How to play Help Your Neighbour

Help Your Neighbour is played with three dice and chips, and suits two to six players. Each player starts with ten chips. With six players, everyone gets one number from 1 to 6. With fewer, the numbers are shared out as evenly as possible: three players take two numbers each, two players three numbers each. With four or five players, one or two numbers are left without an owner and simply do nothing in the game.

Players roll the three dice in turn. For every die showing your number, you must put one chip in the pot in the middle. If your neighbour rolls 4-4-2 and you own the four, it costs you two chips.

So it is the other players' rolls that hurt you: on your own turn you can at worst hit yourself. Hence the name, best read with a wink. Your neighbours are only too happy to help you empty your stack.

Play continues until only one player has chips left. That player wins and takes the pot. A round rarely lasts more than fifteen minutes, so play several and let whoever wins the most rounds take the evening.

Some play it the other way around: dice showing your number earn you chips from the pot instead of costing you, and the first player to run empty wins. Another twist is swapping numbers between rounds, so nobody is stuck with an unlucky number all evening.

If you like simple chip games, also try LCR or Aces in the Pot.

Yes, from around age six. All it takes is recognising your number on the dice and counting chips. The game is pure luck, so everyone at the table has the same chance of winning.