Drunk Farkle Drinking Game

Push your luck one roll too far and drink the difference.

Also known as: Farkle Drinking Game · 10000

Be the first to rate this game

Your rating:

Players 2-8

You need6 dice, score pad, drinks

DrinkAnything

Intensity

Time30-45 min

Play Drunk Farkle online

Drunk Farkle takes the beloved push-your-luck dice game - six dice, 1s and 5s and triples scoring points, bank or keep rolling - and attaches consequences to greed. Every roll you press your luck, you risk the Farkle: a roll with zero scoring dice that torches your turn's points and, in this version, comes with a drink attached. Bank early and you are safe but slow; roll on and you are rich or drinking.

It is the thinking drinker's dice game. Where Three Man and Snake Eyes are pure luck, Farkle hands you a real decision every single roll, and your friends get to heckle it. Two to eight players, six dice, a score pad and a target of 5,000 or 10,000 points - with the sweetener that banking big makes everyone below you sip. Greed has never been so well quantified.

What you need & setup

Gather 2-8 players, six dice, a score pad and a designated (reasonably sober) scorekeeper.
Agree the winning target - 5,000 points for a brisk game, 10,000 for the full epic.
Set the drink rules: one drink per Farkle, sips-for-the-table when someone banks 350+.
Everyone rolls one die; highest goes first, play moves clockwise.

How to play Drunk Farkle

Roll all six dice

Start your turn by rolling all six dice and hunting for scorers: every 1 is worth 100 points, every 5 is worth 50, and any three of a kind scores its face value times 100 - except three 1s, which score a princely 1,000. Straights and three pairs score big bonuses too, if your table plays the full chart.

Set aside and decide

You must set aside at least one scoring die from every roll. Then comes Farkle's eternal question: bank what you have and end your turn safely, or re-roll the remaining dice to build the pile higher? Every die you set aside shrinks your next roll and raises your odds of disaster. The table should be loudly voting for disaster.

Fear the Farkle

If any roll produces zero scoring dice, that is a Farkle: your entire turn's unbanked points evaporate, your turn ends, and - this being Drunk Farkle - you take a drink. The sting scales beautifully: farkling on your first roll costs a sip and a shrug; farkling with 800 unbanked points costs the same sip and a piece of your soul.

Ride hot dice

Score with all six dice in one turn and you have hot dice: pick up all six and keep rolling, adding to the same turn total. Hot dice streaks are how legends and catastrophes are made, because the Farkle risk resets with every fresh handful. The correct amount of hot-dice greed is slightly more than feels wise.

Bank and punish

When you stop, your turn total is banked permanently and can never be lost. In Drunk Farkle, banking 350 or more comes with a bonus: every player with a lower total score than you takes a sip. It converts good turns into table-wide events and gives the leaders a target on their back, which is exactly where leaders belong.

Race to the finish

First player to the target score triggers the final round: everyone else gets one last turn to catch them, desperation re-rolls and all. Highest total wins and hands out a closing toast; the lowest score traditionally drains what is left of their drink to the winner's health. Then someone demands a rematch. Someone always demands a rematch.

Roll outcomes

Roll	What happens
1	100 points
5	50 points
Three of a kind	Face value x 100 (three 1s = 1000)
Farkle (no scoring dice)	Bust: lose the turn's points and take a drink
Pass at 350+ banked	Safe - everyone below you sips

The rules

Single 1s score 100 points; single 5s score 50.
Three of a kind scores face value x 100; three 1s score 1,000.
Four, five or six of a kind double the three-of-a-kind score with each extra die (house standard).
A straight (1-6) scores 1,500; three pairs score 1,500 (optional chart).
At least one scoring die must be set aside after every roll.
Rolling zero scoring dice is a Farkle: lose the turn's unbanked points and take a drink.
Score with all six dice and roll all six again (hot dice), same turn.
You need 500 points in a single turn to get on the board (opening threshold).
Banking 350+ makes every player with a lower total score take a sip.
First to the target (5,000 or 10,000) triggers one final turn for all others.

Variations & house rules

Triple Farkle

Three Farkles in a row costs 1,000 points off your banked score and a double drink. It is the classic tabletop rule with teeth added, and it turns a cold streak into genuine peril - the third roll of a slumping player gets the most attentive audience in the game.

