What Is Yacht?
Yacht is a dice game for one or more players, played with five dice over 12 rounds. Each turn you roll up to three times, keeping the dice you want, then write the result into one of 12 scoring boxes. Each box is used once, and the highest total after 12 rounds wins.
It is the older game that Yahtzee, Hasbro's commercial version, grew from, and it scores differently: no bonus for the six number boxes, a Full House worth the total of its dice, two straights worth 30 each, and nothing extra for a second Yacht. You can play it above, alone or against up to three computer players.
| Players | One or more; here, you alone or with up to three computer players |
|---|---|
| Dice | Five standard six-sided dice |
| Rolls per turn | Up to three: one roll and two re-rolls |
| Rounds | 12, one for each scoring box |
| Bonuses | None |
| Highest possible score | 297 |
| Average with perfect play | 167 (solo, computed exactly) |
How to Play Yacht
Roll five dice up to three times, keep whatever helps, and fill one scoring box per turn until all 12 are full. The highest total wins.
- Roll all five dice. Start your turn by rolling all five dice. In the game on this page the first roll happens by itself when your turn begins.
- Keep what helps. Set aside any dice you want to keep and re-roll the others. In our game you click a die to hold it, and click it again to let it go.
- Re-roll up to twice. You get two re-rolls, so three rolls in all. You may pick up a die you kept earlier, and you may stop after any roll.
- Score one box. Choose an empty box on your score sheet and enter what the dice are worth there. If they do not fit the box, it scores 0 and is still used up.
- Play 12 rounds. Pass the dice on. Each player fills one box a turn, so the game ends when everyone has filled all 12.
- Add up the totals. Total the 12 boxes. Yacht has no bonuses, and the highest total wins.
Yacht Rules and Scoring
Yacht has 12 boxes. The six number boxes count one face each, three combination boxes pay the total of their dice, and three pay a fixed 30 or 50. No box pays a bonus.
| Box | Counts when | Scores | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ones | Any roll | Total of the 1s (max 5) | = 2 |
| Twos | Any roll | Total of the 2s (max 10) | = 6 |
| Threes | Any roll | Total of the 3s (max 15) | = 9 |
| Fours | Any roll | Total of the 4s (max 20) | = 8 |
| Fives | Any roll | Total of the 5s (max 25) | = 20 |
| Sixes | Any roll | Total of the 6s (max 30) | = 18 |
| Full House | Three of one number and two of another | Total of all five dice (max 28) | = 28 |
| Four of a Kind | At least four dice alike | Total of those four dice only (max 24) | = 24 |
| Little Straight | 1-2-3-4-5, in any order | 30 | = 30 |
| Big Straight | 2-3-4-5-6, in any order | 30 | = 30 |
| Choice | Any roll | Total of all five dice (max 30) | = 20 |
| Yacht | All five dice alike | 50 | = 50 |
Rulings that settle arguments
- Five of a kind is not a Full House. A Full House needs two different numbers, so 6-6-6-6-6 scores 0 there. It does count as Four of a Kind, which pays four of the dice: 24.
- Any roll can go in any empty box. If the dice do not fit, the box scores 0 and is used up. Late in a game you often have to choose which box to give up.
- Kept dice are not locked. Before your third roll you can pick up a die you kept after the first roll and roll it again.
- The straights are fixed. Only 1-2-3-4-5 and 2-3-4-5-6 count, in any order. Four dice in a row score nothing as a straight.
- No bonuses of any kind. High number boxes earn nothing extra, and a second Yacht scores only in whichever box you put it.
- Highest and lowest totals. The best possible game is 297: 105 from the number boxes, 28 for 6-6-6-5-5, 24 for four 6s, 30 for each straight, 30 in Choice, and 50 for the Yacht. The worst possible game is 5, because Choice always scores at least 5, the total of five 1s.
These are the rules our game plays. Its scorecard labels the straights Sm. Straight and Lg. Straight and shows an Upper Total for the six number boxes, but that total earns no bonus.
Some websites and apps attach the name Yacht to Yahtzee's rules, with 13 boxes and a 35-point bonus. The rules here are the original 12-box game, which was in print by 1938. The differences between Yacht and Yahtzee are set out further down.
Play Yacht Against the Computer
Pick 1 (Solo) or 2 to 4 players from the menu at the top of the game. You always take the first seat, and every other seat is a computer player. Changing the number starts a new game.
Your first roll is made for you. Click dice to hold them, press Roll to throw the rest, and pick a box from the Available column, which shows what every open box would score with the dice on the table. An unfinished game is saved in your browser and picks up where you left it. There is no undo, no pass-and-play mode, and no online play.
