Players
2 to 6
Equipment
5 dice and an opaque cup per player
Length
20 to 30 minutes
How to play, step by step
- Shake and peek. Everyone rolls five dice under their cup and looks only at their own.
- Open the bidding. The starting player names a quantity and a face — 'cuatro cincos', four fives — claiming that many exist across all cups.
- Raise, dudo, or calza. In turn, each player raises the bid, calls 'dudo' (doubt), or calls 'calza' (exactly right).
- Aces are wild. Ones count as every face value, so expected counts are roughly one third of all dice, not one sixth.
- Reveal on a challenge. All cups lift and the dice are counted. A wrong doubter loses a die; a correct one costs the bidder a die.
- Calza pays back. Call the count exactly and you recover a lost die. Get it wrong and you lose one.
- Last cup wins. Players hitting zero dice are out. The final player with dice takes the game.
Bidding on aces
| Switching to aces | Halve the current quantity, rounding up |
| Switching away from aces | Double the quantity and add one |
| Raising within a face | Increase the quantity |
| Raising the face | Keep the quantity, name a higher face |
The palifico round
When a player drops to their last die, the next round is palifico. Aces stop being wild, the player who went down to one die opens the bidding, and the face they name is locked for the whole round — everyone may only raise the quantity. It is the one round where a single-die player has a genuine edge, and it is what keeps Dudo from being a slow elimination.
Counting a bid
- Total dice on the table ÷ 3 = the expected count of any face, with aces wild.
- Subtract what you hold. Six players with five dice each is 30 dice, so about 10 of any face; if you hold three, the other cups should hold about 8.
- A bid more than two above expectation is usually a bluff or a very strong hand.
- In palifico, aces are not wild, so divide by 6 instead of 3. Bids should drop dramatically.
When to call calza
Calza is worth taking when the standing bid sits exactly at expectation and you hold dice that make the count land precisely. It is a rare, high-value play — recovering a die in an elimination game is worth more than the risk of losing one, but only when your read is genuinely tight.
Common variants
- Perudo — the commercial version, essentially identical.
- Liar's Dice — the English name, often played without calza.
- Fixed-face Dudo — palifico rules applied to every round for a purer counting game.
Frequently asked questions
What does 'dudo' mean?
It is Spanish for 'I doubt' — the call that challenges the previous bid and forces every cup to lift.
What is calza in Dudo?
A call that the current bid is exactly right. Correct, and you win back a lost die; wrong, and you lose one.
Are aces wild in Dudo?
Yes in normal rounds, no during palifico.
Keep playing
Work out bid probabilities, or browse the full dice game rules library and our free dice tools.