Farkle

Farkle, or Farkel, is a dice game that has also been called or is similar to 1000/5000/10000, Cosmic Wimpout, Greed, Hot Dice, Squelch, Zilch,Zonk, or Darsh. Its origins as a folk game are unknown, but it has been marketed commercially since 1996 under the brand name Pocket Farkel by Legendary Games Inc. While the basic rules are well-established, there is a wide range of variation in both scoring and play, as described below.

Farkle is played by two or more players, with each player in succession having a turn at throwing the dice. Each player's turn results in a score, and the scores for each player accumulate to some winning total (usually 10,000).

Once a player has achieved a winning point total, each other player has one last turn to score enough points to surpass that high-score.

The following scores for single dice or combinations of dice are widely established, in that they are common to all or nearly all of the above-cited descriptions of farkle scoring.

For example, if a player throws 1-2-3-3-3-5, they could do any of the following:

This is not an exhaustive list of plays based on that throw, but it covers the most likely ones. If the player continues throwing, as in any of the above cases except the last, they risk farkling and thus losing all accumulated points. On the other hand, if they score five dice and have only one die to throw, they have a 1 in 3 chance of scoring a single 1 or a single 5, and then having scored all six dice they will have "hot dice" and can throw all six dice again to further increase their score.

Each scoring combination must be achieved in a single throw. For example, if a player has already set aside two individual 1s and then throws a third with the four dice remaining, they do not have a triplet of 1s for a score of 1000 but merely three individual 1s for a score of 300.

Since farkle is a folk game, variant rules are used in different playing communities. While the standard rules described above are widely used, even they are not universal. For example, the commercially marketed game of Pocket Farkel differs in that three 1s are scored as 300 rather than 1000. In addition, some players score one or more combinations of dice beyond the standard ones. Those variations include the following.

Like the standard combinations, any of these variant combinations must be achieved in a single throw.

These are the variations listed in the above-cited descriptions of farkle scoring, but further variations presumably exist. Since it is a folk game, players are free to agree upon whatever scores they choose for whatever combinations they choose to recognize.

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