Pig

Pig is a classic dice game of nerve. On your turn you roll a single die over and over, stacking each result into a running turn total, until you decide to stop or your luck runs out.

• Each roll of 2 through 6 adds to your turn total and lets you roll again.
• Roll a 1 and your whole turn total is wiped, you score nothing and play passes on.
• Hold to bank your turn total into your permanent score and hand the dice over.
• The first player to reach 100 points wins.

• Desktop: click Roll to throw the die and Hold to bank your turn total; use New game to reset.
• Phone & tablet: tap the Roll and Hold buttons, no keyboard needed.

• Versus CPU at Easy, Medium or Hard difficulty.
• 2-player pass-and-play on one device.
• Daily or Practice seeding for the dice, plus online play against another person.

• A common baseline is to hold once your turn total reaches about 20, the expected gain from rolling on no longer beats the risk.
• When you trail badly, push further and hold later; when you lead, bank early and protect it.
• If an opponent needs a huge swing to catch you, keep your turns short and starve them of chances.

Pig was first described in print by the magician and gambling writer John Scarne in 1945, which is almost certainly much later than it was first played. Like most games passed hand to hand, it existed as folk practice before it existed on a page.

The designer Reiner Knizia groups it with what he calls jeopardy dice games, where the only real decision is whether to risk what you have already banked in pursuit of more. That single question is the entire game, which is why it survives being explained in one sentence.

It has a second life in classrooms. Because the optimal stopping point can be worked out but is not obvious, mathematics teachers use it to teach probability — and its commercial descendants, Pass the Pigs and Skunk among them, keep the same skeleton under different dice.

Pig is a traditional press-your-luck dice game brought to the browser with sharp odds and clean presentation. This original build is free to play with CPU, local and online opponents and nothing to download.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.