Farkle
ZilchTen ThousandТысяча очков
Six dice, and after every roll the same choice: bank what you have or reroll the rest — but a roll that scores nothing burns the whole turn.
A player rolls six dice, sets aside the ones that score, and decides: bank what has been gathered or reroll the rest. Reroll well and the total grows; roll a blank — a — and the whole turn goes.
The whole game is in that choice, and it gets worse every time. After the first roll there are usually four dice on the table and not much at stake, so the risk is easy. After the third there are fifteen hundred points in hand, two dice left, and the chance of a blank has crept towards a third.
work apart from all that: if all six have scored, they are taken up again and the running total stays. That is how the enormous turns are built that people play Farkle for.
Six-sided dice
Under these rules: Six dice between everybody.
Ordinary gaming dice, pipped from one to six.
The most widespread randomiser people have invented. Opposite faces add up to seven — not a rule of any game but a convention of manufacture, and the thing by which a die is recognised.
Rules of Farkle
What you need
Six six-sided dice and something to keep score on.
Setup
Before the start the table agrees a target — usually ten thousand points — and the threshold at which .
Everyone rolls one die; the highest goes first, then play passes clockwise.
A turn
- Roll all six dice.
- Set aside at least one scoring die — more if you like.
- Choose: bank the running total and end the turn, or reroll the dice that are left.
- If a roll contains no scoring dice at all, the turn ends and scores nothing.
Non-scoring dice may not be set aside, and rolling fewer dice than remain is not allowed.
Hot dice
If at some point all six dice have been set aside and all of them score, the player takes all six again and carries on with the same turn, keeping what has been gathered.
Getting on the board
Until a player has banked the agreed minimum — commonly five hundred or a thousand — in a single turn, their points do not count at all. A turn short of the threshold is lost exactly as a farkle is.
Scoring
| Combination | Points |
|---|---|
| A single 1 | 100 |
| A single 5 | 50 |
| Three of a kind | the number × 100 |
| Three 1s | 1000 |
| Four of a kind | 1000 |
| Five of a kind | 2000 |
| Six of a kind | 3000 |
| Straight 1–2–3–4–5–6 | 1500 |
| Three pairs | 1500 |
Only 1s and 5s score on their own. A lone 3 is worth nothing and does not count as a scoring die.
End of the game
The player who reaches the target says so, and a final round begins: everybody else gets one more turn to overtake them.
The highest total at the end of that round wins.
Worth knowing
The scoring table is where the game differs most: the commonest one is given here, but commercial editions and households count otherwise, especially for four, five and six of a kind. The opening threshold is given as five hundred or a thousand, and the target as five thousand or ten. The penalty for three blank turns in a row, and the rule letting you take over somebody's unbanked total, are not played everywhere.
Glossary of terms
- A farkle
- A roll with no scoring dice in it at all. The turn ends at once and everything gathered in it is lost.
- Getting on the board
- Banking an agreed minimum in a single turn before any points are recorded at all.
- Hot dice
- The state where all six dice have scored. They are taken up again and the same turn continues.