Toxic Dice

Anyone who farkles passes one die of their choice to the next player, who must include it in their opening roll and return it after. Pure superstition - the die is not actually cursed - but watching players agonize over which die 'feels' toxic is worth the rule on its own.

Greed Ladder

Drinks scale with unbanked points lost to a Farkle: one sip per 300 points, rounded up. Cautious players barely drink; riverboat gamblers pay properly for their sins. This is the variation for tables that want the drinking to precisely mirror the decision-making.

Farkle Royale

Team play for four, six or eight: partners sit opposite, combine banked scores, and may once per game 'inherit' a partner's hot dice to continue the streak themselves. Adds table talk, shared blame and the unique joy of farkling away points your partner earned.

Speed Farkle

A ten-second shot clock on every bank-or-roll decision, enforced by the table counting down. Deliberation is where Farkle drags with big groups; the clock keeps the night moving and produces magnificently terrible snap decisions. Violators drink and auto-bank.

Pro tips

Bank at 300-500 points early in the game; build a base before you start gambling with hot dice.

Your Farkle odds explode as dice shrink: rolling two dice fails about half the time, one die fails two times in three.

Never chase the opening 500 threshold recklessly - farkling repeatedly while off the board is the classic new-player death spiral.

Play the table, not the dice: if you trail by 2,000 in the final rounds, caution is just losing slowly.

Write scores down every turn - Drunk Farkle math done from memory drifts about 20 percent per hour.

Keep the Farkle drink to one honest sip; the game generates plenty of them across a full session.

Where Drunk Farkle fits on the shelf

Drunk Farkle is one of the gentler picks on the shelf - 9th of 9 dice games by intensity, rated 2 out of 5.
It is one of the few games here that genuinely works with just 2 players, and it stays fun up to 8.
A typical session runs 30-45 min - a solid middle act for the evening.
Browse the full dice drinking games shelf to compare all 9 games side by side.

A little history

Farkle's ancestry is genuinely murky - enthusiasts variously claim medieval French or Icelandic roots, sometimes citing a 14th-century sailor named Sir Albert Farkle whose existence no historian has ever confirmed. More verifiably, the game circulated in America as 10,000, Zilch or Hot Dice for generations before commercial versions standardized scoring in the late 20th century. The drinking adaptation is a natural evolution: the Farkle was always a punishment looking for a beverage.

Drink responsibly: Farkle's drink triggers are frequent but small, and the game runs long - the danger is accumulation, not any single moment. Keep the Farkle penalty to one sip, count an hour of play as a checkpoint for water, and let anyone play a round on points alone. See our safety guide for pacing tips and alcohol-free versions.

Drunk Farkle FAQ

What exactly counts as a Farkle?

Any roll where none of the dice you just threw can score - no 1s, no 5s, no three of a kind, and no straight or pairs combination if your chart includes them. Your previously set-aside dice do not save you; only the fresh roll counts. When it happens, your turn ends, every unbanked point from that turn is gone, and you take your drink. Then the table applauds.

Do you have to score 500 before you can start banking?

Under the standard opening threshold rule, yes - your very first banked turn must be worth at least 500 points, which forces new players into exactly the risky rolling the game is about. Once you are on the board, you may bank any amount. Some tables lower the threshold to 350 for drinking play so nobody spends the whole first hour farkling in purgatory.

What are hot dice and how do they work?

If all six of your dice have scored in a single turn - in one roll or across several - you have hot dice: pick up all six and keep rolling, adding to the same turn total. There is no limit to how many times this can chain. It is Farkle's jackpot mechanic and its siren song, because one bad roll still farkles the entire accumulated pile, no matter how tall it has grown.

How do the drinking rules work in Drunk Farkle?

Two triggers carry the game. Every Farkle costs the roller one drink - the risk tax. And every bank of 350 or more makes all players with lower total scores take a sip - the success tax. Together they guarantee the drinking tracks the drama: gamblers pay when luck breaks, leaders make the table pay when it holds. Everything else, like Triple Farkle penalties, is optional seasoning.

How long does a game of Drunk Farkle take?

A 5,000-point game with four players runs about 30-45 minutes; a full 10,000-point game can stretch past an hour with a big table, mostly depending on how much your group deliberates. If the night needs a faster format, drop the target to 3,000, adopt Speed Farkle's shot clock, or declare the leader after ten full rounds the winner. The dice do not mind.

Drunk Farkle Drinking Game

Play Drunk Farkle online

What you need & setup