How to play Yacht, and how to score it

Each turn you roll five dice up to three times, then score them in one row of your card. You can't pass: every turn ends with a score.

• Tap Roll. The first roll throws all five dice.
• Tap the dice you want to keep. Kept dice stay where they are, and the next roll throws only the others.
• Roll again if you want, up to three rolls in all. You choose your keepers again before each roll, so you can let go of a die you kept last time.
• Stop whenever the dice are good enough. You can score after the first or second roll.
• Tap a row to see what it scores, then tap Score. Every row you can still use shows its points faintly, so you can compare them first.

The card has 13 rows: six at the top and seven at the bottom. Each row takes one score and is then used for the rest of the game, even if that score is 0. When your dice fit no free row, you still have to pick one and take a 0 in it.

A few details catch people out. Five the same is not a full house (only the joker rule below makes it one). A large straight also counts as a small straight, so 1-2-3-4-5 can go in either. And a Yacht counts as three or four of a kind too, if you'd rather keep the Yacht row for later.

• Ones, Twos, Threes, Fours, Fives, Sixes: the total of the dice showing that number. Three 5s in Fives is 15. Two 1s in Ones is 2.
• Three of a kind: at least three dice the same. It scores the total of all five dice, so 6, 6, 6, 4, 2 is 24.
• Four of a kind: at least four the same, also the total of all five. 3, 3, 3, 3, 5 is 17.
• Full house: three of one number and two of another. Always 25.
• Small straight: four numbers in a row (1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-5 or 3-4-5-6), with the fifth die anything. Always 30.
• Large straight: five in a row (1-2-3-4-5 or 2-3-4-5-6). Always 40.
• Yacht: all five dice the same. 50 points.
• Chance: any five dice, scored as their total.

Add up your six top rows. If they come to 63 or more, you get 35 extra points. 63 is exactly three of each number: 3 + 6 + 9 + 12 + 15 + 18 = 63. Until you reach it, the Bonus row on the card shows how far you've got, like 41/63.

You don't need exactly three of each. A fourth die of a number makes up for a number that came up short. Ones 2, Twos 4, Threes 9, Fours 16, Fives 15 and Sixes 18 add up to 64: one short in Ones and two short in Twos, paid back by a fourth Four.

The rows aren't equal, though. 63 over six rows is 10.5 a row on average, but Sixes needs 18 and Ones only 3. Missing Ones by a die costs you 1 point toward the bonus. Missing Sixes by a die costs 6.

The bonus is never safe. Our computer's own estimates of what the six top rows average under good play add up to 62.9, just under the line, so even careful play misses it in some games.

Score a Yacht for 50, and every Yacht you roll after that in the same game earns a 100-point bonus on top of what it scores. Each one adds a star to your Yacht box (the card has room for four).

An extra Yacht still has to go in a row, and you don't get a free choice. The joker rule decides, and it applies whenever you score five the same while your Yacht box already has a score, 50 or 0. With a 0 there you follow the same rule but get no 100 bonus, so a zero in the Yacht row gives up every later bonus too. The rows you're not allowed to use are dimmed on the card.

Say your Yacht box holds 50, your Fours row is already used, and you roll five 4s. Put them in Large straight: 40, plus the 100 bonus, is 140 from one turn.

• If the top row for that number is free, the Yacht goes there. Five 4s in Fours score 20.
• If that top row is used, pick any free bottom row, and it scores in full: 25 in Full house, 30 in Small straight, 40 in Large straight, or the dice's total in Three of a kind, Four of a kind or Chance.
• If every bottom row is used as well, it goes in any free top row for 0.

Players take whole turns one after the other: one player rolls and scores, then the other. With 13 rows each, that's 13 turns each, and the game ends when both cards are full.

Your total is your six top rows, plus 35 if you made the bonus, plus your seven bottom rows, plus 100 for each extra Yacht. The higher total wins. If the totals are equal, the game is a draw.

Against the computer you always roll first. Online, Play again swaps the seats, so whoever went second goes first in the next game.

Our Hard computer averages about 240 a game on this card. A player who chases a Yacht every turn, keeping whichever number they have most of, averages about 162 with the same dice.

• Aim for three of a number in each top row. Three 5s in Fives keeps you on track for the bonus. Two 5s leaves you 5 short, to make up somewhere else.
• Three and four of a kind count all five dice, so high numbers pay. Three 6s with a 5 and a 4 is 27. Three 2s with a 1 and a 3 is only 10.
• When a roll fits nothing, take your zero in the cheapest row. Ones is worth 5 at most, and our computer reckons it averages under 2 points under good play. A zero in the Yacht row costs about 17 points on the same estimates, and every 100-point bonus you might have had.
• Keep Chance for an emergency. Good play gets about 22 points out of it, and five random dice add up to 17.5 on average. Spend it early on a so-so roll and there's nowhere safe left for a bad one.
• Chasing a Yacht: with four the same and two rolls left, you'll finish it 30.6% of the time, about 1 in 3: you miss only if both rolls miss, and 5/6 × 5/6 is 69.4%. With four the same and one roll left, it's 1 in 6. With three the same and two rolls left, only 9.3%, about 1 in 11.
• Chasing a large straight: four in a row that's open at both ends, like 2-3-4-5, needs a 1 or a 6. That's 1 in 3 on one roll and 5 in 9 (55.6%) with two. 1-2-3-4 or 3-4-5-6 has only one way out, 1 in 6 on one roll.
• Two pairs: reroll the odd die. One roll gives you a full house 1 in 3 times (a match for either pair does it), and two rolls 5 in 9.
• Don't chase Yachts at any price. Keeping your most common number every turn gets a Yacht in about 4.6% of turns, the most any way of playing can manage. Hard gets one in about 3.5% of turns and still scores about 80 more a game, because it plays for the whole card.

Yahtzee is a trademark of Hasbro, and ScampLabs has no link with Hasbro. Yacht is an older five-dice game, and its traditional scorecard isn't the same as ours: some of its rows score differently. If you learned Yacht from an old book of rules, expect a few changes.

Our card is the Yahtzee-style one: 13 rows, three and four of a kind, a 25-point full house, straights for 30 and 40, Chance, 50 for a Yacht, 35 for 63 in the top rows, and 100 for each extra Yacht with the joker rule. If you've played Yahtzee, you already know how to play ours.

Easy keeps whichever number it has most of (the higher number if two are tied), rolls all three times unless it already has a Yacht, and then scores the row that pays the most points right now. It never saves a row or thinks about the bonus. In our tests it averages about 161 a game.

Medium thinks about the whole card when it scores: a row's points, minus what that row usually earns if it's kept for later, plus credit toward the 35 bonus. When it picks dice to keep, it looks only one roll ahead, and one time in four it takes its second-best choice. It averages about 222.

Hard scores the same way, but it works out the odds of every possible reroll through both rolls left, so it plans its whole turn. It averages about 241, where perfect play on a card of your own averages about 255. None of the levels look at your card, only their own.

None of them can see a roll before it happens either. The dice are drawn after the computer has picked its keepers, and its plan comes from the odds of every outcome, never the next dice. We checked 100,000 games in each mode: every number comes up a sixth of the time, and the computer gets no more Yachts than the odds allow.

Start on Easy or Medium. Hard averages about 80 points more than Easy, so beating it takes good top rows and well-chosen zeros, not just luck with the dice.

It’s free in your browser, with no sign-up. Play Yacht against the computer, with a friend on the same screen, or send a friend a link and play online. Or tap Quick match to play someone new.

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