Play Yamb Online

What Is Yamb?

Yamb (also spelled Jamb, and known as Jima or Džima in parts of the Balkans) is the dice game of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia and North Macedonia. If you know Yahtzee, you know the heart of it: roll dice up to three times, hold the ones you like, and write the result into a category on a score sheet. What makes Yamb a different animal is the sheet. Instead of one column of 13 boxes, a Yamb sheet has four columns of 13 rows, and each column has its own rule about the order in which you may fill it.

• The Down column (↓) is filled from the top row to the bottom.
• The Up column (↑) is filled from the bottom row to the top.
• The Free column (↕) is filled in any order, like a Yahtzee card.
• The Announce column (N, from the Serbo-Croatian najava) may only be filled if you announce the row immediately after your first roll of the turn.

That means 52 turns instead of 13, three sections of scoring instead of two, and constant tension between what the dice give you and where the sheet will let you put it. Yamb is the most demanding member of the Yahtzee family; it rewards planning several turns ahead in a way that Yatzy and Generala never quite do.

A Short History of Yamb

Yamb belongs to the same lineage as Yacht, the public-domain dice game recorded in the 1930s, and the Latin American Generala. The Yahtzee brand arrived in 1956, but none of these games needed a box: a handful of dice and a sheet of paper ruled into a grid are enough, and the grid is where each culture put its own stamp.

Across socialist Yugoslavia the game spread as a pencil-and-paper pastime in cafés (kafane), army barracks, school corridors and family kitchens. Nobody owns it and nobody knows who first drew the four-column sheet; what is clear from the surviving rule variants is that the game grew by accretion. The strict Down and Up columns forced players to accept bad rows, the Free column gave relief, and the Announce column added a bluff-yourself gamble. Some tables added extra columns still: a “hand” column that may only be scored after a single roll, or columns filled outward from the Max and Min rows in the middle of the sheet. Printed Yamb pads sold in stationery shops standardized the layout, and after the breakup of Yugoslavia the game carried on unchanged in every successor state.

Since the 2000s Yamb has lived mostly on phones. Dozens of mobile apps from the region use the same 13 rows, and most of them default to the four-column layout you will play above. The scoring values used here — Straight 66/56/46, Full +30, Poker +40, Yamb +50, bonus 30 at 60 — are the most widely published set, though you will meet houses that play the Straight at fixed values or set the bonus line at 63.

Yamb Rules

Equipment

• Six six-sided dice. Many Balkan players use five; our game uses six, and only the best five count toward any combination. (See Variants for the five-dice version.)
• A score sheet with 13 rows and four columns, plus three sub-total rows for the upper bonus, the middle section and the column totals.
• A dice cup, optional but traditional.

Object of the Game

Fill all 52 cells of the sheet with the highest possible total. Each column is scored separately and the four column totals are added together. Playing solo you chase your personal best; with several players, everyone uses their own sheet and the highest total wins.

How a Turn Works

1. First roll. Roll all six dice.
2. Announce (optional). If you want to use the Announce column this turn, click one of its open rows now. You must then write this turn’s result in that row, whatever happens.
3. Hold and re-roll. Set aside any dice you want to keep and roll the others. You may hold and re-roll twice, for a maximum of three rolls. You can change your mind about held dice between rolls.
4. Write the result. Choose one legal cell and write the score your dice make in that row. If your dice do not make the combination, you write a zero — a scratch. You may write after the first, second or third roll.

Which cells are legal depends on the column:

If the Down, Up and Free columns are already full, you are forced to announce every remaining turn.

The Rows and How They Score

A few details worth knowing:

• Only five dice count. Six 3s score 15 in Threes, not 18. Max is the sum of your best five, Min the sum of your worst five. The sixth die is a free re-roll that makes every combination a little easier.
• Tris, Poker and Yamb score only the matching dice plus the bonus, not the whole roll. Four 6s and two 2s is 4 × 6 + 40 = 64 in Poker.
• Full needs two different numbers. Five or six of a kind is not a Full. With six dice, 3-3-3-6-6-6 is a Full worth 3 × 6 + 2 × 3 + 30 = 54; the game always picks the best five.
• The middle section can be huge or nothing. Max 30 (five 6s) minus Min 5 (five 1s) is 25, and multiplied by five 1s it is 125 points. Multiplied by a scratched Ones row it is zero. If Max is smaller than Min, the section scores zero rather than going negative.
• The Straight counts the roll number, not the number of dice you held. A Straight you complete on the second roll is 56 whether you held five dice or none.

