Play Left Center Right Online

What Is Left Center Right?

Left Center Right, usually shortened to LCR, is a fast dice game of pure chance for three or more players. Everyone begins with three chips. On your turn you roll up to three special dice whose faces read L, C, R and a dot, and the dice tell you where your chips go: to the player on your left, to the player on your right, into the center pot, or nowhere at all. Play passes around the table until only one person still holds a chip. That person wins the pot.

There are no decisions to make. That sounds like a flaw, but it is the entire point. LCR is a game you can explain in one breath, play while holding a drink, and enjoy with a five-year-old and a grandparent at the same table. It is a staple of family reunions, office parties and holiday gatherings, and when played with coins or dollar bills instead of chips it becomes a very gentle gambling game where the stakes are set entirely by what you put on the table.

If you like the social, luck-driven feel of LCR you will also enjoy Bunco, the other great group dice game, and if you want to add a single decision to the mix, Pig is the natural next step. For players who want to keep the fast pace but add real strategy, Qwixx is our recommendation.

A Short History of Left Center Right

LCR is published by George & Company LLC, a family-run business whose roots go back to a novelty store opened in Buffalo, New York in 1901. The company began selling the dice game in 1983, at first with the words “Left Center Right” written by hand on foil wrapping, and from 1992 it marketed the game exclusively under the name LCR. Those dates come from the findings of a 2009 United States Court of Appeals decision in a trademark dispute over the game, which is an unusually reliable source for a game’s origins. The same ruling noted that George & Company was by then selling more than half a million copies of LCR a year.

The court also observed that the underlying pass-your-chips dice game is old and in the public domain, having circulated under various names before LCR gave it its modern packaging. Hobbyist databases list a 1959 British game called Never Say Die as a possible ancestor, though the publisher has never confirmed that lineage. No individual designer has ever been credited for LCR.

The LCR name and dice design are registered trademarks of George & Company, as is LCR Wild, the company’s 2013 trademark for its variant edition. In 2015 the toy company Spin Master acquired Cardinal Industries, which had earlier licensed an electronic LCR product, and a competing game called PassPlay: The Game of LeftCenterRight led to several years of litigation that ended in a settlement. George & Company still sells the original game, the LCR Wild edition, a deluxe edition with a dice cup, oversized foam versions and even a card-based version through its own online store.

Left Center Right Rules

Components

• Three LCR dice. Each die has six faces: one L, one C, one R and three dots.
• Chips. The retail game includes 24 chips, enough for eight players with three each. Coins, buttons or candy work just as well.
• Three or more players. Two works but is over in a handful of rolls; four to eight is the sweet spot.

Object

Be the last player at the table who still holds at least one chip. When that happens the game ends immediately and the last player standing collects every chip in the center pot. Under the rules most groups play, the winner also keeps whatever chips were already in front of them.

How a Turn Works

1. Count your chips. If you have three or more, roll all three dice. If you have two, roll two dice. If you have one, roll one die. If you have none, you do not roll, but you are not eliminated: play simply passes to the next player, and chips can still arrive from your neighbors on later turns.
2. Roll the dice.
3. Resolve every die. - L — pass one chip to the player on your left. - R — pass one chip to the player on your right. - C — put one chip into the center pot. Chips in the center never come out until the game ends. - Dot — nothing happens. That chip stays with you.
4. Check for a winner. If every other player now has zero chips, the game is over and the last chip-holder wins the pot. Otherwise, play passes to the left.

Note that the number of dice is fixed before you roll: with two chips you roll two dice and can lose at most two chips on that roll.

Scoring and Payouts

LCR has no running score. The only tally that matters is the count of chips in front of each player and in the pot. The table below shows the pot and hand sizes in a typical four-player game with three chips each, which starts with 12 chips in play.

Because every C removes a chip from circulation permanently while L and R only move chips around, the game must end: the pot only ever grows.

