A throw that produces no scoring dice at all. Your turn ends immediately and you lose every point you had accumulated but not banked during that turn.

What score do you need to win?

10,000 banked points. The game does not end your turn automatically when you cross the line — you have to choose to bank for the win, which means you can keep pushing a lead if you want to.

When all six dice you threw form part of scoring melds. You may then pick up all six and throw again, keeping the points you have already accumulated this turn. It is the best position in the game.

Can I combine dice from different throws into one meld?

No. Every meld must come from a single throw. Two 1s set aside and a third 1 thrown later are worth 100 + 100 + 100 = 300, not the 1,000 that three 1s in one throw would score.

Do I have to set aside every scoring die?

Only one. Beyond that minimum you choose, and deliberately leaving a 5 unset to keep an extra die in play is often the right decision — the improved odds are usually worth more than the 50 points.

Roughly once you are down to two or three dice with 300 to 500 points at stake. With four or more dice live the chance of farkling is only about 16 per cent, so rolling on is generally correct; with two dice it is over 40 per cent, and greed becomes expensive.

Farkle

Farkle has one decision in it, repeated perhaps two hundred times a game: bank what you have, or roll again. That single question turns out to be enough.

Roll, click the dice you want to set aside, then bank your points or roll the rest.

Players	1 vs the computer
Deck	Six standard dice
Play time	10–20 minutes to 10,000
Difficulty	Trivial rules, genuinely interesting decisions

How to play Farkle

Six dice, and a race to 10,000 points. You start your turn by throwing all six.

The turn

After each throw you must set aside at least one scoring die. Beyond that minimum you are free: keep more if you want, keep less if you would rather re-roll them. Then choose:

Roll again with the dice you did not set aside, hoping to add more.
Bank, which adds everything accumulated this turn to your permanent total and passes the dice.

Farkling

If a throw produces no scoring dice at all, you have farkled. Your turn ends immediately and every unbanked point from that turn is lost. This is the entire risk in the game, and the chance of it rises sharply as you keep fewer dice.

Hot dice

If every one of the dice you threw forms part of a scoring meld, you have hot dice: you may pick up all six and throw again, carrying your accumulated points with you. A turn can in principle continue indefinitely.

Melds must come from a single throw

This is the rule that trips people up. Combinations do not build across throws. Set aside two 1s, then roll a third 1, and you do not have three-of-a-kind — you have a pair of 1s worth 200 and a single 1 worth 100, for 300 rather than 1,000.

Scoring

Single 1 — 100. Single 5 — 50.
Three 1s — 1,000. Three 2s — 200, three 3s — 300, three 4s — 400, three 5s — 500, three 6s — 600.
Four of a kind — 1,000. Five of a kind — 2,000. Six of a kind — 3,000.
Three pairs — 1,500 (a four-of-a-kind plus a pair counts).
A full run 1-2-3-4-5-6 — 2,500.

The game ends when a player banks 10,000 or more. It does not end your turn automatically at the threshold — you bank for the win deliberately.

Strategy

Farkle looks like a game of pure chance and is really a game about one number: how likely you are to farkle on the next throw.

Know the farkle odds by dice count

This is the whole of Farkle strategy. With six dice the chance of scoring nothing is about 2 per cent. With four it is around 16 per cent, with three about 28 per cent, with two roughly 44 per cent, and with a single die you fail two times in three. Those numbers should drive every decision you make.

Bank at 300 to 500 on two or three dice

The practical rule of thumb. With four or more dice still live, keep rolling almost regardless of your total — the expected gain outweighs a 16 per cent risk. Once you are down to two or three dice with a few hundred points at stake, bank. Players lose far more points to greed on two dice than they ever gain.

You do not have to keep every scoring die

Roll a 1 and a 5 and you may set aside only the 1, re-rolling five dice instead of four. Giving up 50 points to keep an extra die in play is frequently correct, because the farkle probability difference between four and five dice is larger than 50 points is worth. Beginners hoover up every scoring die automatically and roll far too few.

Chase hot dice when the count is favourable

Clearing all six dice resets you to a fresh throw of six with everything banked-in-progress intact — the single best position in the game. If you are one die away from hot dice and it is a 1 or 5 you need, the roll is usually worth taking.

Play the scoreboard, not the dice

Push harder when you are behind and the opponent is close to 10,000: a cautious 300 does not help if they are about to win. Conversely, when you are ahead near the end, bank early and often and let them take the risks.

Variants

Entry threshold — many house rules require 350, 500 or 1,000 points in a single turn before you may bank at all.
Straight and two triplets — some tables score 1-2-3-4-5-6 as 1,500 or 3,000 rather than 2,500, and give two sets of three a fixed bonus.
Final round — once someone passes 10,000, every other player gets one last turn to beat them.
Zilch / stealing — variants where consecutive farkles carry a penalty, or where an incoming player may continue the previous player’s unbanked points.
Ten Thousand, Zilch, Dix Mille and Greed — essentially the same game under different names, with the scoring table varying in every one.

Where Farkle came from

Farkle is a folk dice game with no traceable author, and it is one of a large group of games — Ten Thousand, Zilch, Greed, Dix Mille, Hot Dice — that are all recognisably the same design with different scoring tables. It belongs to a category of dice games documented in Europe for centuries, and its immediate ancestors are the family that also produced Yacht and, commercially, Yahtzee.

The name's origin is unknown, and the various origin stories attached to it — a sea captain, a Texan rancher — have no supporting evidence and appear to be invented. It circulated through the twentieth century as a bar and family game, spread entirely by word of mouth, which is exactly why the scoring table differs between any two groups you play with. A commercial set called Farkel was trademarked in the 1990s, but the game long predates it. Reiner Knízia, in his writing on dice games, analyses this family in detail and treats the bank-or-roll decision as one of the cleanest examples of a push-your-luck mechanic in any game — which is a fair assessment of why a game with no board, no cards and one decision has survived so long.

Questions people ask about Farkle

What is a farkle?: A throw that produces no scoring dice at all. Your turn ends immediately and you lose every point you had accumulated but not banked during that turn.
What score do you need to win?: 10,000 banked points. The game does not end your turn automatically when you cross the line — you have to choose to bank for the win, which means you can keep pushing a lead if you want to.
What are hot dice?: When all six dice you threw form part of scoring melds. You may then pick up all six and throw again, keeping the points you have already accumulated this turn. It is the best position in the game.
Can I combine dice from different throws into one meld?: No. Every meld must come from a single throw. Two 1s set aside and a third 1 thrown later are worth 100 + 100 + 100 = 300, not the 1,000 that three 1s in one throw would score.
Do I have to set aside every scoring die?: Only one. Beyond that minimum you choose, and deliberately leaving a 5 unset to keep an extra die in play is often the right decision — the improved odds are usually worth more than the 50 points.
When should I bank?: Roughly once you are down to two or three dice with 300 to 500 points at stake. With four or more dice live the chance of farkling is only about 16 per cent, so rolling on is generally correct; with two dice it is over 40 per cent, and greed becomes expensive.