Play Help Your Neighbor Online

What Is Help Your Neighbor?

Help Your Neighbor is a fast, chip-shedding dice game for a group. Before the first roll, the eleven possible totals of two dice, 2 through 12, are dealt out around the table so that every player owns a few of them. Everyone starts with ten chips. Players then take turns rolling two dice, and whoever owns the total that comes up puts one chip in the pot. It might be the roller; more often it is somebody else, which is where the name comes from. The first player to get rid of all ten chips wins the pot.

That is the entire game. There is no holding, no re-rolling and no betting decision, which makes it one of the few dice games in which a four-year-old and a great-grandmother compete on precisely equal terms. The interest comes from watching the chips drain away unevenly, from the moment a player gets down to one chip and every roll at the table might finish them, and from the arguments over who got the good numbers. Because the winner is the player who loses chips fastest, it also has the pleasant reversal that a run of bad luck for your neighbor is good news for you.

Help Your Neighbor belongs to the same family of pass-and-pay chip games as Aces in the Pot and Left Center Right, and it shares its social, roll-and-groan rhythm with Bunco. What sets it apart is number ownership: your fate is tied to a few totals for the whole game, and the arithmetic of two dice decides how much you should like them.

A Short History of Help Your Neighbor

Help Your Neighbor is a folk game, and like most folk games it has no single rulebook. At least three distinct games travel under the name, and it is worth knowing which one somebody means before you sit down.

The three-dice pot version is the one recorded by dice-play.com, the long-running British archive of traditional dice games, which describes it as “a very old and fast-moving dice game.” In that version each player is assigned a single number from 1 to 6, three dice are thrown, and any player whose number shows pays one chip into the pot for each die showing it. With ten chips each, the first player to put every chip in the pot wins. It is played in rounds so that the first throw rotates around the table.

The card-and-dice version is the one most American families remember. Each player lays out cards for the numbers 2 through 12 from a standard deck, usually with the 7s removed and the jack and queen standing in for 11 and 12, and rolls two dice to turn down the matching card. A total you have already turned down passes clockwise to the next player who still needs it, and a 7 costs the roller a chip to the pot. The first player to turn down every card wins the pot, and the others pay a chip for each card still face up. Family blogs that describe this version recall playing it at grandparents’ houses as far back as the 1950s. The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York holds a boxed edition of exactly this game, a special deck packaged with dice, in its collection, though the catalog entry carries no date or maker. Several small publishers have sold packaged card-and-dice editions in recent years.

The two-dice ownership version you can play on this page combines the two: the eleven two-dice totals are dealt out as owned numbers, as in the card game, but chips go into a pot and the first to shed them wins, as in the three-dice game. Dice Game Depot, which describes the pot version, files it simply as “an LCR-style game of fast, easy fun.”

Our own game catalog dates Help Your Neighbor to the 1930s, and the phrase turns up in that period as a slogan and a title for various pastimes, but we could not find a printed rule sheet or a publisher’s record from that decade, so treat the date as family lore rather than fact. The relationship to Left Center Right is easier to pin down. LCR was first sold by George & Company of Buffalo, New York in 1983 and under the LCR name from 1992, dates recorded in a 2009 federal appeals court decision, and the same court noted that pass-your-chips dice games in general are old and in the public domain. Help Your Neighbor is one of the games that observation refers to: an older, uncopyrighted way of moving chips around a table with dice.

Help Your Neighbor Rules

The rules below are the two-dice ownership version played on Dice.now. The three-dice and card-and-dice games are described under Variants.

Equipment

• Two standard dice.
• Ten chips per player. Coins, buttons or pasta all work.
• Eleven number cards, one for each total from 2 to 12. Slips of paper are fine, or simply write each player’s numbers on a scrap of card in front of them.
• Three to six players. Four is ideal because eleven numbers divide into hands of three, three, three and two.

Object

Be the first player to put all ten of your chips into the pot. The winner takes the pot; the other players keep whatever chips they still hold.

Setup

Shuffle the eleven number cards and deal them one at a time around the table, starting with the player on the dealer’s left. With four players three seats receive three numbers and the last seat receives two. Each player places their numbers face up in front of them and takes ten chips. (See the Odds section for why the deal matters so much, and Play on Dice.now for how our version keeps it fair.)

How a Turn Works

1. Roll two dice and add them together.
2. Find the owner of that total. Every total from 2 to 12 belongs to somebody, so every roll costs somebody a chip.
3. The owner pays one chip into the pot. If the roller owns the number, the roller pays.
4. Check for a winner. A player who has just paid their tenth chip has no chips left and wins immediately, even in the middle of somebody else’s turn.
5. Pass the dice to the left.

Play continues until somebody wins. Because every roll removes exactly one chip from the table, a four-player game can never last more than 37 rolls (three players stuck on one chip each plus the winner’s ten).

