Rules
You and your opponent each take a turn rolling three d6. You keep rolling until you get a scoring hand:
- 4-5-6 - instant win for the round (highest possible).
- 1-2-3 - instant loss for the round (lowest possible).
- Three of a kind (“trips”) - score the trip value. Trip-6 beats trip-5 beats trip-4 … down to trip-1.
- Pair plus an odd die (“point”) - your point is the odd die’s value. Point-6 beats point-5 … down to point-1.
- Anything else - no call. The dice are rerolled automatically.
After both players have a scoring hand, the higher hand wins the round. Ranking, high to low: 4-5-6 → trips → point → 1-2-3. Ties push and the round is replayed.
First to 3 round wins takes the match.
History
Cee-lo (also “see-low,” “C-Lo,” and a half-dozen other spellings) is a street and bar dice game with roots in 19th-century Chinese gambling, popularized in the US through the early-1900s gambling halls and lasting into modern hip-hop culture - it shows up in songs by Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, and others. The name is a corruption of the Cantonese 細路 (“see lo”), variously rendered.
There are dozens of regional variants - “bank” cee-lo with a permanent banker, “chasing the ace,” doubles-only scoring, and so on. The version here is the most common 1-vs-1 form: simple ranking, ties replay, no betting.
There’s no strategy: you roll until the dice tell you the answer. The fun is the volatility - 4-5-6 and 1-2-3 are both 1-in-36 per roll, so swings happen.
References