Rules
Roll 6 dice. The scoring evaluator picks the best combo from your roll and locks those dice away. Add the points to your turn total. Then choose:
- Bank - turn total goes to your score, turn ends.
- Push - re-roll the remaining (non-scoring) dice. If the next roll scores zero, that’s a Farkle - your entire turn total is wiped.
If a single roll uses all your remaining dice, you’ve got hot dice - get all 6 back and keep going. Turn total carries.
First player to 10,000 wins.
Scoring
- Single 1 → 100
- Single 5 → 50
- Three of a kind → face × 100 (three 1s = 1000)
- Four of a kind → ×2 the three-of-a-kind value
- Five of a kind → ×3
- Six of a kind → ×4
- Straight 1–6 → 1500 (needs all 6 dice)
- Three pairs → 1500 (needs all 6 dice)
Anything else → Farkle.
History
Farkle (also Zilch, Greed, Squelch, 10,000) is a folk dice game with murky 19th-century origins. Like Pig, it’s been a math-class staple for decades because the optimal stopping rule is genuinely subtle - Farkle probability climbs steeply as dice run out (≈2% with 6 dice, ≈28% with 3, ≈67% with 1), so a “decent” turn total starts to feel risky surprisingly fast.
This implementation is auto-optimal: each roll automatically takes the highest-scoring interpretation. Real Farkle lets you deliberately pass on scoring some dice so you have more to re-roll, but most casual play just takes the max anyway.
The bot follows a basic stopping rule: bank if it would win, bank at any total ≥ 1000, bank at ≥ 500 with 3 or fewer dice left.
References