The computer players use the strategy that gives the highest average score under these rules, the same one our strategy section describes: every hold and every box is the choice worth the most points, on average, over the rest of the game. They stop on a made straight while its box is open and keep a Full House of high dice such as 5-5-6-6-6, but early in a game they break 2-2-6-6-6 to roll two dice at the 6s. Now and then they take a 0, usually in Yacht or Ones, rather than spend a box that is worth more later. In a million simulated solo games with seeded dice they averaged 167 points, the average of perfect play. They play for their own score and ignore yours.
Yacht Score Sheet
Print this sheet to play Yacht at a table with five dice and a pencil. It lists the 12 boxes in the order our game uses, what each one pays, and six blank columns, one for each player or for six games in a row. To keep score on a phone instead, use the Yacht score keeper: it adds every column as you go, holds up to eight players, and also has a 13-box sheet for Yahtzee's scoring.
| Box | Scores | Name | Name | Name | Name | Name | Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ones | Total of 1s (max 5) | ||||||
| Twos | Total of 2s (max 10) | ||||||
| Threes | Total of 3s (max 15) | ||||||
| Fours | Total of 4s (max 20) | ||||||
| Fives | Total of 5s (max 25) | ||||||
| Sixes | Total of 6s (max 30) | ||||||
| Full House | 3 of one number + 2 of another: total of all 5 (max 28) | ||||||
| Four of a Kind | 4 or 5 alike: total of 4 of them (max 24) | ||||||
| Little Straight | 1-2-3-4-5: 30 | ||||||
| Big Straight | 2-3-4-5-6: 30 | ||||||
| Choice | Any roll: total of all 5 (max 30) | ||||||
| Yacht | 5 alike: 50 | ||||||
| Total | Add all 12 boxes (max 297). No bonus. |
How to fill it in
Write each player's name at the top of a column. At the end of every turn, the player who rolled writes a score in one empty box of their column, or a 0 if the dice do not fit the box they choose. After 12 turns each column is full: add it up, and the highest total wins. In the game above, the scorecard does this adding for you.
A Yahtzee score card is laid out differently, so this sheet will not fit a game of Yahtzee. Hasbro's card has 13 boxes including Three of a Kind, a line for the 35-point bonus when the six number boxes reach 63, and rows for 100-point bonuses from extra Yahtzees.
Yacht Odds: How Often Each Combination Comes Up
A Yacht comes up once in 1,296 rolls, and about once in 22 turns if you chase it from the first roll. Every figure below is exact, worked out by computer for five fair dice. The Yacht, Full House, and Four of a Kind figures hold for Yahtzee too, since the dice are the same.
| Combination | Ways out of 7,776 | Chance | About |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yacht (five of a kind) | 6 | 0.077% | 1 in 1,296 |
| Four of a Kind (four or five alike) | 156 | 2.01% | 1 in 50 |
| Full House (three and a pair) | 300 | 3.86% | 1 in 26 |
| Little Straight (1-2-3-4-5) | 120 | 1.54% | 1 in 65 |
| Big Straight (2-3-4-5-6) | 120 | 1.54% | 1 in 65 |
Over a whole turn the chances climb, because you keep the useful dice and roll the rest twice. This table assumes you chase one combination from the first roll and hold the best dice for it every time.
| Combination | By the second roll | By the third roll |
|---|---|---|
| Yacht | 1.3% | 4.6% |
| Full House | 19.1% | 36.3% |
| Four of a Kind | 13.2% | 29.1% |
| Big Straight | 8.9% | 19.7% |
| Little Straight | 8.9% | 19.7% |
| Either straight | 13.0% | 26.1% |
The exact chance of a Yacht in three rolls is 347,897 in 7,558,272, or 4.603%. Your chance depends heavily on what the first roll gives you:
- Four of a kind (6-6-6-6-1): 30.6% to finish the turn with a Yacht.
- Three of a kind (6-6-6-2-1): 9.3% to finish the turn with a Yacht.
- One pair (6-6-3-2-1): 2.9% to finish the turn with a Yacht.
- No pair (6-5-4-3-1): 1.3% to finish the turn with a Yacht.
Making a Yacht on two turns running, chasing it both times, has a chance of about 1 in 472 (0.21%).
Yacht Strategy
Keep sets, stop on a made straight, and bury bad rolls in Ones. We worked out by computer the strategy that gives a solo player the highest average score under these rules, checking every hold and every box in every position of a game. The tips below are what that strategy does, with the points each choice gains on average over the whole game.
Keep three of a kind and nothing else
Keep both pairs and roll one die
Stop on a straight
A first roll of 2-3-4-5-6 is a finished Big Straight worth 30: score it. Re-rolling the 6 in the hope of something better costs 8.8 points on average. While both straight boxes are open, 2-3-4-5 is the hold to hope for, since a 1 or a 6 finishes a straight: 55.6% over two re-rolls, against 30.6% for 1-2-3-4, which needs a 5.
