How to Play the Twenty One Dice Game

We have a fast and easy dice game for you today: Twenty One! This is a quick and easy dice game that is great for a group and players of all ages can play.

Twenty One joins the press your luck list of games like Pig, 10,000, and Bank.

In this post, we’ll cover how to play, the rules and the game variations for the Twenty One dice game. Let’s get to it.

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What You Need For Twenty One Dice Game

You will need two dice and something to keep score with. We love to play where everyone has their own dice in their favorite color. You can shop dice here; Canadians here.

How to Play Twenty One Dice Game

The object of the game is to be the player with the closest score to 21 without going over.

To start, everyone rolls a die to see who goes fist. The high roll gets to start.

On your turn, you will roll both dice and add them together. You will then roll the dice again and add that sum to your first sum. When you reach a total of 14 or more, you roll only one die. You keep adding to your score as you roll. At any time, you can choose to stop and keep the sum as your score.

If your sum reaches more than 21, you have busted and are out of the round.

The next player gets to roll both dice. Play is the same. He can choose to stop at any time or keep going until he wishes to stop or he busts. If he score lower than the first player, he won’t win so he should keep rolling until he get a score that is the same or higher than the first player.

Each player after that plays the same way.

The player with the score closest to twenty one without going over wins the round. If there is a tie, each player rolls one dice and the highest roll wins the round.

Round Two

The second round starts with the player to the left of the player who started the game. The game is played the same. Each round after that the starting player moves to the left until everyone has had a turn to start.

Winning the Twenty One Dice Game

The player who has won the most rounds after everyone has had a turn to start is the winner.

Twenty One Dice Game Variations

The first game variation is that instead of playing with two dice, you only play with one dice. This makes the game a little longer but it’s just as much fun.

The next rule change would be to play until you reach 36. I would think this would be called 36 not 21.

The last game variation is to play with poker chips. To start, everyone gets the same amount of poker chips to play with. Before starting a round, everyone puts one chip in the middle. The game is played the same, except for when you bust you have to put a chip into the middle. The player who wins the round wins the chips in the middle. If you run out of chips, you are out of the game. The winner is the player who wins all the chips, or that player with the most chips at the end of the amount of rounds that you agreed to play to.

Roll the Fun

The Twenty One dice game is fast, fun and easy to learn. You can play with a group of players of all ages and have a great time. Get the printable rules here.

Looking for more fun with dice? Check out the dice games Help Your Neighbour, Jailed, Roller Coaster and Come on Six. Visit out Family Game Shelf shop for tons of fun with seasonal and original games like our Whacky Putt mini golf dice game.