What is Farkle?

"I fixed your blog for you," my dh said this morning.

"Oh? What was wrong with it?" I asked, feeling a bit scared.
"It said you live in Afghanistan!"

Oops. I guess that's the first-on-the-list default choice, LOL! I wonder how many of the Afghani bloggers are really from somewhere else?!

Well, on to Farkle. Some call this game "10,000." Dh and I played in college, it's a fun, fast-paced dice game. I recently taught our kids, and they are hooked! There are several variations on how to play and score points (just google "Farkle rules"), but here are our family rules:

You'll need: 6 dice, a pen and paper.

Play: Each player takes turns rolling the dice. Each time you roll, you have to remove at least one die that is worth points (I'll list the point values below). Then you have to decide whether to score those points or roll the remaining dice, trying to get more points. If you get more points, you can keep rolling, but if your re-rolled dice have no value, you lose all points that you would have earned that round.

Point Values:
1-100
5-50
3 of a kind (in one roll, not cumulative) = 100 times that number (ie, 3 2's = 200).
4 of a kind = the above points plus 100 (ie, 4 2's = 200 plus 100 = 300)
3 1's is 1000
3 pairs (ie 2 2's, 2 4's & 2 5's for example) = 500 points
6-straight (1-2-3-4-5-6 in ONE roll) = 1500 points
Farkle-no points at all rolled, lose your turn.

Example: Role 6 dice & get 3 5's, a 4 and 2 6's. Set the 3 5's aside, that's 500 points. You can decide to stop and rack up 500 points, or you can gamble and roll the remaining 3 dice. Let's say you roll again, a 1, a 5, and a 2. You pull out the 1, that's 100 points, and the 5, that's 50 points, so now you're up to 650. You decide that's enough & stop, so you now officially add those 650 points to your written score. If you rolled again & got, say, a 2--well, you lose those 650 points, pass the dice to your left, so sad for you.

However--let's say you gamble, roll that last die, and get a 1--now you're up to 750 points, you've used up all 6 dice--you can pick ALL the dice up and roll them all again, and keep adding points!

Additional rule--we play that to get on the score board initially, you have to start with a minimum of 1000 points--so you have to keep rolling until you get 1000 or more for that first score, or until you lose your points & your turn. Once you are on the score board, you can stop at any point value you want.

To win: As you may have guessed by the alternate title, you need 10,000 cumulative points or to win. Once you hit or pass 10,000, everyone else gets one more turn. They have to roll until they can beat your point total (thus winning themselves) or until they don't score & get no points for that round.

This is a really fun way to encourage kids to use their addition skills, as well as teaching them about probability! Plus--it's just plain fun. Enjoy! Merry :-)