The game of Yahtzee hasn’t always been as popular as it is today, the games current owners claim that they sell up to 50 million Yahtzee dice games every year, but these sales haven’t always been the case. Yahtzee, first filed in 1956 for a trademark, struggled in its early years to set any gaming fans pulses racing, that was until the idea of having Yahtzee dice game parties in homes was introduced with the idea of spreading the word about Yahtzee by means of word of mouth, this had a very positive effect and helped immensely in making Yahtzee a very popular household dice game.

So what are the basics of Yahtzee?

The idea or object in a game of Yahtzee is to roll five dice in certain combinations, with thirteen combinations needed in each game, the players take it in turns and in each turn there is the option of up to three rolls of the dice for each player with each combination needed giving different scoring possibilities. No combination can be used twice and once all thirteen combinations in a Yahtzee dice game have been scored by all the players the totals are totalled up, any bonus’s added and the player with the highest total is the winner of that game of Yahtzee.

The Yahtzee scorecard has two parts, an upper and lower section with six combinations or ‘categories’ in the upper section and seven in the lower. With each turn, each player rolls the five dice and then has the option to ‘keep’ whichever dice they feel will be the most helpful to them in obtaining a scoring combination which hasn’t already been scored before rolling the dice again, with up to a maximum of three rolls allowed in each turn to reach or get a scoring combination. After each turn the player must make a decision in which category they want to mark their score. If no category is left corresponding to the rolled dice the player must choose an un-scored category to use and score that category zero. There are bonus points available for the top section and also extra points for a second and any subsequent Yahtzee scores.