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Boatzee
Rules for various dice games such as Boatzee (BZ), Double Boatzee (BD), and Triple Boatzee (BT)


  • read: Boatzee (BZ)
  • read: How are the Boatzee dice generated?
  • read: Double Boatzee (BD)
  • read: Triple Boatzee (BT)



Boatzee (BZ)

Object:
Boatzee is very similar to a famous, well-known dice game. The object is to roll 5 dice up to 3 times, and score higher than your opponent at the end of the game.

How to Play:
When you pull up a Boatzee board, you will see 5 dice at the top of the screen. To re-roll one or more dice, click on the dice you want to re-roll, and a red border will appear around the dice. When you have selected all the dice you want to re-roll, click on the Re-roll selected dice link to get new dice.

NOTE: you can also click on selected dice to "unselect" it. Clicking the same dice will alternate between selected and unselected.

You can re-roll up to 2 times. After your 2nd re-roll, you'll need to choose a category to score your roll (described below).

Once you click "Re-roll dice" that action is permanent, even if you click on "Start this move over", and even if you leave the site for a few hours or a few days. Once you re-roll, your previous dice are lost forever. This is to prevent players from re-rolling again and again looking for good rolls. So make sure the dice are selected correctly before you click on the re-roll link.

Scoring:
After you finish rolling your dice, click on a category to score that roll. If you get a good roll, you do not have to re-roll. You can score at any point during your dice rolls. The categories are described below:
  • Ones: sum of all 1's showing on the 5 dice
  • Twos: sum of all 2's showing
  • Threes: sum of all 3's showing
  • Fours: sum of all 4's showing
  • Fives: sum of all 5's showing
  • Sixes: sum of all 6's showing
    For the above categories, only the dice matching the category are scored (for example, the 6's in the Sixes category). All other dice are ignored
  • 3 of a kind: total of all dice: when 3 (or more) dice are the same
  • 4 of a kind: total of all dice: when 4 (or more) dice are the same
  • Full House: score 25: 3 of the same dice, and 2 more of a different value
  • Small Straight: score 30: consecutive sequence of 4 (or more) dice
  • Large Straight: score 40: consecutive sequence of all 5 dice (1-2-3-4-5 or 2-3-4-5-6)
  • Boatzee!: score 50: all 5 dice showing the same value
  • Chance: add total of any 5 dice
  • Top Section Bonus: in addition, if the top section (categories Ones through Sixes) totals 63 or more, you get 35 bonus points. If you put a 3 of a kind in each number, you will get this bonus. However, you can sometimes fudge this, like putting in 4x Sixes or 4x Fives to make up for fewer Ones and Twos.


If you are unsure how a category scores, go ahead and click in that spot, and our computers will show you the score. You have the option of changing your mind and choosing another category by clicking the "Start this move over" located below the board. You can also use this link to clear any dice you've clicked, or you can clear the dice by clicking on them one at a time.

Each category can only be used once per game. If you do not meet the conditions for a category, you will score 0. You MUST fill in one category per turn-- you may not pass a turn even if you get a bad roll.

Winning:
When all the categories have been filled in, the person with the highest number of points wins.

Thank you for playing Boatzee on ItsYourTurn.com!
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How are the Boatzee dice generated? In every game where there's an element of chance, there's always the question of whether the dice are "fair", so we are adding this section to tell you how the dice are generated on ItsYourTurn.com.

We've pre-rolled a huge number of dice sets (5 dice to a set), which are stored in a table ready to be used. You will always get a set of 5 dice even if you're requesting fewer than 5 (on a re-roll, for instance). The dice that you do not use are discarded.

The dice are handed out sequentially depending on the order in which they are requested. With the amount of traffic that we receive on ItsYourTurn.com, dice sets are handed out at the rate of several sets per second.

The exact dice you get depends on the order that the requests are made. Since there are tens of thousands of players continuously requesting dice 24 hours a day, there is no way to control ahead of time which dice you will get. The speed with which your request travels through the Internet and through our servers will determine which dice you receive, and a difference of milliseconds will give you completely different dice.

Even if you were fast enough to make two requests in a row, the dice have been randomly rolled and are randomly ordered. There is absolutely no pattern between adjacent sets.

The program that selects the dice is completely independent of the Boatzee game logic. It does not know who you are, what your board is, or which dice you're looking for. All it does is select the very next set of dice and returns it to you, and it does this several times per second. A few milliseconds of Internet network delay in either direction would result in you receiving a completely different set of dice.

The program does not favor either you or your opponent. It does not know that you need a 6 and then deliberately gives you other numbers. It does not know who the dice are for, so it is unable to give your opponent perfect dice and then give you rotten dice. Everyone on the site uses the same set of dice, so even if the dice are skewed (they aren't), they would be equally skewed for everyone.

Once a set of dice is used, it is discarded. We regularly roll new dice to be used, so that no sequence of dice is ever the same. We have already rolled several hundred million dice, and new random dice are added all the time. We do not reuse past dice rolls.

For an even longer discussion of the randomness of our dice, you can also read the help topic
are the dice fair? located in the backgammon rules.
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Double Boatzee (BD) The rules and categories for Double Boatzee are the same as regular Boatzee, except that the values in the SECOND column are doubled. (The values in the first column are not doubled, and are the same values as regular Boatzee).

The only item not doubled is the Top Section Bonus, which is always 35 point regardless of which column it's in. In order to get this bonus, you'll need to score 63 UNMULTIPLIED points (or, in the second column, you'll need to score 126 multiplied points to get the bonus).

The total of all your columns are displayed as the TOTAL SCORE item below the board.
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Triple Boatzee (BT) The rules and categories for Triple Boatzee are the same as regular Boatzee, except that the values in the second column are doubled, and the values in the third column are tripled. (The values in the first column are not doubled, and are the same values as regular Boatzee).

The only item not multiplied is the Top Section Bonus, which is always 35 point regardless of which column it's in. In order to get this bonus, you'll need to score 63 UNMULTIPLIED points (in the second column, you'll need to score 126 multiplied points to get the bonus, and in the third column you'll need 189 points).

The total of all your columns are displayed as the TOTAL SCORE item below the board.
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