Bury bad rolls in Ones
With no bonus riding on the number boxes, a 1 in the Ones box is worth one point and nothing more, so Ones is where perfect play dumps a failed turn. On the first turn, 6-5-4-3-1 is better written as 1 in Ones than 19 in Choice, by 2.4 points over the game. Even a low Full House goes there: 1-1-1-2-2 scores 3 in Ones, and that beats 7 in Full House by 6.5 points.
Save Choice for later
Choice averages 23.4 points under perfect play, and a big roll early in the game can be worth more in another box. On the first turn, 6-6-6-5-3 belongs in Sixes for 18, not in Choice for 26: Sixes comes out 1.0 points ahead over the game. A high Full House is the exception: 6-6-6-5-5 scores 28 in either Full House or Choice, and Full House is better by 9.9 points.
Where the points come from
Under perfect play the two straights and the Full House bring in about 62 points a game between them; Ones brings in 1.5. The Yacht box is filled with 50 in only 27% of games.
| Box | Average points | Games where it scores |
|---|---|---|
| Choice | 23.4 | 100% |
| Big Straight | 21.5 | 71.8% |
| Full House | 20.5 | 91.5% |
| Little Straight | 20.1 | 67.1% |
| Sixes | 16.6 | 99.6% |
| Four of a Kind | 15.5 | 79.1% |
| Yacht | 13.7 | 27.3% |
| Fives | 13.0 | 99.7% |
| Fours | 9.8 | 99.7% |
| Threes | 7.2 | 99.7% |
| Twos | 4.1 | 97.5% |
| Ones | 1.5 | 84.9% |
What Is a Good Yacht Score?
Anything over 167 beats perfect play's average, and 200 is a strong game. We computed the full spread of final scores for the strategy above:
- The average is 167.0, and half of all games finish at 167 or more.
- Eight games in ten end between 122 and 216.
- 16.7% of games reach 200, and 0.4% reach 250.
- 2.4% finish below 100, even with every decision right.
- The highest possible score is 297 and the lowest is 5.
Our computer players use this strategy, and in a million simulated games they averaged 167. Perfect play in Yahtzee averages about 254.6, higher because Yahtzee has a 13th box, a 35-point bonus, a 40-point straight, and 100-point bonuses for extra Yahtzees.
Yacht vs Yahtzee
Yahtzee is Hasbro's commercial version of Yacht, sold since 1956. It adds a 13th box, Three of a Kind, pays a 35-point bonus when the six number boxes reach 63, fixes the Full House at 25 and the Large Straight at 40, and awards 100 points for each extra Yahtzee.
| Rule | Yacht (our game) | Yahtzee |
|---|---|---|
| Scoring boxes | 12 | 13 (adds Three of a Kind) |
| Bonus for the six number boxes | None | 35 points for 63 or more |
| Full House | Total of all five dice (max 28) | Flat 25 |
| Four of a Kind | Total of the four matching dice | Total of all five dice |
| Shorter straight | Little Straight, 1-2-3-4-5 only: 30 | Small Straight, any four in a row: 30 |
| Longer straight | Big Straight, 2-3-4-5-6 only: 30 | Large Straight, any five in a row: 40 |
| Five of a kind | Yacht: 50 | Yahtzee: 50 |
| Another five of a kind | No extra points | 100-point bonus, plus Joker rules |
| Box that takes any roll | Choice | Chance |
| Highest possible score | 297 | 1,575 |
| Average with perfect solo play | 167 | About 254.6 |
Yahtzee is a registered trademark of Hasbro. Our game is Yacht, the public-domain original, and it keeps Yacht's scoring throughout: a Yahtzee player sitting down to it will find no bonus for the number boxes and both straights worth 30.
Other five-dice relatives include Yatzy, most played in the Nordic countries, and Generala, its Latin American cousin. Yatzy adds One Pair and Two Pairs boxes, pays 15 and 20 for its fixed straights, and gives a 50-point bonus at 63. For a dice game that works the opposite way, where you push your luck instead of filling boxes, try Farkle.
History of Yacht
Yacht was in print by 1938, in The Complete Book of Games by Clement Wood and Gloria Goddard, published in New York. They grouped it with Crag, a game for three dice, as a "sequence" dice game.
Its famous descendant came from a boat. By Hasbro's account, an anonymous Canadian couple played a game they called The Yacht Game on their yacht and asked the toy maker Edwin S. Lowe to make sets as gifts for their friends. Lowe bought the rights in exchange for 1,000 gift sets, Hasbro says, and in 1956 began selling the game as Yahtzee, a name that nods to where it was played. The E. S. Lowe Company sold it until 1973, when Milton Bradley bought the company, and Hasbro owns the game today.