Outcomes of a Roll

Worked Examples

Example 1: the deal. Four players. After shuffling, you receive 4, 7 and 12; Ana gets 3, 8 and 10; Ben gets 5, 6 and 11; Cara, last in the dealing order, gets 2 and 9. Your hand is hit on 3 + 6 + 1 = 10 ways in 36 per roll, Ana’s on 2 + 5 + 3 = 10, Ben’s on 4 + 5 + 2 = 11 and Cara’s on 1 + 4 = 5. Cara is going to have a long game.

Example 2: helping a neighbor. You roll 3 and 5 for a total of 8. Ana owns 8, so Ana puts a chip in the pot and goes to nine. You have just helped your neighbor.

Example 3: paying for your own roll. Ben rolls 1 and 4, a 5. Ben owns 5, so Ben pays. Nobody minds paying on their own roll; in this game paying is progress.

Example 4: the finish. Twenty-six rolls in, the pot holds 26 chips. You are down to one chip, Ana has two, Ben has three and Cara still has eight. Cara rolls 3 and 4. Seven is yours. You put in your last chip, the game ends at once, and you collect the pot of 27 chips: your own ten back plus seventeen from the other three seats. Ana keeps two, Ben three and Cara eight.

Example 5: a stuck seat. In a different game Cara owns 2 and 12 only. Those totals come up on two rolls in 36, so she expects to shed one chip every 18 rolls. The game is almost certain to end before she has paid a third chip. With the random deal this happens; with the balanced deal on Dice.now it cannot.

The Odds in Help Your Neighbor

Two dice produce 36 equally likely combinations, but only eleven totals, and the totals are far from equally likely. Seven can be made six ways (1+6, 2+5, 3+4 and their mirror images), while 2 and 12 can each be made only one way. That single fact decides most games of Help Your Neighbor, because a chip leaves your hand on every roll that hits one of your numbers, and the player whose numbers are hit most often sheds ten chips first.

Add up the ways for a hand and you have its chance per roll:

The last column assumes the other players are not racing you; in a real game the race ends much sooner. We simulated 20,000 four-player games with a plain shuffled deal, and the results were stark. A hand hit on 16 ways in 36 won 87% of its games; a 12-way hand won 52%; a 9-way hand, which is the average, won only 19%; a 6-way hand won 2%; and hands of 4 ways or fewer never won at all. The average random-deal game lasted 25 rolls, the shortest 10 and the longest 37.

Only 4.9% of random deals give every seat between 8 and 10 ways, which is our definition of a balanced table. In 20,000 games with such balanced deals every seat won within a fraction of a percent of 25%, games lasted 27.6 rolls on average (11 to 37), and the seat holding only two numbers won 23% of the time, which is close to its fair share. Within the balanced range hand strength still tells: 8-way hands won 15%, 9-way hands 24% and 10-way hands 36%.

Two further numbers are useful at the table. Since exactly one chip goes into the pot on every roll, the pot always equals the number of rolls made, so the winner in a typical game collects about 27 chips, a net gain of about 17. And because the winner must be hit ten times, the chance that the very first roll of the game ends anything is zero: no game can finish before roll 10.

Help Your Neighbor Strategy

Once the first die is thrown there is nothing to decide, so strategy in Help Your Neighbor lives entirely in the setup. Here is what actually changes your results.

1. Fight for the deal, not for the dice

Everything in the odds section says the same thing: the hand is the game. If your group deals the numbers by shuffling, the player holding 7 and either 6 or 8 is the favorite before a die is rolled. If you are choosing numbers by picking in turn, take 7 first, then 6 or 8, then 5 or 9. Nobody should ever willingly take 2 or 12 as one of only two numbers.

2. Balance the table before you play for anything

The fairest fix is to deal so that every seat has a similar chance per roll. One perfectly even split for four players is 2-3-7, 4-8-12, 5-10-11 and 6-9: each of those hands is hit on exactly nine ways in 36. Shuffle those four hands among the seats and every player has an identical 25% chance. That is what Dice.now does automatically, within a small tolerance.

3. Count ways, not numbers

A hand of three numbers is not better than a hand of two. Cara’s 6 and 9 above are hit on nine ways; your 2, 3 and 12 would be hit on four. Add the ways (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 for 2 through 12) and compare totals before you decide whether to be pleased.

4. Expect the ending to come from someone else’s roll

Three rolls in four are somebody else’s, and every one of them can be your winning or losing roll. In a four-player game you can go from three chips to none without touching the dice yourself. Do not wander off during other people’s turns, because the game ends the instant the tenth chip goes in.

5. Play a set of rounds and rotate the deal

A single game is decided by one deal and 25-odd rolls. Playing four rounds with a fresh deal each time, and rotating who receives the short hand, evens out the luck. Score one point per win, or keep the chips won across rounds as the running score.

