Yacht

How to Play Yacht

In a nutshell: The 1938 original - Twelve categories, no bonuses, pure scoring. You play with 5 dice and up to 3 rolls a turn across 12 scoring cells. It's rated easy, and a good game scores 150+; without bonuses every point is earned at the table.

Yacht is the game Yahtzee came from - published in 1938 and named for the yachting set who played it. The chassis is familiar: five dice, three rolls, choose which dice to keep. But the scorecard is leaner and stricter. There are twelve categories instead of thirteen, no upper bonus, no extra-Yacht bonus and no joker rules. Both straights - Little (1-2-3-4-5) and Big (2-3-4-5-6) - are worth a flat 30 and must be exact. Full House scores the sum of the dice rather than a fixed 25, and Four of a Kind counts only the four matching dice. Playing Yacht after Yahtzee is like driving a classic car: same joy, fewer assists, and every point honestly earned.

Yacht at a glance

Goal	Fill all twelve categories, one per turn, for the highest total. No bonuses exist - the categories are all there is.
Dice	5 six-sided dice, up to 3 rolls per turn
Categories	12
Difficulty	Easy
Good score	150+
Family	Classic

Step by step

History of Yacht

Yacht is the documented starting point of the whole family. The game appears in print in 1938, though five-dice poker-style games ("Poker Dice", "Crag", "Cheerio") circulated for decades before. Its clean twelve-category card - numbers, combinations, two exact straights, Choice and the 50-point Yacht - became the template every descendant copied.

The name reflects its social origins among the transatlantic yachting crowd, where the game filled long evenings at anchor. Rulebooks of the 1940s and 50s printed it under several names with minor scoring differences, a fluidity that survives today in games like Generala and Yatzy.

When Edwin S. Lowe was asked in the mid-1950s to produce sets of a couple's "yacht game", he tightened the scoring, added the upper bonus, and trademarked the result as Yahtzee. Yacht itself remained public domain - the family's open-source original, still played exactly as it was in 1938.

How to Win at Yacht: Strategy

💡 Top tip: With no upper bonus, stop protecting small numbers - Ones and Twos exist mainly as places to bury bad turns.

Winning tips, in order of importance

1. Straights must be exact runs, so a 1-2-3-4-6 hand needs precisely the 5: know when you're drawing to one card and cash out early if it misses.
2. Full House scoring by sum means 6-6-6-5-5 (28) is a monster; chase high full houses, not just any full house.
3. Choice is your best row for a heap of sixes that fits nowhere else - don't spend it on 18 when a 27 will come.
4. Four of a Kind counts only four dice, so a fifth junk die costs nothing - bank it the moment it lands.
5. Yacht (50) is a tenth of a great game's score; keep the row open while three-of-a-kind hands keep appearing.

Advanced tactics for Yacht

1. Yacht's straights are stricter than Yahtzee's smalls: four-card runs score zero, so the expected value of straight-chasing is sharply lower - fold earlier than instinct says.
2. Because Full House scores by sum, a 2-2-2-3-3 house (12 points) is often worth passing in favor of re-rolling for higher pairs.
3. The absence of bonuses flattens the value curve; play each turn for raw points and treat the scorecard as twelve independent auctions.
4. Track the two straight rows early - they're the only fixed-value cells, and once both are filled the game becomes pure sum-maximization.

Common Yacht mistakes to avoid

• Playing for a bonus that does not exist - there is no 63-point reward in Yacht, so low number rows are just zero-dumps.
• Settling for a cheap full house - the house scores the SUM of the dice here, so 2-2-2-3-3 is 12 points where 6-6-6-5-5 is 28.
• Treating four-card runs as straights - both Yacht straights must be exact five-card sequences, or they score nothing.
• Spending Choice early - it is the only flexible row on a card with no bonuses, so keep it for your biggest homeless roll.

Yacht Variations

Generala

The South American branch - first-roll 'servida' bonuses and an instant win for a served Generala.

Cheerio

A 1930s cousin with additional categories and house-specific scoring.

Crag

A faster three-dice relative from the same era, with a 13-category card of its own.

Yacht FAQ

Still have a question about Yacht? Browse the full Yahtzee FAQ, look up a term in the Yahtzee glossary, print a score sheet for game night, or compare Yacht with the other games in the rules for every dice game.

Last updated 2026-07-03.