Advantage Yahtzee: Winning Strategies for the World's Greatest Dice Game

by Olaf Vancura, Olaf, Ph.D. Vancura

Buried within this seemingly simple game is a mathematical puzzle so complex, the game has long been considered unsolvable by the mathematical world. But now the code has been broken and an optimal... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1402772009
• ISBN13: 9781402772009
• Release Date: November 2010
• Publisher: Puzzlewright
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Helpful and interesting

Teaches in a very short time how to play the game better. My 11 year old could also read and apply the book's techniques, so I think it is well worth the money and time if you like to play this game.

From the Board Games Editor at BellaOnline.com

For some reason, I had always thought of Yahtzee as a game of mostly luck and a little skill. Then I read Advantage Yahtzee, by Olaf Vancura, Ph.D. The book is cheap (only 6.95) and a relatively quick read, but I guarantee that your Yahtzee scores will improve dramatically after reading it just one time. This book, however, was written in such a manner that even someone who has virtually no math skills and has only played Yahtzee once will be able to read it easily and benefit greatly. Between the strategy tips, the book is filled with fun facts. Did you know that the highest possible score in Yahtzee is 1,575? That would mean you'd have to roll 13 straight Yahtzees. Or did you know that on every first roll, there are 252 possible outcomes? You'll learn this and so much more if you read this book. Pick it up, it's well worth the cheap cover price and will improve your game vastly.

Yahtzee Advantage - A must for serious fans of the greatest game ever made

It wasn't long ago that many of us hardcore yahtzee fans believed that the optimal strategy was well out of the reach of mortals. Well, the esteemed Olaf Vancura, PhD has thankfully proved us wrong. Yahtzee Advantage is certainly the most ground breaking book in the history of Yahtzee that ever was and certainly ever will be. After a short history of Yahtzee, Vancura discusses Yahtzee rules and even clarifies the dubious and complicated 'joker rules.' He then moves on to how he unravelled the secret of Yahtzee. The next few chapters address how to simulate the optimal strategy in beginning, mid, and end game. There are a number of useful graphs that summarize what play to make during different rolls in the game; he even includes the Yahtzee distribution given perfect play and provides a few case studies. Without Dr. Vancura, we never would have known the golden benchmark - the optimal score under perfect play. Advantage Yahtzee is a must for serious fans of the greatest game ever made. Because of Yahtzee Advantage, and its counterpart - the online Yahtzee Proficiency Tester- , I expect that we will see human yahtzee scores to rise dramatically over the next decade.

Nails two out of the three topics I wanted.

This book includes a decent set of rules, a standard score sheet and a crystal clear explanation of the one rule that most people misinterpret. Neat, but, in and of itself, not worth a book unless you're a purist who wants to know if they are in the "wrong" camp. Imagine my surprise when I found out I was.Of course, it also includes a reasonably small set of guidelines that will enable you to approximate "perfect" play. Given the "stupefyingly" large number of possibilities, you'll never play "perfect" Yahtzee. If this is what you want, five stars. If you have a penchant for numbers, you may well be playing close as it is. Again, I was.Personally, I wanted a book with three sections: the two above and the third consisting of the mathematician's/programmer's point-of-view. Of course, the book tells you the approach Vancura used. Without it, the problem explodes. It took Vancura two months to go from "it can't be done" to "did it." But the distance from "here's how" to actual implementation is huge. Would have loved to have access to source code in at least pseudo-code if not C/Perl/some other popular language - preferably somewhere on the web.