Yatzy Strategy: Chasing the Upper Bonus and Picking the Right Box

Updated October 2026

A game of Yatzy lasts exactly thirteen turns, and every turn ends with one box on the scorecard filled for good. That makes the game less about lucky rolls and more about bookkeeping: which box a roll belongs in, which boxes you can still afford to spoil, and how far you are from the 35-point bonus. This guide walks through the scoring rules exactly as this version implements them, the odds behind the common chases, and a turn-by-turn way of thinking that keeps your total high even when the dice are cold.

The scorecard in this version

There are thirteen boxes. The six number boxes add up only the dice showing that face, so three 4s and two 6s score 12 in the 4s box and 12 in the 6s box. The seven combination boxes work like this:

• 3 Kind and 4 Kind score the total of all five dice when at least three (or four) dice match.
• Full House is a flat 25 for exactly three of one face plus two of another. Five matching dice do not count as a full house here, so do not plan to drop a Yatzy into that box.
• Small St. is a flat 30 for any four faces in a row (1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-5 or 3-4-5-6). Large St. is a flat 40 for 1-2-3-4-5 or 2-3-4-5-6.
• Yatzy! is 50 for five of a kind. A second Yatzy earns nothing extra; there is no bonus box and no joker rule.
• Chance takes the sum of the dice with no condition.

If the six number boxes reach 63 or more, 35 points are added to your total. Add everything up and the best possible game is 375: 105 from the number boxes, the 35 bonus, 30 each in 3 Kind, 4 Kind and Chance, then 25, 30, 40 and 50 for the fixed combos.

Each turn gives you up to three rolls. You cannot hold dice before the first roll, and the category buttons stay locked until the dice have been rolled once. After that, tapping a die toggles a hold, and the Roll button greys out if every die is held. The live numbers on each unused box show exactly what the current dice would score there, including zeros, so you never need to add up by hand.

Think of 63 as "par"

The 63 target is precisely three of each face: 3 + 6 + 9 + 12 + 15 + 18. A useful habit is to score every number box against that par. Four 5s is 20, which is five points over par for that box. Two 6s is 12, six points under. Keep a running sense of whether you are over or under, and you will know at a glance whether the bonus is safe or slipping away.

The scorecard shows "Upper" progress as a fraction of 63, but par thinking tells you more, because faces differ in how much they can recover. Low faces can only claw back a point or two: four 1s is 1 over par, and even five 2s is only 4 over. High faces can rescue a real deficit, since four 6s is 6 over and five 6s is 12 over. So a deficit is cheap to carry while the 5s and 6s are still open and expensive once they are filled. That is the main reason to save big rolls of high faces for the number boxes.

Here is why the bonus is hard. In our simulation, rerolling every non-matching die for a chosen face across three rolls leaves you with about 2.1 of that face on average, and only about 35 percent of turns finish with three or more. So you cannot hit par box by box by force. You hit it by banking extra 5s and 6s when they arrive naturally, then accepting a slightly short 1s or 2s box later.

The odds behind each chase

Knowing roughly how often a plan works helps you decide when to start one. These figures come from our own simulation of a whole turn (three rolls) with sensible holds, starting from a fresh roll:

• Yatzy: keeping the most common face and rerolling the rest gets five of a kind about 4.6 percent of the time.
• Three of a kind or better: the same holds reach it about three turns in four (roughly 75 percent).
• Four of a kind or better: about 29 percent.
• Small straight: keeping the longest run toward a four-in-a-row lands it about 59 percent of the time.
• Large straight: chasing a full five-run from scratch succeeds about 25 percent of the time. On the very first roll alone it shows up only about 3 percent of the time.
• Full house: holding your best pair or triple and filling around it worked about 36 percent of the time with our simple holds.
• Chance: rerolling anything under 5 on the second roll and anything under 4 on the third averages a little over 23 points, against 17.5 for a single unimproved roll.

Two lessons fall out of these numbers. First, a small straight is a far more reliable target than a large one, so when you have 2-3-4-5 after one roll, a 30 is close to guaranteed and the 40 is a real but not certain bonus. Second, chasing a Yatzy is only worth it when you already have three or four matching dice, or when the other boxes no longer need the roll.

Deciding where a roll goes

The hardest moments come after the third roll, when the dice fit nothing well. A few rules of thumb help:

• Prefer the box that loses the least, not the one that scores the most. Putting 22 into Chance on turn three may feel good, but Chance is your safety net for later. A 12 in the 4s box at par may be a better use of the same dice.
• Keep 3 Kind and 4 Kind for high faces. Since they score the sum of all five dice, three 6s with two big kickers can be worth 28 or more, while three 1s barely reach double figures.
• Choose your sacrifice early. When a turn collapses completely, a zero has to go somewhere. The 1s box costs at most 5 points and only 3 against par, which makes it the classic dump. Yatzy is the other common sacrifice late in the game, because its chance of ever filling is small.
• Do not zero a straight while it still has decent odds. With several turns left, a straight box is likely to fill eventually. Spoiling it on turn four throws away 30 or 40 points of expected value.

Planning across the thirteen turns

In the opening turns, take what the dice offer and stay flexible. If a first roll shows three 5s, chasing more 5s serves both the 5s box and the kinds boxes. If it shows a run, keep the run. Early on, you have many homes for a result, so you can let the dice choose the plan.

By the middle of the game, take stock. Count how many turns remain and which boxes are still open. If the upper section is ahead of par, you can spend turns on combos. If it is behind, high-face rolls should go to the number boxes even when they would make a decent 3 Kind.

Near the end, the plan is set by the boxes left. When only two or three remain, decide which of them you are rolling for before you hold anything, and hold toward the box with the best combination of points and odds. If you need one 6 for the bonus and also have Chance open, hold every 6 and let Chance absorb whatever arrives.

Small things that cost points

The New button in the corner is not a reset in this game. While you have points on the card, it ends the game immediately and shows the final total with the option to save it, so do not tap it by accident mid-game. Equally, it is easy to tap a box when you meant to tap a die; read the box's live value before you commit, because a scored box can never be changed. Finally, watch the hold highlight before rolling: a die you forgot to hold is gone.

Your best total is kept on your device, and any game that ends above zero can be submitted to the Hall of Fame from the final card. The bonus alone is worth more than a large straight, so a sensible first goal is to earn it in most of your games before worrying about anything else.