Worked Examples

Example 1: a full three-dice roll. You hold three chips and roll L, C, dot. One chip goes to your left-hand neighbor, one goes into the pot, and one stays with you. You now hold one chip and will roll a single die next turn.

Example 2: rolling with fewer chips. You hold one chip and roll one die: a dot. Nothing happens; you keep the chip and roll one die again next turn. Had the die shown R, your only chip would have gone to the player on your right and you would sit out until a neighbor’s L or R roll sent something back.

Example 3: a sudden ending. Four players. Ana has two chips, everyone else has none, and the pot holds ten. Ana rolls two dice: C, L. One chip goes to the pot, one goes to Ben on her left. Now Ben is the only player with a chip, so Ben wins the pot of eleven plus the one chip in hand. Ana’s roll ended the game in Ben’s favor, which is the kind of swing that makes LCR groan-out-loud fun.

Example 4: the comeback. You have sat on zero chips for three turns. The player on your right rolls L, L, dot: two chips arrive in front of you and you are rolling two dice again next turn. Nobody is ever “out” in LCR.

The Odds in Left Center Right

LCR dice are not standard, so the probabilities are worth spelling out. Each die has one L, one C, one R and three dots, so on any single die:

• Dot (chip stays): 3 in 6 = 50%
• L: 1 in 6 ≈ 16.7%
• R: 1 in 6 ≈ 16.7%
• C: 1 in 6 ≈ 16.7%

Every chip you roll for therefore has exactly a 1 in 2 chance of staying put and a 1 in 2 chance of leaving. From that single fact you can derive everything else about the game.

Some consequences:

• On a three-dice roll you lose 1.5 chips on average, of which 0.5 goes into the pot and 1.0 goes to your neighbors. A three-chip stack is expected to be a 1.5-chip stack after a single turn.
• With two dice you keep both chips only 25% of the time; with one die you keep it 50% of the time.
• Only C results change the number of chips in play, so the pot grows by about one-sixth of the dice rolled. A four-player round with everyone on three chips rolls 12 dice and sends about two chips to the pot, which is why players start dropping to zero within a few rounds.

How long does a game last?

A 2024 paper by Benjamin Richeson and David Richeson, “What’s the Best Seat in the Game Left, Center, Right?”, analyzed the game with Markov chains and large Monte Carlo simulations. Their expected game lengths, counted in individual player turns, are:

The four-player game you can play on this page therefore averages about 34 turns, or roughly eight and a half turns per seat. The same paper found that the seating order matters slightly: in a three-player game the best seat wins about 36.5% of the time and the worst about 30.7%, and the advantage belongs to the players who roll last in the turn order. In an eight-player game the gap shrinks to about 13% versus 12%. The authors also proposed a small fix, treating the first player’s opening L results as holds, which roughly halves the gap.

Left Center Right Strategy

Let us be honest: there is no in-game strategy in LCR, because you make no choices after the dice leave your hand. There are, however, a handful of things you can control before and around the game, and each is grounded in the numbers above.

1. Sit as late in the turn order as you can

The Richeson analysis shows that the last players to roll in the order have the highest win probability, because the players before them have already started shedding chips before they roll once. In a three-player game that is worth about six percentage points. If your group draws for seats, hope for a high number; if you pick seats freely, take the one that rolls last.

2. Expect to lose half your stack every turn

Every chip you roll for has a coin-flip chance of leaving. Do not be surprised or frustrated when three chips become one. The player who “runs hot” is simply the one whose coin flips came up dots, and next turn the odds reset. Knowing this keeps the game fun rather than maddening.

3. Zero chips is not a loss

You skip your roll when you have no chips, but your two neighbors each have a one-in-six chance per die of handing you one. With both neighbors rolling three dice, the probability that at least one chip comes your way in a single round is 1 − (5/6)^6, about 66%. Stay at the table; most games have at least one comeback.

4. Play for a fixed number of games, not a fixed time

Since a four-player game averages about 34 turns but has a standard deviation of 12, any single game can be very short or drag on. Agreeing to play “best of five” or “until the pot has changed hands three times” gives the evening structure that a clock will not.

