Tips yatzy

General tips and statistics.

For the top half, the 35pt bonus is really important. To earn that, you need at least 3 of a kind for 1 through 6, for a total of 63.

For the bottom half, Three/Four of a Kind and Chance, you want to score better than the average of 5 dice, which is anything over 17 total.

As for the Full House and Straights, fish for those early and use the failed attempts to fill in your top half.

For serious players, there is an online application that allows you to compare your moves with those of a computer playing optimally (i.e. making plays that are most likely to score you the highest overall, in the largest number of possible scenarios). Try using it and see if you can improve your thinking.

Another app on that same website lets you play through an entire game of Yahtzee and get all of it analyzed afterwards. Here are the instructions on how to read the analysis.

The game of Yahtzee will challenge the player to choose between chasing similar dice to score the grand prize ( ‘Yahtzee’ is ‘five-of-a-kind’ ) versus a straight where any duplicates are re-rolled to chase the straight. To get Yahtzee means you’ll always need to chase duplicate dice at the expense of a straight. This ‘Yahtzee 1st and foremost’ strategy dictates that you only chase a straight when you get an inside straight (four die, 2,3,4,5) on your initial roll, otherwise you re-roll any dice not duplicated to score a ‘Yahtzee’.

The Yahtzee variant ‘Yams’ introduces an alternative scoring sheet with a few changes. For instance it drops the ‘chance’, ‘three-a-kind', and adds a ‘Rigole’ which is four-of-a-kind plus one from the opposite die face (1 for sixes, 2 for fives, 3 for fours, etc).

Ballpark Figures's video

Here is a summary of the Ballpark Figures's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOgb5wrb7mM

Think about the game with a different score system:

+4 for each extra Yahtzee

+2 for the top bonus, large straight, Yahtzee

+1 for 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, full house, and small straight

Small Straight, 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind

Small straight has a value of nearly 30 points turn 1 to 10.

Is around 28 points turn 11, around 25 points turn 12, and around 20 points turn 13.

That mean that leaving it until the end if you never got a bad turn is very valuable. But once you reach turn 10, keeping it more make you lose some points, but it's still fine.

It's the same thing for 3 of a kind.

For 4 of a kind, it has a much lower initial value (rarer to get it), so the points lost are similar.

Large Straight

Large straight on the other hand, got a value starting around 32 points turn 1, and slowly goes down by 1 every two turns. Then it start going much lower pretty fast. Reaching around 23 turn 10, and 12 turn 13.

Often goes for it if small straight or chance is still open. Else usually only do it if you can 0 something else.

Full house

Full house decrease faster, from 22 points to the start, they goes to 20 points turn 7, 17 points turn 10, and 12 points turn 13.

Top bonus

You get in average 23.8 points for the top bonus.

Filling first four 1/2/3/4/5/6 will make you win 24.5/27.4/29.2/30.3/31.1/31.9 points. So that can be a jump of 8 extra points.

On the contrary filling first one 1/2/3/4/5/6 will make you win 18.5/15.2/10.3/5.4/1.8/0.3. You can see that you will lose 5 points with one 1 and 8 points with one 2 first [note that starting with those make you more likely to forget that top bonus and focus on other bonus first, so the loss should be slightly lower]. On those cases it's often better to put 0 on four of a kind or Yahtzee instead.

First turn

The best first turn is Yahtzee (320.8), then four Sixies (268.2), then four fives (264.5), large straight (261.5), four fours (261.0), four threes (257.4), 3 of a kind [55666] (254.0), full house [11122] (253.9).

You should never start with two or fewers 4/5/6, or one 2/3/4/5/6, never fill 4 of a kind, and rarely score 3 of a kind.

The worst start is where you fill chance with 23446 for 239.0 points.