6. Set the stake by the pot, not the chip

Because the pot equals the number of rolls, a four-player game pays the winner about 17 chips net, and each loser gives up between one and ten. At ten cents a chip that is a couple of dollars either way; at a dollar a chip it is a real evening. The three-dice version, where several chips can leave on one throw, moves money faster.

7. Use the card version when you want the helping rule

If your group enjoys the pass-it-along moment when a number you have already turned down goes to the next player who needs it, play the card-and-dice version. It has a little more texture and the 7 penalty gives the pot a second source of chips. The two-dice ownership version described here is quicker to set up and easier to explain.

8. Reach for it when the table is mixed

Help Your Neighbor is at its best with a wide age range, a noisy room, and a group that wants to roll dice without thinking. When people want decisions, move on to Pig, and when they want to bet on two-dice totals for real, Under and Over Seven and Craps use the same distribution of totals with a house edge attached.

Common Mistakes

• Letting the roller pay for every roll. The owner of the total pays, not the roller. If the roller owns the number, the roller pays; otherwise the chip comes from another seat.
• Ignoring a roll of your own number because it is not your turn. Your numbers are live on every roll at the table. Watch the dice.
• Ending the game at the end of a round. The winner is decided the moment the tenth chip goes in, whoever rolled. Finishing the round is a house rule, and one that can create a tie.
• Dealing 7 to the same seat every game. In a series, shuffle every round or use a balanced split. A seat that holds 7 every game will win most of them.
• Thinking more numbers is always better. Two good numbers beat three bad ones. Nine ways beats four ways no matter how many cards are on the table.
• Confusing the versions. In the card game a number you have already covered helps a neighbor; in the pot game every number belongs to one player for the whole game and there is nothing to pass. Agree which one you are playing before the first roll.

Variants and House Rules

• Three-dice Help Your Neighbour (dice-play.com). Each player takes one number from 1 to 6, with unused numbers ignored when fewer than six play; with three players each takes two numbers, with two players three. Three dice are thrown and each die showing your number costs a chip. First to shed all chips wins the pot. Rounds rotate the first thrower.
• Card-and-dice Help Your Neighbor. Ten cards per player for 2 through 12 with 7 removed; two dice; turn down your own card, pass an already-covered number clockwise to the next player who needs it; a 7 costs the roller a chip. First to clear every card wins the pot and collects one chip per uncovered card from each opponent. Some families keep the 7 card and simply treat 7 as a normal number.
• Doubles pay double. A house rule for the two-dice game: a total made with a double (2+2, 3+3 and so on) costs the owner two chips. It speeds the game and adds a groan.
• Balanced deal. Deal from a pre-arranged set of hands with equal ways, as in strategy tip 2. Strongly recommended for anything but a single casual game.
• Neighbor pays the roller. An inverted version reported by some players, in which the owner hands the chip to the roller instead of the pot and the game ends when a player has no chips left, that player losing. It rewards owning bad numbers and turns the game inside out.
• Fewer chips. Five chips each halves the game to about 14 rolls, useful with very young children.

Glossary

• Owned number: A two-dice total assigned to a player for the whole game. When it is rolled, that player pays.
• Ways: The number of dice combinations, out of 36, that produce a total or hit a hand. Seven has six ways; 2 has one.
• Pot: The chips paid in during the game. It always holds one chip per roll made and goes to the winner.
• Shedding: Getting rid of chips. In this game the player who sheds fastest wins.
• Short hand: The seat that receives only two numbers when eleven are dealt to four players.
• Balanced deal: A deal in which every hand has a similar number of ways, so every seat has a similar chance to win.
• Helping: Rolling a total that belongs to another player, which moves them one chip closer to winning.

Play Help Your Neighbor Online on Dice.now

The game at the top of this page is the two-dice ownership version described in the rules above. You sit at a four-seat table with three computer players, Ana, Ben and Cara. At the start of every game the numbers 2 through 12 are dealt round-robin from a randomly chosen seat, so the short hand of two numbers moves around the table, and the deal is repeated behind the scenes until every seat’s hand is hit on between 8 and 10 of the 36 possible rolls; if that never happens, the perfectly even 2-3-7, 4-8-12, 5-10-11 and 6-9 split is shuffled among the seats instead. Every seat shows its numbers, its chips and its chance per roll, and the log lists the deal so you can compare hands.

Everyone starts with ten chips. On your turn you press Roll; two dice are rolled with your browser’s cryptographic random number generator, the total is shown with the name of its owner, the matching number lights up on the owner’s seat, and that player pays one chip into the pot. Computer players roll on their own with short pauses, and Auto-play runs your seat too. The instant any player pays their tenth chip the game ends, the winner takes the pot, and your wins, games played and biggest pot won are saved on your device only. See who the dice help tonight: roll the dice.