Dice games
Pig
- players
- 2–10
- minutes
- 10
- years
- 8+
In the box
1 die
Box details
- Origin
- Traditional game, with no specific designer or publisher
- Mechanics
- Dice RollingPush Your Luck
Where to buy it
Near you
In a shop
Within 50 km.
The basics
With a single die, the aim is to reach a hundred points. On your turn, roll the die as many times as you like, adding up the results, and stop at any time to write down your total, but a one wipes out everything built up during the turn and play passes on. The first to a hundred points wins; as a house rule, the round is finished and the highest total wins.
Traditional rules, checked against reference sources · October 2026
The rules, step by step
Setup
A single die, Start at 0
- A single die, a score sheet, two or more players.
- Everyone starts at zero.
How to play
Roll as long as you like, Stop to write it down, One: turn wiped out
- On your turn, roll the die as many times as you like, adding up the results.
- You may stop at any time: the running total is then written down.
- But a one wipes out everything you had built up during the turn, and play passes on.
Scoring
Each face its value, One: 0 points, Written score is final
- Each face scores its value, from two to six.
- A one scores nothing and ends the turn: the turn total drops to zero.
- A score once written down is safe: it can no longer be lost.
End of the game
First to 100 points
- The first to reach one hundred points wins: you only need to stop as soon as your score plus your current turn gets there.
- Going first is an advantage: between two perfect players, the one who starts wins about 53 times out of 100.
- House rule to offset that advantage: finish the round, and the highest total wins. This is how Marquoir counts, as it records complete rounds.
House rules and pitfalls
Stopping at twenty points maximises the average gain per turn.
- Stopping at twenty points maximises the average gain per turn. To win, aiming a little higher pays off: against a perfect player, stopping at twenty-five wins more often than stopping at twenty.
- In the two-dice version, a single one ends the turn as usual, but a double one wipes out the score already written down, not just the turn total.
Going further
Variants · Frequently asked questions · In the same family
Variants
Game to
100 points
50 points
House rule: the rules play to 100 points.
choose them when you start a game: the scorer adapts
Frequently asked questions
When should you stop in Pig?
At around twenty points, each extra roll gains on average as much as it risks losing to a one: that is the break-even point for a single turn. Over a whole game, stopping at around twenty-five wins slightly more often. And if an opponent is close to a hundred, you obviously have to take more risks.