Dice Games — Yahtzee, Generala & Ten Thousand (Farkle)

This page bundles three classic dice games into a single board — switch between them from the Game row in the Menu. Each plays differently, but the controls are consistent: lock dice with a tap, hit Roll or Bank, watch the scorecard update live, and pick the category that nets you the most points.

🎲 Yahtzee — the modern classic

Roll 5 dice up to 3 times per turn. After each roll you can tap any dice to "lock" them — they won't reroll. After your third roll (or earlier if you're satisfied) you must drop your dice into one of 13 scoring categories, and each category can only be used once across the full game. The board splits into an Upper Section (Ones through Sixes, scoring the sum of matching dice) and a Lower Section (combinations).

The Upper Section has a hidden ace up its sleeve: score 63+ points up top and you collect a +35 bonus. That bonus is the most reliable points swing in the game, so the strongest scorers chase it aggressively in the first half.

Game ends when all 13 categories are filled. Aim for 250+ on Medium, 320+ on Hard, 350+ to feel like a Cyborg.

🇦🇷 Generala — the Argentine cousin

Born in Buenos Aires and played across South America. The same 5 dice + 3 rolls structure as Yahtzee, but with only 12 categories (faster game) and a beautiful twist: scoring on your first roll doubles the points. Hit a Full House (3+2) on roll one and you bank 70 instead of 35. Hit Generala (5 of a kind) on roll one and the game ends immediately with 100 points — instant win.

Because of first-roll doubles, Generala rewards aggressive opening rolls. New players play it like Yahtzee and lose 30–40% of their score to held-too-early dice.

🔟 Ten Thousand — press your luck

Also known as Farkle, Zilch, or 5000 across different regions. Roll 6 dice, set aside any scoring combination (a single 1 = 100, a single 5 = 50, three-of-a-kind = face × 100, etc.), then decide: bank the points and end your turn safely, or roll the remaining dice and try for more. The trap is the Farkle: if a roll produces no scoring dice at all, you lose every point you'd accumulated that turn.

When all 6 dice score, that's Hot Dice — you get them all back and roll again with your turn total intact. It's the highest-variance moment in the game. Reach 5,000 (default target, scales with difficulty) to win.

Play Yahtzee ZAP, Generala, and Ten Thousand free online at Cliko Games — no download, no sign-up. Switch between all three games from the Game row in the Menu. Each game has its own daily challenge, difficulty scaling, and challenge sharing via URL.

All three games work on desktop and mobile browsers. Difficulty ranges from Beginner (forgiving targets) to Cyborg (expert-level scoring thresholds).

Three rulesets share one dice tray: Yahtzee’s fixed thirteen categories, Generala’s bonuses for hands rolled in one throw, and Ten Thousand’s push-your-luck banking. Switching between them is a crash course in how one mechanic becomes three different games. The daily roll sequence is shared by every player, and Qwixx ZAP adds the row-locking branch of dice design.

From the builder's desk

Yahtzee Zap is really three dice games living on one tray, and the engineering story behind that is the design call I want to explain — because it's also, in a roundabout way, the reason players lose here. Under the hood there's a single shared engine handling the universal physics of this game family: the dice, the rolls, the hold-and-reroll loop that every variant in the tradition shares. On top of that engine sit per-ruleset scoring adapters — separate modules that each know their own game's categories, values, and bonus structures. One tray, one rolling rhythm, three complete rulebooks. The reconciliation problem was making three genuinely different scoring traditions feel native on identical hardware, and solving it once, cleanly, instead of building three near-identical games that would drift apart with every future fix.

That architecture is invisible when it works, and the funny thing is that players recreate its exact challenge inside their own heads — badly. Because here's the mistake that defines this page: switching between the three games and applying the wrong scoring instinct. The dice look the same. The holds feel the same. The rolling rhythm is muscle memory within ten minutes. So the brain quietly assumes the VALUES are the same too — and they are not. A combination worth chasing hard in one ruleset can be a mediocre category with worse odds in another; the bonus structures reward different disciplines; the category that anchors one game's strategy barely matters in the next. Players carry a Yahtzee-style bonus-chasing instinct into a ruleset where the category values and the odds simply differ, burn two rerolls hunting it, and hand the round away wondering why the score feels thin.

The fix costs five seconds and beats hours of habit: re-read which game's scoring you're in before committing dice. Not the rules — the scoring. Before your first hold of any round, glance at the category sheet and let it reset your instincts: what does THIS game pay well for, and what are the odds of completing it from these dice in the rolls remaining? The tray is shared. The strategy never is. Treat each ruleset as its own opponent with its own price list, because that's exactly what the code does.

My honest recommendation for learning the page: pick one ruleset and play it exclusively until its values feel obvious, then add the second and let the contrast teach you both. The players who rotate casually from day one stay mediocre at all three; the players who layer them end up fluent.

The daily rolls land at midnight, the same dice fate for everyone. Same tray, three games — make sure you know which one you're playing before the dice stop.

Dice games look like pure luck — but the difference between a beginner and a Cyborg-tier player is hundreds of points per game. Below is the strategy book we'd give a friend who wanted to start beating us.

Yahtzee category-by-category EV cheat sheet

For the player who likes numbers — here's roughly what each Yahtzee category is "worth" on an average turn (after 3 rolls), if approached optimally:

Notice Chance and Four-of-a-Kind have nearly the same expected value — but Four-of-a-Kind has triple the upside. When you're behind, push for variance; when you're ahead, take Chance and lock in.