MinYat - A Minimal Yahtzee variant.

MinYat is a game of chance that I designed sometime during 1997-8 which is very fast and almost all dependant on luck, unlike its parent, the Yahtzee game (which is available on most computer systems, and also as a dice-game). MinYat is much simpler and should be understandable even by someone who does not do arithmetic (yet).

Required

Five dice (or so), which each have six sides. All of the dice should be labeled the same way, or the game will probably not work.
At least Two players. I haven't been in a group of more than Four, so I can't tell you if the game is really fair after that.

The Rules

All players shall sit in a certain order. This order shall not change until the end of the game.
The dice shall be given to one of the players, who will be the First player.
The player who has the dice rolls them.

Each player may roll the dice one more time than the previous player did.
The first player gets to roll the dice once.

If all of the dice now show the same symbol on the upper side, then whoever rolled the dice now wins the game.
If the player who has the dice has not rolled them as many times as they may, then

If the player wishes, they can pick up any subset of the available dice, leaving the others on the table, and roll them. Continue reading at Rule Four.

If the player has rolled the dice as many times as they are due, then they

Must pass the dice to the next player, who will get to roll the dice one more time than whoever just handed them the dice.
Note: The next player must roll All of the dice when they roll them for the first time.

The game ends when someone rolls the dice and they all match (a Yahtzee).
It's lots of fun to play many games in a row and see who gets the highest score.

Examples

Bob is playing MinYat. The player to his right just rolled the dice for the fifth time and did not get all the same (they had 3-3-3-3-4). Now Bob gets the dice. He will get to roll them six times, and each time he can choose which dice to leave on the table. If Bob gets a MinYat, then he will be the winner of this game.
If you have any questions, feel free to write me at chrosk@capaccess.org. Be sure to tell me that it is feedback from my web-page in the subject line as I have been getting a lot of junk mail recently.

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