Maxi Yatzy Rules — How to Play and Keep Score

Setup

Six dice, a cup, and a column of twenty boxes for each player: the six number boxes upstairs, then fourteen combination boxes below. Roll for the first player and go clockwise. One game is one pass down every column.

How to play

Roll all six dice. Keep any you like, reroll the rest, and do that once more if you want — three rolls at most, and dice you kept can go back in the cup on a later roll. After your last roll, write the result into one empty box of your choice. If no box fits, you must still pick one and score it 0. The game ends when all twenty boxes are filled.

Scoring

Upper section. Ones through Sixes score the total of the dice showing that face — with six dice, Sixes can reach 36. When the six upper boxes add up to 84 or more, a 100 point bonus is added. Eighty-four is exactly four of each number, one more per box than the Yatzy target of three.

Lower section. Every box scores only the dice named, except the three straights, which are flat, and the two boxes that use all six dice.

The pairs must be different numbers: four fives is one pair, not two. A full house ignores the sixth die; a villa and a tower need it. Six of a kind is only the Maxi Yatzy box — it is not a villa, a tower or three pairs, however you try to split it.

Maximum score. With these boxes a perfect sheet is 649: 126 upstairs plus the 100 bonus, and 423 across the lower boxes.

Ending the game

Highest grand total after twenty boxes wins, ties standing as ties. The 100 point bonus decides more games than any single lower box, so a good player will bank a fourth six upstairs before chasing a tower.

Common variations

Some sheets print the two straights and the royal straight as sums instead of flat values, and some pay Maxi Yatzy 50 rather than 100 — change the box values to match the card on the table. Played in two columns, the sheet is filled twice and the columns added. The five-dice game is its own sheet in this catalogue.