Cheap entertainment for everyone (Yahtzee)

Name: kingseany

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Product:	Yahtzee
Date:	23/10/04 (839 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Easy to learn, Play anywhere

Disadvantages: Addictive

Yahtzee is a game played with five dice. Whether these dice are actual dice, or virtual, it doesn't matter, the game is still the same. As well as the old style yahtzee, you can play on an electronic hand hand unit (available from MB Games), on your PC (Yahtzee Master is free to download), and allows internet multi-play), or on a console such as a playstation.

So what exactly is Yahtzee? There are five dice, and a scoresheet. The scoresheet contains various dice patterns with various scores.

You have up to three throws per go, and any amount of people can play, from one to as many as you have score sheets for.

The various scores are:

Yahtzee - this is five of the same, and whether it's 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's or 6's - it doesn't matter. The usual score for a yahtzee is 50.

1's, 2's etc. It's preferable to get as many as you can - 4 of each is good going. They are worth the number's on the dice, so for instance 4 6's is 24 points, or 3 4's is 12. You can get 5 of a kind obviously, but best to put this in the yahtzee score - unless you already have one. It's possible to get 2 or even 3 yahtzees in a game, unlikely to be more than that. Once you have filled in these six places, if you have more than 63 points in total, you can get a bonus - which can mean the difference between winning or losing a game.

Full House - 3 of one and 2 of another, ie 3,3,3,6,6 - worth 25 points

Straights - Big straight or small straight - like poker, where you can get 1,2,3,4,5 (big straight), or 2,3,4,5 (small straight). Straights are usually 30 or 40 points.

3 of a kind - exactly that - 3 6's for instance. Score is eg 3x6 + the other dice.

4 of a kind, as above but four of any one number, the higher the better, but even 4 1's are higher than nothing.

One pair / two pairs, ie 2 x 6 or 2 x 6's & 2 x 5's

Chance - This is where you can put anything that doesn't fit into the above, and the score is the total number of spots on the dice.

There maybe some variations on the above, depending on which country you are in, many versions don't have the one pair/two pairs score (ours does).

At the end of all the goes, the highest scorer wins!

There is a lot of chance, but a lot of tactic and thinking too. Not as much thinking as chess, but a bit. It's addictive too, as are all the simple games.

Yahtzee can be played by anyone who understands how to count, so even younger players can join in. It can be played almost anywhere, as a set of dice and a pad and pen don't take up much space. The electronic version is great for on the train, and you don't need to worry about counting.

Cost of a yahtzee game vary from just a few pounds for a standard game, to £10 or so for an electronic version - still very reasonable. PC versions can be downloaded for free, or you can buy more graphical ones quite reasonably. There are more variations once you get bored, such as word yahtzee and super yahtzee.

It's cheap entertainment for everyone.

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