Ending the Game and Winning

The game ends when all 52 cells are written. Each column total is its upper sum, plus the 30-point bonus if earned, plus the middle section, plus the lower rows. Your final score is the sum of the four columns.

How to Score: Worked Examples

• First roll 2-3-4-5-6-6. A Straight on roll one is worth 66. If the Straight row is open in Free, write it immediately. If Down is sitting on the Straight row or Up has just reached it, even better: the strict columns get their hardest row filled at full value.
• 4-4-4-4-2-2 after two rolls. Poker scores 4 × 4 + 40 = 56. Full scores 3 × 4 + 2 × 2 + 30 = 46. Fours scores 16. Take Poker unless you are chasing the upper bonus in a column that badly needs Fours.
• 6-6-5-5-1-1 in a column whose Max row is open. Max is the best five: 6 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 1 = 23. Not great. With two rolls left, hold the 6s and 5s and re-roll the 1s: the average Max after that is above 26.
• Announce turn, you announced Full after 3-3-5-5-2-6. Hold both pairs and roll the other two dice. Any 3 or 5 completes the Full (55.6% over two rolls). If it misses, you write 0 in the Announce Full row; you cannot bail out to another cell.
• Down column sitting on Ones, first roll 1-1-4-5-6-6. Two 1s are worth 2, but every 1 you add multiplies the middle section later. Hold the 1s and roll four dice twice: you will average about 3.3 ones by the end of the turn. Ones is the one upper row where you should be happy with a small number.
• Up column has reached Min, roll 1-1-2-2-3-6. Min is the lowest five: 1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 = 9. That is excellent. Write it and do not re-roll.

Probabilities and the Odds

Six dice give 6⁶ = 46,656 equally likely outcomes on a single roll, compared with 7,776 for five dice. Because only five have to fit, every combination is noticeably easier than in Yahtzee. The single-roll numbers below are exact; the three-roll figures come from a 200,000-turn simulation that holds the most common face (or, for the Straight, one die of each distinct face) and re-rolls the rest.

Other numbers that shape the game:

• A five-dice Yamb is 1 in 1,296 on a single roll; the sixth die makes it more than five times as likely (1 in 251).
• Playing purely for the Straight over a whole turn, you land it on roll one 9.2% of the time, on roll two 17.1% and on roll three 14.2%. The expected value of an open Straight row is about 22 points per attempt, which is why an early 66 is such a swing.
• A random roll of six dice has an average Max of 19.6 and an average Min of 15.4, so an unplanned middle section is worth only about 4 × Ones. Planned Max and Min rows (held 6s or held 1s over three rolls) push the gap to 15 or more.
• Three of every number makes exactly 63 in the upper section, so the 60-point bonus line is reachable even if one row comes up one die short.
• The theoretical maximum for one column is 105 (upper, five of each) + 30 (bonus) + (30 − 5) × 5 = 125 (middle) + 28 + 66 + 58 + 64 + 80 (lower) = 556, and 2,224 for the whole sheet. Nobody has ever needed to worry about it.

Yamb Strategy: Planning Four Columns at Once

1. Treat the Free column as a pressure valve, not a default

Beginners write every good roll in the Free column because it is always legal, then find themselves grinding zeros through the Down and Up columns for the last 20 turns. Do the opposite: whenever a roll fits the next row of Down or Up, write it there, and save Free for rolls that fit nowhere else.

2. Ones are worth more than 1 point each

In every column the Ones row multiplies the middle section. Three 1s turn a 20-point Max−Min gap into 60 points; a scratched Ones row turns it into nothing. When the Down column starts, spend the whole turn hunting 1s. When the Up column reaches the top, do the same.

3. Build Max and Min deliberately

Max is not “whatever I rolled.” Hold 6s and 5s and re-roll everything else for three rolls and you will average around 27. For Min, hold 1s and 2s: single digits are routine. A column with Max 28, Min 7 and four 1s scores 84 points in the middle, more than a Poker.

4. Announce what the first roll already suggests

The Announce column is a gamble only if you announce blind. After a first roll of 5-5-5-2-3-6, announcing Tris is nearly free (you already have it) and announcing Poker is a 35% shot at 60 points. Announce combinations you are more than halfway to, and keep Yamb for a first roll that already shows four of a kind.

5. Take the first-roll Straight, wherever it fits

66 points is the biggest single cell on the sheet that does not need five of a kind. If the Straight row is open in any column that can legally take it, write it. If it is not, the roll is still a strong candidate for Max (a 2-3-4-5-6-x roll has a Max of at least 20).

