Glückshaus Dice Game Rules

Glückshaus needs two dice, a board with numbered rooms and a pile of chips. No board in the house? Half a minute with a pen and a sheet of paper covers it. Matchsticks, buttons or small coins all work as chips.

Anything from 2 to 8 players is fine. Everyone starts with the same number of chips, and ten or fifteen each is a reasonable amount. Hand out more and the game runs longer.

What you are after is everybody else's chips. It hardly matters who goes first, so roll one die each and let the highest start. Play then moves clockwise.

The board is drawn as a house, with a number on every room. Two dice can produce any total from 2 to 12, but most boards have no room for the 4. That leaves ten of them: 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12.

Three rooms carry a picture rather than a plain number. A pig sits on the 2, a wedding is taking place in room 7, and the 12 belongs to the king and his crown. Each of those numbers has a rule of its own, while the other seven rooms behave alike.

Chips only ever come to rest in rooms 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Nothing is ever placed on the pig or the king, because those two numbers collect what is lying elsewhere in the house instead. Some boards leave the room for 12 out altogether for that reason.

On your turn you roll both dice and add the pips. The total picks out one room, and what happens next depends on whether that room is empty.

An empty room takes one of your chips. A room with a chip in it hands that chip over to you. Either way the dice then pass to the next player.

Roll a 3 and a 5 and the total is 8. If room 8 is bare, the roll costs you a chip. If a chip was already sitting there, it is yours, and the room stands empty again until somebody rolls another 8.

An ordinary room holds one chip at most, so the board keeps filling and emptying as you go. Three rooms play by their own rules: 7, 2 and 12.

Roll a 7 and there is a wedding going on in the middle of the house, so you are expected to bring a present. You add a chip no matter how many are already there, and you never get to take anything back out.

A 7 is the most common total two dice can make, which keeps the pile growing for as long as the game lasts. A quarter of an hour around the table often leaves ten chips sitting in the wedding room.

Only the king is allowed near the presents, and that is what makes room 12 worth waiting for.

Double ones make 2, and that room belongs to the pig. You collect every chip scattered around the board, but the wedding room stays where it is.

Double sixes make 12 and crown you king. The king takes everything, presents in room 7 included, and leaves the board bare behind him.

Each of those rolls turns up once in 36. With five chips dotted around the house and twelve in the wedding room, the pig is worth five and the king seventeen.

Four players, ten chips each, empty board.

Anna rolls 6 and 3 for a 9. The room is empty, so a chip of hers goes in. Bjørn rolls 2 and 5 for a 7 and hands a chip to the wedding. Cato rolls 4 and 5, lands on the 9 and pockets Anna's chip. Dina rolls 1 and 3, and on a board without a 4 that does nothing at all.

Round two. Anna throws another 7 and the wedding room is up to two chips. Bjørn throws a 6 and puts a chip in an empty room. Cato throws a 6 as well and takes the chip Bjørn just parted with. Then Dina rolls double ones.

The pig takes everything except the wedding, and right now there is nothing else on the board. Dina collects nothing. Two rolls earlier that same pig would have paid her a chip, and later in the game it might pay ten.

Once your chips are gone you are out. They are sitting in the rooms or in front of the other players by then, and all you can do is watch.

The last player with chips in hand wins the game and takes whatever remains on the board, wedding presents and all.

You can also agree on a different ending before the first roll. Play until the king has been rolled twice, or set a timer for twenty minutes and let the biggest pile win. Ten chips each and four players usually adds up to about a quarter of an hour.

These rules follow the common modern version: ten rooms with no 4, one chip at a time in each room, the wedding on 7 building up, the pig on 2 and the king on 12. Play runs until everyone but one player is broke. The variant that fills each room up to its own number is included, and the figures in the odds section come from the 36 combinations two dice can make.