Close relatives are still played under other names and rules: Yatzy in the Nordic countries and Generala in Latin America. Yacht itself, with its 12 boxes and no bonus, is the game on this page.
Yacht FAQ
How do you play Yacht?
Roll five dice up to three times a turn, keeping any dice you like between rolls, then score the result in one of 12 boxes, such as Full House, Big Straight, or Yacht. Each box is used once, a roll that does not fit scores 0, and the highest total after 12 rounds wins.
How many dice do you need for Yacht?
Five standard six-sided dice, plus a score sheet and a pencil. Every player uses the same five dice in turn, so one set serves the whole table. The printable Yacht score sheet on this page has room for six players or six games.
How many rolls do you get in Yacht?
Up to three rolls a turn: one roll of all five dice and two re-rolls. You can re-roll any dice, including ones you kept earlier, and you can stop after the first or second roll. In our game the first roll happens by itself, and the Roll button counts down your two re-rolls.
What is a full house in Yacht?
A Full House is three dice of one number and two of another, such as 6-6-6-5-5. In Yacht it scores the total of all five dice, so 6-6-6-5-5 scores 28 and 2-2-2-1-1 scores 8. Yahtzee pays a flat 25 instead. Five of a kind does not count as a Full House in Yacht.
Can a Yacht be scored as Four of a Kind?
Yes. Five of a kind qualifies for Four of a Kind, but that box pays only four of the dice, so 6-6-6-6-6 scores 24 there, 30 in Sixes, and 50 in the Yacht box. It scores 0 as a Full House, which needs two different numbers.
What is a large straight?
In Yacht the large straight is called the Big Straight: exactly 2-3-4-5-6, in any order, worth 30 points. The Little Straight is 1-2-3-4-5, also worth 30. Yahtzee's Large Straight is any five dice in a row and scores 40, and its Small Straight needs only four in a row.
What is Choice in Yacht?
Choice is the box that takes any roll and scores the total of all five dice, from 5 to 30. Yahtzee calls the same box Chance. Under perfect play it averages 23.4 points, and on the first turn perfect play puts even 6-6-6-5-3, worth 26 in Choice, in Sixes instead.
What are the odds of rolling a Yacht?
One roll of five dice gives a Yacht 6 times in 7,776, or 1 in 1,296. Chasing one for a whole turn, keeping your most common number each time, succeeds 4.60% of the time, about 1 in 22. The odds are the same for a Yahtzee, which is also five of a kind.
What are the odds of rolling a Yacht twice in a row?
If you chase a Yacht on two turns running, the chance of making both is about 0.21%, or 1 in 472. On a single roll each time it is 1 in 1,679,616. Each turn is independent, so a Yacht on your last turn makes the next one neither more nor less likely.
What is the highest possible score in Yacht?
The highest possible score is 297. It needs five of each number in the six number boxes (105 points), 6-6-6-5-5 as the Full House (28), four 6s (24), both straights (60), 30 in Choice, and a 50-point Yacht. Yahtzee's ceiling is 1,575, because of its bonuses.
What is a good score in Yacht?
Anything above 167 beats the average of perfect solo play, which we computed exactly for these rules. Eight games in ten of perfect play land between 122 and 216, and one in six reaches 200. Our computer players use that perfect strategy and also average 167, so beating one in a single game is a fair goal.
Is Yacht a game of skill or luck?
Both. Perfect play averages 167 points. Simple fixed rules (keep the biggest set, take the box that scores most right now) average about 106, so decisions are worth around 60 points a game. Luck still swings results widely: the same perfect player scores anywhere from 122 to 216 in eight games out of ten.
Is it Yahtzee or Yatzy?
Both are real games. Yahtzee is Hasbro's trademarked version, sold since 1956. Yatzy is the version most played in the Nordic countries: it adds One Pair and Two Pairs boxes, gives a 50-point bonus at 63, and pays 15 and 20 for its fixed straights. Yacht, the original, has 12 boxes and no bonus.
Who invented Yahtzee?
Yahtzee came from Yacht. By Hasbro's account an anonymous Canadian couple played it on their yacht, and the toy maker Edwin S. Lowe bought the rights for 1,000 gift sets, selling it as Yahtzee from 1956. Milton Bradley bought Lowe's company in 1973, and Hasbro owns the game today.
Play Yacht Online Free
Scroll back up to play in your browser, free and with no download. Choose Solo to chase a score of 167 or better, or add up to three computer players and try to beat them.
For more games with dice, browse every dice game we host.