Farkle is a push-your-luck dice game for 2-6 players. It’s quite fun and there’s something rather lovely about having super-high scores.
Preparation
You will need six regular 6-sided dice. If you can’t find any, you can ask google to roll some for you. You’ll need paper and pencil for scoring and you’ll want to download a copy of my Farkle scoring guide to refer to as you play.
Aim
Your aim is to be the player with the most points when the game ends. The game will end at the end of the round in which at least one player has reached 10,000 points.
How to Score
You will score according to the dice values you throw.
Ones and Fives are special and will always score points.
You’ll also score points from sets of the same number multiple times and for straights.
Refer to the scoring guide on the left for all the scoring combinations.
How to play
On each round every player has a turn. Play progresses in a clockwise order around the table.
On your turn:
- Roll all six dice.
- Set aside at least one scoring die. (Refer to the scoring guide.)
- Now, you may choose to continue and re-roll the remaining dice, or you may choose to stop.
- If you choose to re-roll: Re-roll all the remaining dice. Again, you must set aside at least one scoring die. As long as you have set aside scoring dice, you may always choose to re-roll the remaining dice again.
- You may NOT add dice rolled to previous rolls to score higher. For example, if you roll 2 fives on your first roll and 2 fives on your second roll, you score these rolls independently.
- If you choose to stop: Total your score for the round and add it to the scoresheet. Play now passes to the next player.
- If you get no scoring dice on a throw, this is known as a Farkle. You score nothing for your whole turn and play passes to the next player. In other words, all throws must produce at least one scoring die. So if you throw 3 ones on your first throw and you decide re-roll the remaining (non-scoring) dice, then on your second throw the 3 remaining dice are all non-scoring, you lose the 300 points you would have scored from your 3 ones.
Keep playing until one player has reached 10,000 points. All players have the same number of turns, then the player with the highest score wins.
Variation: You may like to add the rule that if one player scores from all six dice, then they can re-roll all six dice one more time and add the score from this final roll to their total score for this round.
If you want to test out the game online before you play with others, you can do so here.
If you like dice games, you should also try Five Dice Pig.