How to play Yacht
Yacht is a game of five dice and a score sheet for two to six players. Each turn you roll up to three times, keeping whatever dice you like between rolls, and then write what they make in one of thirteen boxes. When every box is full, the highest total wins.
- Players
- 2-6
- What you need
- Five dice and a score sheet
- How long
- About four minutes a player
What the game is
Yacht is an old public game, played with ordinary dice and a sheet of paper. The boxed game Yahtzee and the German Kniffel are both its children, and their rules are the ones nearly every family plays now, so they are the rules here.
It is luck you can steer. The dice are random, but which ones you keep, and which box you spend a roll on, is where good players pull ahead. A turn takes seconds, the whole table watches every roll, and anybody who can count to thirty can play.
A turn
- Roll all five dice.
- Tap the dice you want to keep. They move aside, ringed in brass. Tap one again to let it go.
- Roll the rest. You may do this twice, so a turn has at most three rolls.
- Pick an empty box on your sheet. The pad shows what the dice would score in every box you can use.
You may stop after any roll and score. A box the dice do not fit takes a nought, which you have to tap twice to be sure. Every box is used exactly once, so a game is thirteen turns each.
The upper boxes and the bonus
The upper half of the sheet is the ones, twos, threes, fours, fives and sixes. Each counts only the dice of its own face, so three fours in the fours box make 12.
If the six upper boxes add up to 63 or more, you get 35 more. Sixty-three is three of every face, so a sheet ahead of three of a kind in each upper box is on course. The pad keeps the count beside the bonus.
The lower boxes
- Three of a kind: at least three dice alike. Scores all five dice added up.
- Four of a kind: at least four alike. Scores all five dice added up.
- Full house: three of one face and two of another. Scores 25.
- Small straight: four faces in a row, such as 2, 3, 4 and 5. Scores 30.
- Large straight: all five in a row, 1 to 5 or 2 to 6. Scores 40.
- Yacht: all five dice alike. Scores 50.
- Chance: any dice at all. Scores all five added up.
The dice can fit several boxes at once. Five sixes are a yacht, but they are also four of a kind and three of a kind for 30, and 30 in the sixes. Which box to spend them on is the game.
Extra yachts and the joker
Roll a second yacht after you have already scored 50 in the yacht box, and it is worth 100 more. The 100 is added to your total and the dice still go in a box.
That box is chosen by the joker rule. If the upper box of the yacht’s face is empty, the dice must go there. If it is full, they may go in any empty lower box, where a full house and both straights take their full score. Only with every lower box full do they go in another upper box, for nothing. A yacht box already scored as a nought still plays the joker, but pays no 100. The setting turns all of this off.
The end
After thirteen rounds every box on every sheet is full. Each sheet adds its upper boxes, the bonus if it was earned, its lower boxes and any extra yachts, and the highest total wins. Level totals at the top share the game.
The first roll goes round the table from game to game, so nobody always plays last, which is a small advantage because the last player knows what the others reached.
Tactics
- Chase the upper bonus early. Three of a kind in the fives or sixes puts you ahead of the 63 you need, and 35 is more than most boxes score.
- Keep chance for a bad turn. It takes anything, so it is the box that saves a turn when the dice will not fit elsewhere.
- Two pairs is a good start on a full house, and three in a row (with a gap filled by a fourth) is a good start on a straight. Roll for the box that is still empty.
- When a box has to take a nought, give up the one you were least likely to fill: the ones, a yacht late in the game, or four of a kind.
Settings
Two to six players, any of them bots, on one phone or online. One setting changes the scoring.
| Setting | Standard | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Difficulty | Medium | Easy keeps the face it has most of and scores what is worth most now. Medium weighs every keep over the next roll. Hard and Perfect weigh every keep to the end of the turn and value each box against what it usually earns later, which averages close to the best possible play. |
| A second yacht | Scores 100 more and plays as a joker | With it off, a second yacht is just five alike: no 100, and no joker. |
Words
- Keep
- To hold a die back from the next roll. Kept dice stay as they are.
- Scratch
- To write a nought in a box because the dice do not fit any box you want to keep.
- Straight
- Dice in a row, whatever order they lie in. Four in a row is small and five is large.
- Joker
- A second yacht played into a lower box at that box’s full score, under the joker rule.
Every rule on this page is the one the app plays by. Change any of them on the game's own page before you start.