Dicemania Rules

Dicemania, invented in the 1990's, is an Internet variation on the dice game Yacht. The objective being to get the highest possible score based on a number of dice throws. It can be played solo, or against other people, where the highest score wins the game.

Score Sheets and Categories

Each player has their own score sheet, which lists a number of categories. The idea is, by rolling the dice, to fill a score into each category. Each player takes it in turn to roll the 5 dice. At the end of the turn they must choose the best category in which to place the dice. Once this is done a score will be given, which is calculated from the category scoring, as shown below. The basic idea i s to choose the category which will give the best score for the dice. Note that a category can only be selected once.

Upper Section

ones : score 1 x the number of ones thrown
twos : score 2 x the number of twos thrown
threes : score 3 x the number of threes thrown
fours : score 4 x the number of fours thrown
fives : score 5 x the number of fives thrown
sizes : score 6 x the number of sixes thrown

Lower Section

3 of a kind : score the total of all dice if at least 3 of the dice share the same value, score 0 otherwise.
4 of a kind : as 3 of a kind, but at least 4 four dice of the same value are needed.
full house : score 25 if there are three dice of one value and two of another, score 0 otherwise.
low straight : score 30 points if at least 4 dice have consecutive values, e.g. 1234, score 0 otherwise.
high straight : as low straight, but score 40 points for 5 consecutive dice values.
dicemania : score 50 points if all the dice have the same value, score 0 otherwise.
chance : score the total of all dice (usually used when no other category is suitable).

For example, if 55252 was rolled, then suitable categories for this would be:

If any other category was chosen, 0 would be scored in that category.

If 63 or more is scored in the upper section then a bonus of 35 points is awarded.

A Turn Here, a Turn There

It would be very hard to get decent scores if only one roll per turn is allowed. Therefore up to three rolls are allowed each turn. This means that a player can roll the dice, if the dice are not instantly suitable for a particular category, then the dice can be rolled again. Also the player can choose which dice to re-roll and which to keep.

For example, if a player rolled 26146, this would not get a particularly high score for any category. So the player can use their second roll. Since there are more sixes than anything else, a good idea would be to keep the sixes and re-roll the other dice . Say the seconds roll produced the following, 66626. This is very good because there are now 4 sixes, this would be suitable to place in the sixes category, 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind and chance. However there is still one roll left, and it is possible to get an even better score. If again all the sixes were kept, and the two was re-rolled, then this could produce 66666. This is perhaps the best roll possible because it is a Dicemania (all the dice are the same value). So at this p oint all the rolls have been used and a category must be selected. A good choice would be to place the dice in the Dicemania category, which would score 50 points.

The End of the Game is Near

The game ends when all the categories have been filled with a score. The total score for a game is the sum of scores from each category. Towards the end of the game the choice of available categories is small, since most will be filled already. This means that if a bad throw is made, and there is no suitable category, a category will have to be selected, even though it will achieve a low score.

For example, towards the end of the game, the only categories still not filled could be fours and Dicemania, all the other categories have been used in previous moves. After all rolls have been made, a player has the dice 35615. The player must choose either fours or Dicemania to place the dice. Both are not suitable, since they will both score 0. In this case it might be best to choose to score 0 in Dicemania, since it is very hard to get a Dicemania, and the player might need to g et a score in fours in order to achieve the bonus, so they then can use their next turn to try to get lots of fours.

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