Category: Fun

During my last visit to Seattle, my sister taught me a new game called Ten Thousand.  It’s played with six dice, and a pencil/paper to keep score.   Two or more people can play.

We’ve played it on the boat the last few times we’ve gone out… and have only lost one die in the lake, so far.   I’ve been repurposing them from other games as I go.  🙂

I’ve been told the game is similar to Farkle, but I am not familiar with that game to say if that is true.   Here are the rules we use for our version of  Ten Thousand:

Order of play: Each player rolls 1 die to determine order of play, highest one goes first, turns proceed clockwise around the table, as follows…

The general idea:  To begin, all players start off with a score of  zero on the board.  Each player’s turn is made up of one or more rolls.  A player must roll the dice to accumulate points on each turn, according to the scoring combinations outlined below.  She can keep rolling as long as she rolls a scoring combination, but she risks losing all points on a turn if she busts (i.e., rolls without a scoring combination).   Each player must first accumulate 1000 points or more on a turn to get “on the board” and to begin recording a score.   If player n cannot reach 1000 points or more on her first turn, no points are recorded for that turn, and play passes to the next player.  Player n must then try to get on the board on each of her subsequent turns.  Once player n is on the board, she can stop at any number of points to end her turn, and those points are added to her score on the board.   If a player busts on any turn, no points are recorded for that turn.  Standard play ends when one player’s score on the board reaches 10000 or more.  At which point each remaining player takes one more turn to see if she can beat it.  The player with the highest score after that final round is the winner.

Method of scoring:  To start a turn, a player rolls all the dice.  To keep rolling, she must roll something that matches one of the scoring combinations.  She must then set aside at least one of the scoring combinations as ‘counter(s)’ on each roll that will count towards the point total of that turn.  She then rolls the remaining (non-counter) dice to continue her turn.   If all 6 of the dice are ‘counters’ a given turn, player must roll all 6 dice again, to continue adding to her total points for that turn.   Once a player is ‘on the board,’ she can decide to end her turn with any number of points and add them to her total on the board.   However, if a player rolls resulting in no scoring combination for that roll, that player ‘busts,’ her turn is over, and no score is recorded on the board for her on that turn.  Play then passes to the next player.

Scoring combinations (* note that ⚀’s are special):

On any roll:

⚄ = 50
⚀ = 100*

In a single roll:

3 of a kind equals that face value in hundreds (e.g., 3 ⚄ = 500).
3 ⚀ = 1000 *

6 of a kind equals that face value in thousand  (e.g., 6 ⚁ = 2000)
6 ⚀= 10,000*

A run = 1500 (i.e., ⚀⚁⚂⚄⚃⚅ )

Three sets of pairs = 1500  (e.g., ⚀⚀ ⚃⚃ ⚄⚄…. or even ⚂⚂ ⚂⚂ ⚅⚅, etc).

I hope that made sense.  Now find 6 dice and give it a try!