Farkle

Push-your-luck dice game. Roll six dice, keep the scoring ones, then bank your points or risk them on another roll. Roll no scorers and you lose the turn. Pile up the most over ten turns.

How to play

Tap Roll to throw the dice. Any dice that score are kept automatically and added to this turn's points.

Single 1s are worth 100 and single 5s are worth 50. Three of a kind score their face times one hundred — except three 1s, which are worth 1000. A full run of 1-2-3-4-5-6 or three pairs both score 1500.

After a roll you choose: Bank the turn's points into your score, or Roll the remaining dice for more. If a roll produces no scoring dice at all, that is a Farkle — you lose everything unbanked this turn. If all six dice end up scored, you get hot dice and roll all six again with your points safe so far.

The game lasts ten turns. Bank too cautiously and you fall behind; push too hard and a Farkle wipes you out. Aim for the highest total.

Tips & strategy

The single most important number in Farkle is your dice count, not your points. Rolling six dice almost never busts, but a single die scores nothing about two times in three. As the dice you have left dwindle, the chance of a Farkle climbs steeply, so the same pile of points is far safer to gamble with six dice in hand than with one or two.

A good rule of thumb is to bank whenever you are down to one or two dice and already hold a worthwhile turn total. Re-rolling a lone die to chase another fifty points risks a much larger sum you have already earned — the maths rarely favours it. Keep rolling freely while you still have four or more dice, because the bust risk there is low.

Hot dice are the engine of big turns. Whenever all six dice score you refresh back to a full six with your total intact, so turns that snowball into the thousands almost always run through one or two hot-dice resets. Chasing hot dice with five or six dice in hand is the aggressive play that pays.

Because the game is only ten turns, watch the scoreboard and adjust. If you are ahead, bank early and protect your lead; if you are trailing late, you have nothing to lose by pushing a turn far past your usual comfort point. The best Farkle players are not the luckiest — they are the ones who quit each turn at the right moment.