and reroll one of them on the second. That’s legal.
You can also stop early. If your first roll is 5-5-5-5-5, there’s no reason to touch it.
When your rolls are done, write a score in one empty box. One box per turn, no exceptions, which is why the game lasts exactly 13 rounds. Thirteen boxes, thirteen turns.
If your dice don’t fit anything useful, you have to zero out a box anyway. Choosing which box to sacrifice is most of the skill in Yahtzee.
You can roll five at once in the dice roller if your set has gone missing.
The Yahtzee scorecard
Upper section
| Category | What counts | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Ones | Any 1s | Sum of the 1s |
| Twos | Any 2s | Sum of the 2s |
| Threes | Any 3s | Sum of the 3s |
| Fours | Any 4s | Sum of the 4s |
| Fives | Any 5s | Sum of the 5s |
| Sixes | Any 6s | Sum of the 6s |
Only the matching dice count. Roll 3-3-3-5-6 and score it in Threes, and you get 9.
Lower section
| Category | What counts | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Three of a Kind | Three or more of the same number | Total of all five dice |
| Four of a Kind | Four or more of the same number | Total of all five dice |
| Full House | Three of one number and two of another | 25 |
| Small Straight | Four sequential numbers, such as 2-3-4-5 | 30 |
| Large Straight | Five sequential numbers, 1-2-3-4-5 or 2-3-4-5-6 | 40 |
| Yahtzee | Five of the same number | 50 |
| Chance | Anything at all | Total of all five dice |
Three of a Kind and Four of a Kind score the whole roll, not just the matching dice. Roll 6-6-6-5-4 in Three of a Kind and you score 27.
Full House, the straights, and Yahtzee are fixed. A Full House of 6-6-6-5-5 scores 25, same as 2-2-2-1-1.
Chance takes any five dice and scores the total. It’s the escape hatch for a turn that produced nothing, and it’s the box people waste too early. The average total of five dice is 17.5, so anything below that is a poor use of Chance unless you’re out of options.
The 63-point upper bonus
Score 63 or more across the six upper boxes and you add a 35-point bonus.
Where does 63 come from? Three of each number. Three 1s is 3, three 2s is 6, three 3s is 9, and so on up to three 6s at 18. Add those and you get 63. So the bonus is designed to reward you for averaging three of each number across the upper section.
That’s the practical way to track it. In each upper box, three of that number is par, four puts you ahead, two puts you behind. Four 6s banks 24, six points of credit, which covers a turn where you only manage two 2s.
The bonus is worth chasing. Thirty-five points is bigger than a Large Straight.
The Yahtzee bonus and the Joker rule
Five of a kind scores 50 in the Yahtzee box. Roll a second one later in the same game and things get interesting.
Each additional Yahtzee after the first is worth a 100-point bonus, and there’s no cap on how many you can collect. One condition: your Yahtzee box has to already show 50. If you crossed out the Yahtzee box with a zero earlier in the game, you get no bonus for any Yahtzee you roll afterward.
You still have to record the roll somewhere, which is where the Joker rule comes in. The official version works as a sequence:
- If the matching upper box is open, you have to use it. Roll five 4s and your Fours box is empty, it goes there for 20.
- If that upper box is taken, put it in any open lower box. The Yahtzee acts as a joker, so Full House scores its full 25, Small Straight scores 30, and Large Straight scores 40, even though five identical dice obviously aren’t a straight.
- If the matching upper box and every lower box are full, you have to zero an open upper box.
Some published editions use a free-choice version instead, where you pick any open box, and the joker values only apply once the matching upper box is used. Both are documented. The forced version above is the one printed with standard Yahtzee.
Winning
Add the upper section, the 35-point bonus if you earned it, the lower section, and any Yahtzee bonuses. Highest grand total wins.
There’s no elimination and no interaction between players. Everyone plays their own 13 turns, and turns can be taken simultaneously if you have enough dice, which is how most families speed the game up.
Odds worth knowing
Five dice produce 7776 equally likely outcomes.
Exactly one of those is five 6s, so the chance of throwing five 6s on a single roll is 1/7776, or 0.01%. Any of the other five numbers is just as unlikely on a cold roll, and you get three rolls per turn to build a Yahtzee rather than one shot at it.
Which is the real lesson. Yahtzee is a game of keeping pairs and triples across rerolls, not of hitting jackpots cold. The dice probability guide covers how five-dice outcomes spread out if you want the fuller picture.
Strategy that actually helps
Protect the upper bonus early. Dumping a weak roll into Sixes for 6 points costs you 12 against par and usually costs you the 35.
Zero the Ones box when you need a sacrifice. It’s the cheapest box on the card, worth at most 5.
Don’t take a Small Straight when you have four to a Large Straight and rolls left. The 10-point difference is worth one reroll.
Keep Chance for late. It’s the only box that can absorb any roll, so spending it in round two on a total of 18 is a waste.
Where Yahtzee came from
Edwin S. Lowe first marketed the game as Yahtzee in 1956. The commonly repeated origin story, told by Lowe himself, is that a Canadian couple played it on their yacht and called it the Yacht Game, and that Lowe bought the rights from them.
Milton Bradley bought the E.S. Lowe company in 1973, and the game belongs to Hasbro today. It sits in a family of earlier dice games including Yacht and Generala, both of which use the same idea of rolling for named combinations.
FAQ
How many dice are in Yahtzee?
Five dice. Standard six-sided dice, and the retail box includes a shaker cup for them. All five get rolled on the first roll of every turn, and you can reroll any of them twice more. No version of Yahtzee uses a different number of dice.
How many rounds are in a game of Yahtzee?
Thirteen. The scorecard has thirteen boxes, six in the upper section and seven in the lower, and each turn you have to fill exactly one of them. The game ends when every player’s card is full, so a game is short regardless of how many people are playing.
What is the 63-point bonus in Yahtzee?
Score 63 or more total across the six upper section boxes and you add 35 points. 63 is what you get from three of each number: three 1s, three 2s, and so on up to three 6s. Averaging three of each number through the upper section earns it.
How many points is a second Yahtzee worth?
100 points, and every Yahtzee after that is worth another 100 with no limit. The catch is that your Yahtzee box must already show 50. If you scored a zero there before rolling your first Yahtzee, you forfeit the bonus for the rest of the game.
What is the Joker rule in Yahtzee?
It tells you where to record an extra Yahtzee. The matching upper box gets used first if it’s open. If it isn’t, you pick any open lower box, and Full House, Small Straight, and Large Straight pay their full 25, 30, and 40 despite the dice not matching. If everything’s full, you zero an upper box.
Can you reroll dice you already set aside?
Yes. Nothing is locked between rolls. If you keep three 5s on your first roll and then roll two more 5s, you can pick the earlier dice back up and reroll them. Players often forget this, and it matters when you switch targets partway through a turn.
Yahtzee scratches the same itch as Farkle, which trades the scorecard for push-your-luck banking. More options are listed on the dice games page, and you can roll dice online for any of them.