Yahtzee Strategy Guide - Dedicated to Brandon & Lisa

To quote from the Complete Rules for Yahtzee, the "Object of the game is to score as many points as possible without cheating." The first thing you need to win at Yahtzee is to be one of the luckiest people that the person sitting/standing next to you has ever met. Then you just need sound tactics and good form while rolling the dice and scoring. To learn this takes lots of practice, and time spent watching the masters of the game.

I had one of the greatest Yahtzee champions of all time (Mystery Man) come in and play five recorded games. I'll show one or two of them here in the strategy guide. The scores on the five games were (in order) 257, 223, 520, 383, 224. This guy is good! That's an average of 321.4 on five consecutive games. I'll take you through each roll and the decision making process on each turn, adding my own useful insight as needed. Let's begin. Remember these were live games, no practice, setups, or rigged dice. (You can view the original transcript for each game if you want). Learn from a Master.

The Famous "520 Game"

Turn 1
     Hold 5s because they're worth more than 1s.
     Got another 5, and now have a Full House, but Full Houses are easy to get, so we roll again, trying for a Yahtzee.
     Didn't get the Yahtzee, but still a good score for 5s on Section 1.
15 on Fives

Turn 2
     Three 2s, that's a good start.
     Got another 2! - hurry roll again.
     Yahtzee! Very good sign to get one this early in the game.
50 on Yahtzee

Turn 3
     Hold 6s, we like them best.
     Once again a Full House, but remember, they're easy, roll again.
     Decent score for 6s on Section 1, You should always remember that three of each category on Section 1 will get the 35 bonus.
18 on Sixes

Turn 4
     Yahtzee Bonus! What luck! On the first roll. 100 for the bonus, Now since we've scored the Yahtzee already, and scored on Fives in Section 1, using the Yahtzee as a wild card rule, we can score this roll on Large Straight since that's a tough one to get.
40 on Large Straight

Turn 5
     Hold 2s since we haven't scored them yet.
     Go again, see if we can get more 2s.
     Good enough, three 2s
6 on Twos

Turn 6
     Hold 4s, three is a good start.
     One more 4, could we get another Yahtzee?
     No such luck, but four 4s should make it easy to get the Section 1 bonus.
16 on Fours

Turn 7
     We almost have a Small Straight, but those are very easy to get, usually you can get it on one roll, so we hold the 1s and go for a Yahtzee.
     Now we switch and go for 3s because Ones are useless, and it's good to leave Ones open in case you get a bad roll. Most of the time it won't matter if you put a zero on Ones, but don't do it early in the game.
     Three 3s, good for Section 1. That gives us 64 on Section 1 - score the 35 bonus points.
9 on Threes

Turn 8
     Hold the 5s, we still have 3 and 4 of a kind open.
     Wow, that's another Yahtzee! Remember Fives is complete, so score it on 4 of a Kind
25 on 4 of a Kind

Turn 9
     Hold 2s, 3 of a kind is still open, and if you start with three of a number you should always go for a Yahtzee.
     No change really, roll again.
     Good deal, that's a Full House!
25 on Full House

Turn 10
     Hold the 4s and go for 3 of a kind.
     O.K. that's a small straight (3,4,5,6). See how easy they are, we weren't even going for it.
30 on Small Straight

Turn 11
     Hold 6s, we still need 3 of a kind.
     All right, got the three 6s. (Notice there's also another Full House, they just come if you're good, but we already scored it).
     Well, no more 6s but we do have at least three of them.
21 on Three of a Kind

Turn 12
     We have Chance and Ones left, we could go for Ones, but remember, they're worthless and we already got the 35 bonus. Hold 6s and go for a high Chance or another Yahtzee.
     Good move! Maybe we can get another Yahtzee.
     Almost. This is a great score for Chance, since the highest possible is 30
29 on Chance

Turn 13
     The only category left is Ones, but we don't really need Ones, so go for another Yahtzee with 2s.
     Gained another 2, we could get it?
     I guess we're not that lucky, score for Ones
1 on Ones

Results
Section 1:   65 + 35 bonus  100 
Section 2:   220 + 200 bonus  420 
Total:  520 

Commentary
That was a truly great game. You might say that Mystery Man was incredibly lucky. Yes he was, that's why he's a Yahtzee Champion. But notice the sound fundamentals in his playing strategy. Even if you take away the two Yahtzee Bonuses he still has 320 points. The most you can score leaving out Yahtzee Bonus points is 375, so you can see that he had good intuition on what to go for and where to score on all of the categories. Not just hoping to get lucky on the Yahtzee rolls.

Recorded game feature in Yahtzee v1.4
As of version 1.4 of the Yahtzee game, each game that is scored as a new entry on the high score list will be recorded - every roll!
Version 1.4 was release on 7/11/2002.

Transcripts from Mystery Man's 5 Games
View these rare collector's item for yourself. Feel free to download and study them if you like.
Game 1 [257]    Game 2 [223]    Game 3 [520]    Game 4 [383]    Game 5 [224]



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