There is even an official World Yahtzee Championship featuring competitors from around the world.The oldest written reference to Yahtzee can be found in Livre des Amusements, a book by Jeu de Mail published in 1254 by King Louis IX of France, who was known as “the saint”.There are two game variations known as Block Yahtzee and Rainbow Yahtzee that changing the way the scoring works with different color designs on each die.To put this into perspective, the odds of getting this type of roll are 1 in 20140, making it nearly impossible to achieve. This would require rolling five of a kind which means all five dice must show the same number. The highest possible score for one turn is a Yahtzee, giving the player 25 points.

It would take at least eight players to enjoy a round of the popular game. In Finland, Yahtzee is known as “kolikkopeli”, which means “coin game”.Yahtzee was the national game in South Africa until 1997 when its popularity began to wane due to competition from other games.The film was released in 2005 and stars Randy Quaid, Marla Sokoloff, Michael Lerner, and Dinah Manoff. Just make sure to keep track of your score and don’t lose too much money!

Some of the most popular variations are played with six, ten, fifteen, or twenty-sided dice, but yatzy can also be played with four, five, eight, or even twelve-sided dice.Įither way, it’s a fun game that can be enjoyed by all ages and is excellent for passing the time at parties and bars. There are several variations of Yahtzee played around the world, but they usually stem from how many dice you roll at once and whether or each die can be rerolled or not. In Germany, however, it is believed that the term comes from a combination of words “Yacht”, which means yacht, and “Zahl”, which means number – supposedly because you need to get all five numbers on one roll for your score to be doubled. It reflects the practice in some parts of that region where players will throw dice into a closed fist before revealing their total score. The term “Yahtzee” is thought to originate from the Arabic word “yad”, which means hand or fist. Yahtzee first began spreading from South Africa and other neighboring countries across other parts of Africa and Asia before reaching Europe and eventually becoming popular throughout Canada and other countries on that continent.Īlthough there are no official records to show precisely when or how this happened, we can make some pretty safe assumptions based on the name of this game.

The three-dice version of the game originated in Germany but became known as Farkle in North America. However, in parts of Asia and Europe, the dice variation is much more widely played than its card cousin. In South Africa, where it is mainly known as “Drie Dolkom”, meaning “Three Knives”, the game of Yahtzee is a popular pub game that has been around for many years.

Yahtzee board game rules