5. Use chips of low value if you play for money

The pot in a four-player game typically ends with nine to eleven chips out of twelve. If each chip is a dollar, the winner takes about ten dollars and everyone else loses three. That is fine among friends, but the swing scales linearly with the chip value, so keep it small.

6. Add LCR Wild if your group wants decisions

If pure luck feels flat after a few rounds, the Wild edition’s take-a-chip-from-anyone rule introduces targeting and table talk. It is the official way to give the game a little bite without changing its five-minute length.

7. Use it as a warm-up, not the main event

Play two rounds of LCR, then move to Bunco for a longer social game, or to Farkle and Shut the Box when people want to think a little.

Common Mistakes

• Rolling three dice with fewer than three chips. The number of dice equals your chips, capped at three. Rolling extra dice with one chip is the most common rules error and it makes the game unfairly fast for the trailing player.
• Declaring a player “out.” A player with zero chips is still in the game and can win it if chips come back. Never remove anyone from the table.
• Taking chips out of the center. The pot is permanent. Only an official variant such as LCR Wild lets anyone win the center before the end.
• Passing the wrong way. L means the player on your left, R the player on your right, from your own point of view. The Dice.now table labels each transfer so you can see exactly who received what.
• Ending the game one turn early. The game ends the moment only one player holds chips, which is usually right after someone else’s roll. The last player standing does not need to roll to win.

Variants and House Rules

• LCR Wild. The official George & Company variant, trademarked in 2013, replaces some faces with a Wild symbol. As the rules are commonly described, one Wild lets you take a chip from any player, two Wilds let you take two chips (from one player or two), and three Wilds on a single roll capture the whole center pot and end the game. We could not confirm those mechanics from the publisher’s own rule text, so check the sheet in your box.
• Last Chip Wins. A widely played house rule that flips the ending: the winner is the last player to put their final chip into the center, rather than the last player holding one. It makes the ending slightly less abrupt and is a good choice with young children.
• Deluxe Edition. The publisher’s deluxe set adds oversized dice, larger chips and a dice cup for rolling.
• Big LCR and Junior Size. Foam versions with dice several inches across, made for classrooms, backyards and large groups.
• LCR Card Game. A card-based version in which players flip cards marked L, C, R and dot instead of rolling, with 110 cards in the deck.
• Betting variants. Many groups play with quarters or dollar bills instead of chips.
• More starting chips. Starting with four or five chips per player lengthens the game, since the pot has to absorb more chips before it can end.

Glossary

• Center pot: The pile of chips in the middle of the table. Chips placed there never return to play.
• Chip: The game’s currency; each player starts with three.
• Dot: The neutral face of an LCR die. The chip stays with the roller.
• L / R: A die result sending one chip to the left or right neighbor.
• C: A die result sending one chip to the center pot.
• Out of chips: Holding zero chips. The player skips rolling but remains in the game.
• Last player standing: The only player still holding chips when the game ends; the winner of the pot.
• Wild: A special face in the LCR Wild edition that lets the roller take chips from other players.

Play Left Center Right Online on Dice.now

The game at the top of this page is a free fan re-creation of Left Center Right with our own artwork and wording. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by George & Company LLC; the official game and its variants are sold at the publisher’s store, dicegames.com.

Here is exactly what our version does. You sit at a four-seat table with three computer players, Ana, Ben and Cara, and everyone starts with three chips. On your turn you press Roll and the game rolls one die per chip you hold, up to three, using your browser’s cryptographic random number generator. Chips move immediately, the table shows every seat’s chips and the center pot, and the log records who received what. Computer players roll automatically with short pauses, and a player on zero chips is skipped but stays at the table. Switch on Auto-play and the whole game, including your own rolls, runs to the end by itself. When only one player holds chips the game ends, the winner takes the pot, and your wins, games played and biggest pot are saved on your device only. Ready? Roll the dice.