How to play Klondike (dice)

Klondike is a banking dice game for 2 to 8 players. You need five dice and a pile of chips. The game takes its name from the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s and was traditionally played for money, but it works just as well at home with chips or points that carry no value.

Pick one player to act as the banker for the first round. Everyone else places a stake on the table in front of them, one chip each for example.

The banker rolls all five dice, a single throw. The roll is read as a poker-style hand: five of a kind is best, followed by four of a kind, full house, three of a kind, two pairs and one pair. Each player then rolls their own five dice in turn, also getting just one throw.

If your hand beats the banker's, the banker pays you the same amount as your stake. If your hand is equal or worse, the banker takes your stake.

The hands rank as follows, from best to worst:

1. Five of a kind
2. Four of a kind
3. Full house: three of a kind plus a pair
4. Three of a kind
5. Two pairs
6. One pair
7. Highest single die

In Klondike the ace, meaning the 1, ranks highest, followed by 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2. A pair of aces therefore beats a pair of sixes. Straights do not count.

Play an agreed number of rounds and pass the bank to the next player after each one. When the final round is over, the player with the most chips wins.

Klondike was played in gambling halls across North America, often on tables with a marked layout for the bets. At home you can skip the banker entirely: everyone puts an equal stake into a pot, everyone rolls once, and the best hand takes the pot. That removes the bank's edge, and a tie for best hand is settled with a re-roll.

If you enjoy trying to beat the bank, have a look at High Dice, which uses two dice and only counts the total, or the classic casino game Craps.

No. Klondike is also the name of the world's best known solitaire card game, the one most people simply call solitaire because it shipped with Windows. The dice game and the card game share nothing but the name, which in both cases points back to the gold rush along the Klondike river in Canada. This page is about the dice game.

The rule that the banker wins every tied hand is what gives the bank its edge, just like in other banking games. The more often players tie with the banker, the more the bank earns. That is why the role should rotate, so the advantage evens out over the course of the evening.