Farkle

Farkle is a push-your-luck dice race. You and an AI opponent both try to reach 10,000 points, one turn at a time. On your turn, roll all six dice. You must set aside at least one scoring die, then decide: roll again or bank your points. Single 1s are worth 100. Single 5s are worth 50. Three of a kind scores that face value times 100 — so three 4s is 400. Three 1s score 1,000. A straight from 1 through 6 in one roll is worth 1,500. Roll all six dice so they all score and you get hot dice — you must reroll all six and keep your running total on the line.

The risk is the Farkle. If none of your unset dice score on a roll, you lose all the points from that turn and it becomes the AI's move. The longer you push, the bigger your potential score — but one cold roll wipes it out. That single choice — bank now or roll again — is the heart of the game.

The AI banks when its turn total hits 300 or more with two or fewer dice left, or when banking would push it past 10,000. With four or more dice still going and under 500 turn points, it keeps rolling. You can use that pattern. Build bigger single-turn totals rather than banking small amounts often.

Farkle is a folk dice game with no single inventor and a disputed history. It goes by many names — 10,000, Zilch, Greed, Hot Dice, Whamee — because it spread from person to person rather than through a company. The push-your-luck structure shows up in game books and family traditions across North America and Europe, with written records going back at least to the 1980s. One well-known story links the name Farkle to a Minnesota inventor in 1982, but that story is contested and no trademark was ever filed.

The push-your-luck mechanic itself is much older. Pig, a simpler game played with one die, appears in academic game-theory writing as a classic probability lesson. Farkle extends that idea to six dice with a richer scoring table. That forces you to decide not just whether to keep rolling, but which scoring combos from the current roll to commit to.

This version uses the widely played standard scoring rules: 1s at 100, 5s at 50, three-of-a-kind at face value times 100 (three 1s = 1,000), with four, five, and six of a kind each doubling the step before. A 1–6 straight is worth 1,500. Hot dice make you reroll all six, which is a forced risk moment unique to Farkle.