Yatzy

How to Play Yatzy

In a nutshell: The Scandinavian standard - Pairs, exact straights, and a 50-point Yatzy. You play with 5 dice and up to 3 rolls a turn across 15 scoring cells. It's rated easy, and a good game scores 200+; the maximum with the bonus is 374.

Yatzy is the public-domain dice game every Scandinavian grows up with - the same five-dice, three-roll engine as Yahtzee, but a friendlier and in places trickier scorecard of fifteen categories. The additions are the pair rows: One Pair scores your highest pair, Two Pairs needs two different pairs. The straights are fixed runs - Small is exactly 1-2-3-4-5 for 15 points, Large exactly 2-3-4-5-6 for 20 - and the Full House scores the sum of its dice. Three and Four of a Kind count only the matching dice. Reach 63 in the upper section and the bonus is a fat 50 points. It's cosier than its trademarked cousin, quicker to teach, and the pair rows give even a cold turn somewhere useful to go.

Yatzy at a glance

Goal	Fill all fifteen categories, one per turn, for the highest total. Upper-section players chase the 50-point bonus at 63+.
Dice	5 six-sided dice, up to 3 rolls per turn
Categories	15
Difficulty	Easy
Good score	200+
Family	Nordic Yatzy

Step by step

History of Yatzy

Yatzy is what happened when the Yacht family reached Scandinavia and nobody filed a trademark. Through the 1940s and 50s the game spread across Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland as a public-domain folk game, printed on cheap scorepads and taught across kitchen tables.

Freed from any official rulebook, the Nordic card evolved its own personality: pair rows to soften bad luck, exact straights to sharpen good luck, a sum-scored full house, and a generous 50-point bonus. Sweden's Maxi Yatzy later extended the idea to six dice.

Today Yatzy is arguably more played than Yahtzee across northern Europe - the default rainy-cabin game, the pad-and-pencil standard, and the version whose rules everyone's grandmother is quietly certain are the only correct ones.

How to Win at Yatzy: Strategy

💡 Top tip: The 50-point bonus dwarfs everything else on the card - Chase 63 upper points with the same discipline Yahtzee players give their 35.

Winning tips, in order of importance

1. One Pair is the perfect landing pad for a busted turn - but scoring 8 there early wastes a row that can hold 12; save it for sixes if you can.
2. Two Pairs is easier than it looks (about half of first rolls contain two pairs or better) - don't panic-fill it.
3. The exact straights punish greed: with 2-3-4-5 in hand, only one number completes each run - know which one before you throw.
4. Full House by sum makes high houses valuable - a 6-6-6-5-5 is 28 points, nearly half a Yatzy.
5. Zeros belong in Ones or One Pair, never in the 20-point Large Straight row - Plan your sacrifices three turns ahead.

Advanced tactics for Yatzy

1. Because Three/Four of a Kind count only matching dice, sixes are disproportionately valuable - 18 and 24 in those rows versus 9 and 12 for threes.
2. The pair rows create endgame liquidity: keep one open late as insurance and your last turns can never fully bust.
3. A first-roll 2-3-4-5-6 should be banked immediately - re-rolling a made Large Straight to hunt a Yatzy is a beginner's tell.
4. The upper bonus math is stricter than it looks with 50 on the line: falling 6+ points behind pace by the Fours row usually means abandoning it and pivoting to combination value.
5. In head-to-head play, mirror your opponent's open rows - if you both need Large Straight, taking yours first applies real pressure.

Common Yatzy mistakes to avoid

• Wasting One Pair on low dice - the row can hold 12 points of sixes, and it is also your best late-game insurance cell.
• Missing the 50-point bonus pace - 63 upper points pays 50 here, not 35, so upper discipline matters even more than in Yahtzee.
• Re-rolling a made Large Straight - 2-3-4-5-6 is a guaranteed 20; gambling it for a Yatzy is how 20 becomes 0.
• Forgetting kinds count only matching dice - three fives score 15, not the sum of the hand, so big triples beat mixed hands.

Yatzy Variations

Maxi Yatzy

Six dice, twenty categories, an 84-point bonus threshold - the big-board Nordic upgrade.

Forced Yatzy

Categories must be filled top to bottom, turning the gentle family game into a gauntlet.

Yatzy with jokers

House rules that borrow Yahtzee's joker: a second Yatzy may stand in for any category.

Yatzy FAQ

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

Last updated 2026-07-03.