Looking for Yatzy? Here's How This Game Compares

If you searched for "Yatzy" and landed here, you're in the right neighborhood. This site runs the classic international ruleset for the 5-dice game rather than the Scandinavian Yatzy sheet specifically, and the differences are small enough that you'll be playing comfortably within a couple of turns.

What's exactly the same

The core loop is identical: 5 dice, up to 3 rolls per turn, 13 turns per player, and a score sheet split into an upper section (Ones through Sixes) and a lower section of combinations. The upper section bonus — an extra 35 points if your Ones-to-Sixes total reaches 63 — works exactly the same way it does in Yatzy. Full House, Small Straight, Large Straight, and the top combination (five matching dice) all carry the same idea, even if a couple of names or point values differ slightly by regional variant.

What's different

The main gap is in a couple of lower-section categories. Traditional Yatzy sheets include separate One Pair and Two Pairs categories. This site's ruleset replaces those with Three of a Kind and Four of a Kind instead — categories that score the sum of all 5 dice when you have at least three (or four) matching dice, rather than scoring just the pair itself. In practice this rewards slightly different decisions: in Yatzy, a low pair can still be worth locking in early; here, you generally want at least three matching dice before a "matching dice" category is worth much.

Everything else on the sheet — Chance, the two straights, Full House, and the top prize for five matching dice with its bonus for extra ones — maps over directly.

Why the rules differ at all

Every country that picked up this game in the mid-20th century adapted the lower section slightly, and none of these versions is more "correct" than another — they're regional traditions, the same way card game house rules vary from one family's table to the next. Yatzy became the standard name and ruleset across Sweden, Norway and Denmark; the version on this site follows the classic international 13-category sheet instead, the same core game with a couple of categories swapped.

Trying it for the first time

If you already know how to play Yatzy, the fastest way in is simply to start a game and read the score sheet as you go — every category shows what it needs the moment you tap it. For the full category-by-category breakdown, the complete rules guide lists every score value, and the glossary defines each term (Three of a Kind, Full House, and the rest) in one line if anything looks unfamiliar.