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Farkle strategy

Bank once your turn total reaches 300 with two dice left to roll, 350 with one die, 450 with three, 1,050 with four and 3,100 with five. With six dice, roll. Early in a turn, keep a single 1 or 5 and roll the other five, rather than setting aside every scoring die.

By Emre Özen, updated October 8, 2026. These numbers come from our own exact count of every possible roll and from 10,000 games between copies of our strong computer player, using the default scoring on our farkle scoring chart. New to the game? Start with the farkle rules.

The odds of a farkle

We checked every possible roll for one to six dice. With six dice you almost always have something; with two or fewer, a farkle is close to a coin flip or worse.

Dice rolled	Rolls that score nothing	Chance of a farkle	About 1 in
1	4 of 6	66.7%	1.5
2	16 of 36	44.4%	2.3
3	60 of 216	27.8%	3.6
4	204 of 1,296	15.7%	6.4
5	600 of 7,776	7.7%	13
6	1,080 of 46,656	2.3%	43

One die farkles unless it's a 1 or a 5, so 4 times in 6. Two dice farkle when neither is a 1 or 5: 4 times 4 is 16 of the 36 rolls. With six dice, a farkle needs no 1, no 5, no three of a kind, no straight and no three pairs, which only 1,080 of the 46,656 rolls manage.

When to bank

Every roll is a trade: the points you might add against the chance of losing the whole turn total. We worked out the exact average result of rolling on for every turn total and every number of dice, assuming you keep playing well afterward, and compared it with banking. The point where banking wins is a clean line:

Dice left to roll	Bank when your turn total is at least
1	350
2	300
3	450
4	1,050
5	3,100
6 (a fresh turn or hot dice)	Always roll

One oddity: with one die you should push a little further than with two. That lone die scores a third of the time, and when it does, every die has scored, so you get hot dice and six fresh dice to roll.

Here's how much rolling on adds to (or costs) your turn on average, compared with banking right now:

Turn total	1 die	2 dice	3 dice	4 dice	5 dice	6 dice
250	+42	+1	+46	+134	+268	+560
300	+7	-24	+32	+120	+258	+554
400	-64	-69	+4	+100	+242	+542
500	-134	-115	-24	+84	+226	+530
1,000	-481	-342	-165	+4	+162	+486
2,000	-1,167	-792	-446	-155	+84	+427

These are averages for a single turn. They don't know the score of the game, so near the end you should bend them (more on that below).

Keep fewer dice early in a turn

Setting aside every scoring die feels safe, but it leaves you fewer dice and a higher farkle risk on the next roll. At the start of a turn it usually pays to keep just one die and roll five. The last column is the average for the whole turn if you keep those dice and roll on, from our count, at the start of a turn with nothing set aside yet:

You roll	Keep	Then roll	Average if you roll on
1, 5, 2, 3, 6, 6	1 and 5 (150)	4	311
	1 (100)	5	404
	5 (50)	5	369
5, 5, 2, 3, 4, 6	5 and 5 (100)	4	280
	5 (50)	5	369
2, 2, 2, 1, 3, 4	1, 2, 2 and 2 (300)	2	276
	2, 2 and 2 (200)	3	261
	1 (100)	5	404
1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 6	1 and 1 (200)	4	347
	1 (100)	5	404

Look at 2, 2, 2, 1, 3, 4. Keeping the three 2s and the 1 gives you 300 on the table, but only two dice to roll, and rolling those on averages about 276. Keeping just the 1 and rolling five dice is worth about 404 for the turn instead. Later in a turn, with points to protect, keeping more dice and banking becomes the better choice, and the bank table above takes over.

The opening 500

With a 500 opening, you can't bank until one turn reaches 500, so you sometimes have to roll on when the table says bank. That costs you. Played well from a fresh turn, a turn is worth about 602 points on average with no opening rule, 581 while you still need 500, and 504 while you still need 1,000. Once you're on the board, play by the bank table.

Play the score near the end

In the last round, banking only matters if it puts you ahead. If you're behind, roll until you pass the leader, whatever the table says. A farkle and a bank that leaves you second lose the same way.
Reaching 10,000 first gives everyone else one last turn. If you have hot dice at that moment, rolling on is cheap: six dice farkle only 2.3% of the time, and every extra point makes their target harder.
Going first helps a little. In our games between two strong players, the player who went first won 52.8% of the time.

Our numbers

What we measured	Result
Points per turn, strong player (on the board, farkles count as 0)	582
Turns that end in a farkle, strong player	24%
Turns in a two-player game, both players together	30.8
Games won by the player who went first	52.8%
Points per turn, easy player (keeps every scorer, banks at 300)	476
Strong player's wins against the easy player	2,867 of 4,000 games

Method: 10,000 two-player games to 10,000 between copies of our strong computer player and 4,000 between the strong and easy players, with seats swapped every game, default rules (500 opening, last round on), October 2026. The strong player plays for the most points per turn and follows the last-round rule above. Computer players aren't people, so treat these as one well-defined benchmark.

Practice with hints

The quickest way to learn this is to play and check. In our farkle game, the Hint button marks the dice the strong computer would keep and tells you whether to roll on or bank, with the average behind it. You get 6 hints per game. The score calculator shows the same advice for any roll you tap in.

Sources

Our exact counts of every roll of one to six dice and our simulations, October 2026, using the same code as our game.
"Farkle", Wikipedia, and Game On Family, "Farkle Rules, Scoring and How to Play" (2023): the rules and scoring the numbers assume.