Yahtzee is one of those games that was just part of the wallpaper when I was a kid. Everybody had it, everybody knew it, and, if push came to shove, everybody knew the 13 lines of the traditional yahtzee scorecard so all you really needed was pencil, paper, and five dice.
Well, it turns out, one of my dear friends had never played it before. Like, *EVER*. So I broke the game down for him.
See that scorecard above? Well, the small straight and large straights seem good at first but you’re probably going to roll multiple small straights throughout the game. You quickly move from being pleased to being irritated.
Like, the best (reasonably) possible roll on the first throw of the game is 2, 3, 4, 5 and a double of something in there. Re-roll the double, right? You’ve got a 1/3 chance to roll a 1 or a 6. And since you can throw twice more, you’ve got a 2/3 chance, right?
Well, since you’re going to miss on both tosses, you fill out “small straight” and now you only have 12 more chances to go.
When it comes to the other lines, part of the issue is the eternal fight between the perfect and the good.
Yesterday, I found myself with 4 1s and a 5. I had not yet placed “4 of a kind”. I had not yet placed “Aces”.
So I was stuck with the conundrum of whether I wanted:
1) To take care of 9 points in “4 of a kind” and leave “Aces” open for a failed roll elsewhere
2) To get 4 points in “Aces” and think “maybe I’ll get 4 5s or 4 6s next time around!”
I went with the obvious choice.
A few rolls later, I had 3 6s and 2 5s.
For that, my choice was easy given that I already had 18 points in “Sixes”.
The choice was between “Full House” and “Three of a Kind”.
Again, I went with the obvious choice.
At the start of the game, my buddy was throwing perfect rolls. He got “Full House”, “Small Straight”, “Large Straight”, and, get this, “Yahtzee” in his first 6 turns.
But slow and steady wins the race and he stalled out *HARD* in the upper section after steamrolling through the lower section.
It’s a game where you go from having “13 turns! Holy cow! That is so very many!” to “I only rolled 2 fives. Now what? This ruins everything.”
He tells me he dreamt of Yahtzee last night.
So today we get to do it again.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is Photo of Risk dice by Val42 via Wikimedia Commons)
The girls wanted to play halfway through our game and so we told them that they could roll for us instead.
I was behind, then the eldest rolled a Yahtzee for me on my last last roll.Report
I’m not sure that I’ve ever _actually_ played Yahtzee, come to think of it. It strikes me that it would make a pretty good drinking game, were I about a hundred years younger!Report
It’s an amazing game. 75% luck, 25% skill. Grampa can reliably beat the kiddos, but if the dice ain’t with him, the kiddos can mop the floor with him.Report
I maintain that the best way to very quickly understand anybody’s intuitive grasp of probability is to play three games of Triple Yahtzee with them. By the third game you’re ready to play poker with them.Report