How to play Farkle
2–12 players
Farkle is a push-your-luck dice game played with six dice. Each turn you roll, set aside dice that score, and decide whether to bank your points or roll the rest again — but a roll with nothing that scores wipes out the whole turn. The first player to reach the target score sets off a final round, and the highest total wins.
What you need
Six ordinary dice, and a pen and paper to keep score.
How a turn works
- Push your luck with six dice. On your turn you roll all six, set aside at least one scoring die, and then choose: roll the dice you did NOT set aside to build the turn score higher, or bank what you have and pass.
- Every die you set aside must be part of a scoring combination. You cannot slip a dead 3 in alongside a 1, and a bare pair is not a combination.
- Roll nothing scoring at all and you FARKLE: the whole turn score is lost, however big it had grown, and your turn ends there.
- Set aside all six dice and you get HOT DICE — roll all six again, keeping everything you have accumulated. There is no limit to how far a hot streak can run.
Scoring
| Dice set aside | Points |
|---|---|
| Each 1 | 100 |
| Each 5 | 50 |
| Three 1s | 1,000 |
| Three of a kind (2–6) | the face × 100 |
| 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 | 1,500 |
| Four of a kind with a pair | 1,500 |
| Two triplets | 2,500 |
- The straight, three pairs, four of a kind with a pair, and two triplets each need all six dice, so they can only come from a roll of all six.
- You get the best reading of the dice you set aside, so you never have to declare what you meant by them. Four 1s, for instance, is worth 1,100 as three 1s plus a single 1 — better than the flat 1,000 for four of a kind.
- For a simpler game, drop every combination from four of a kind down and score only single 1s and 5s and three of a kind.
Winning
- Agree on a target before you start. 10,000 is the classic game; 5,000 or 2,500 makes a shorter one, which suits a big table.
- Some tables also make you score a minimum in a single turn — 500, say — before you can bank for the first time. Until you clear it you stay on zero.
- The first player to reach the target starts a final round: everyone else gets exactly one more turn. Then the highest total wins, whoever triggered it — and a genuine tie is shared.
Or let the TV keep score
[Placeholder: copy from Margaret — a sentence or two on playing this on Play Table.]