6. Scratch cheap, scratch early

Every column has 13 rows and some of them will not come. The cheapest scratches are Ones (worth about 2.5 points plus a diminished middle) and Tris (worth about 20). The most expensive are Straight, Poker and Yamb. In the Down column, if you are on Ones with a first roll full of 6s, consider writing the zero at once and saving your rolls of concentration for the next turn.

7. Sequence the strict columns against each other

Down starts at the easy upper rows and ends in the hard lower rows; Up does the reverse. Play them in parallel: early in the game, feed the upper rows of Down and the Yamb/Poker rows of Up (where a Poker is a Poker, not a prayer). Around the middle of the game both columns meet at Max and Min, and you can plan turns for the middle section.

8. Count cells before the last ten turns

With ten cells left, list them. If only Announce cells remain, every turn is forced and you should announce whatever your first roll makes most likely. If a few Free cells remain, keep the most flexible ones (Tris, Max) for last.

Common Mistakes

• Announcing after the second roll. It is not allowed. The Announce decision must be made immediately after the first roll or not at all; the game enforces this.
• Announcing Yamb from a pair. A pair to Yamb in two rolls happens under 3% of the time. You will write far more zeros than 80s.
• Writing a 20-point Max early. A Max below 24 is a wasted row when a planned Max averages 27. Only take a low Max when the sheet forces you.
• Forgetting that only five dice count. Six 5s is 25 in Fives and 25 + 50 in Yamb, not 30 or 80. Plan on five, enjoy the sixth as insurance.
• Ignoring the bonus in the Up column. Because Up reaches the upper rows last, players stop caring about it. Three of each number is still 30 free points.

Variants and House Rules

• Five dice. The traditional set in much of the region. Every combination is harder: a Straight is 3.1% on a single roll instead of 9.3%, a Yamb 1 in 1,296 instead of 1 in 251. Scores run roughly 20% lower.
• Bonus at 63. Many printed pads ask for 63 rather than 60 in the upper section; some pay 35 rather than 30.
• Fixed Straights. Some houses score 1-2-3-4-5 as 35 and 2-3-4-5-6 as 45 regardless of the roll number, removing the first-roll incentive.
• Full as the sum of all five plus 30, Poker as the sum of all five plus 40, and Yamb as the sum of all five plus 50: the same bonuses applied to whole-roll sums. Values are similar; the difference is a few points.
• Two Pairs row (sum of both pairs + 10) added between Min and Tris, or replacing Tris.
• Extra columns. Hand (R, from ručna): the cell may only be written after the first roll. From the middle and Toward the middle: filled outward from Max/Min or inward from Ones and Yamb. Sheets with six or eight columns are common in apps.
• Announce with the bluff. In some multiplayer circles you must announce out loud and the others may “challenge” by betting the announced row will score zero.
• Napomena / Penalty. A failed announcement costs you the row’s minimum rather than a zero — rarely used but worth agreeing on before a serious game.

If you like the ordering puzzle, Qwixx applies the same strict-sequence idea to a roll-and-write in a quarter of the time. Maxi Yatzy also uses six dice but with a single column and roll carry-over, and Kismet adds colored dice to the Yahtzee sheet.

Glossary

• Najava (Announce): Declaring your target row immediately after the first roll of the turn.
• Kenta: The Straight (from kenta, a run), scored 66/56/46 by roll number.
• Ful: Three of one number and two of another.
• Poker: Four of a kind.
• Jamb / Yamb: Five of a kind, and the name of the game.
• Tris: Three of a kind.
• Škartati (Scratch): Writing a zero in a cell on purpose.
• Gornji / Srednji / Donji deo: The upper, middle and lower sections of the sheet.
• Column total: Upper sum + bonus + middle section + lower sum, calculated separately for each of the four columns.

Play Yamb Online on Dice.now

The game at the top of this page is a solo six-dice Yamb with the four classic columns. Six dice are rolled and the best five count for every row; you tap dice to hold them and have three rolls per turn. After the first roll every cell you may legally write is highlighted, with a live preview of what it would score, and the Announce column shows an extra set of highlighted rows you can click to announce. Once you announce, only that cell stays open until you fill it, and when the other three columns are complete the Roll button waits until you have announced. The Straight scores 66, 56 or 46 depending on the roll you write it on, the upper bonus is 30 points at 60, and the middle section is computed the moment Ones, Max and Min are all filled. The game ends after all 52 cells and your best total is remembered on your device. Ready to plan four columns at once? Roll the six dice.