Jackpot is an easy but exciting dice game for medium to large groups, with wild swings of luck and a variable playtime.

The object of Jackpot is to be the player with the most chips at the end of the game.

Jackpot Components

• Two six-sided dice
• Twenty chips, counters, or gaming stones per player
• The following game board, which can simply be drawn on a large piece of paper. Each space should be large enough to hold three chips.

Number of Players

Any, but best with 4 to 8.

How to Play the Jackpot Dice Game

Before the game begins, decide what the game ending condition will be. This can be a time limit such as 30 minutes or you can decide to play until the first player is eliminated from the game.

Place the board in the center of the table. Each player starts the game with the same number of chips (usually 15 or 20).

Choose a player to take the first turn. Play then proceeds clockwise around the table.

On your turn, roll the two dice and add the numbers together.

• If the number corresponds to one of the spaces on the board that has fewer than 3 chips on it, place one of your chips on that space.
• If the number corresponds to a space on the board that already has 3 chips on it, you win those chips. Take them from the board and add them to your own chips.
• If you roll a 2 (a 1 on each die, or “snake eyes”), place a chip on each space that has fewer than 3 counters. If you don’t have enough chips left to fill all the spaces on the board, begin filling spaces from the lowest number.
• If you roll a 12 (a 6 on each die, or “boxcars”), you have won the jackpot! Take all the chips from the board and add them to your own chips.

If you lose your last chip at any point, you are out of the game.

As soon as the predetermined game ending condition occurs -- such as reaching the 30 minute time limit or when a player runs out of chips -- the game is immediately over.

Winning Jackpot

The player who has the most chips at the end of the game is the winner. If there is a tie, then the tied players share the victory.

Jackpot Rules Variations

There are a couple of different rules you can use in the game to add more variety:

Lose to Win

In this game variant, the winning condition changes. Instead of the winner being the player with the most chips at the end of the game, the winner is the first player to lose all their chips.

This variant works best if you also use the Lucky Snake Eyes rules described below.

Lucky Snake Eyes

In the normal game of Jackpot, rolling snake eyes (a 1 on each die) means you place one chip on every space that has fewer than three chips. But in this variant, you also win the chips from any spaces that already have three chips on them.

For example, if you rolled snake eyes with the board as shown below, you would place a chip on spaces 3, 4, and 5, then you would take all the chips from space 6. You would also place a chip on space 7, take the chips on space 8, place a chip on 9, take the chips on 10, and place a chip on 11. So you would actually end the turn with more chips than you started with!

Remember that you have to start filling the board beginning with the lowest number and if you run out of chips at any point, you are out of the game even if you would win more chips from the higher-numbered spaces. So in this example, if you started the turn with three chips, you would place one chip each on spaces 3, 4, and 5. At that point you would be out of chips and therefore out of the game. You would not take the chips from space 6.