Players
2 or more
Equipment
1 six-sided die
Length
5 to 10 minutes
How to play, step by step
- Roll the die. On your turn, roll a single die and add the result to your running turn total.
- Decide: roll or hold. After every roll you may roll again to add more, or hold to bank your turn total into your permanent score.
- Watch for the 1. Roll a 1 and you lose your entire turn total — everything accumulated this turn is wiped, and your turn ends.
- Bank and pass. Holding adds the turn total to your score and passes the die to the next player.
- Race to 100. First player to reach 100 points wins.
Turn outcomes
| Roll 2 to 6 | Add that many to your turn total, then choose again |
| Roll 1 | Lose the whole turn total; turn ends |
| Hold | Bank turn total into your score |
The 'hold at 20' rule
The classic heuristic is simple: keep rolling until your turn total reaches 20, then hold. The maths behind it is clean. Each roll risks your entire turn total on a 1-in-6 chance, and gains an average of 4 (the mean of 2 through 6) on the other five sixths. Once your turn total passes roughly 20, the expected loss from a 1 outweighs the expected gain.
Hold-at-20 is not perfectly optimal, but it beats almost every human player and is worth about 1 point per turn over hold-at-15 or hold-at-25.
When to break the rule
- If banking would put you at 100, always bank — the game is over.
- If your opponent is about to win, keep rolling well past 20. You have nothing to protect.
- Early in the game with a big lead, hold sooner — around 15 — to lock in the advantage.
- Playing against a player who never presses, mirror them; there is no reason to take variance you do not need.
Why Pig is a good teaching game
Pig is the cleanest possible demonstration of expected value versus risk of ruin — the same tension behind every bankroll decision in real-stake dice. If you understand why hold-at-20 works, you already understand why chasing losses does not.
Common variants
- Two-dice Pig — rolling a single 1 loses the turn; double 1 wipes your entire score.
- Big Pig — doubles score double, and double 1 is worth 25.
- Skunk — a commercial variant played with a scoresheet and multiple rounds.
Frequently asked questions
What is the optimal strategy in Pig?
Roll until your turn total reaches about 20, then hold — unless you can win outright or you are far behind, in which case press on.
How many points do you need to win Pig?
One hundred, in the standard rules.
What happens when you roll a 1 in Pig?
You lose everything accumulated during that turn and play passes to the next player. Your banked score is safe.
Keep playing
Model the risk with the odds calculator, or browse the full dice game rules library and our free dice tools.