What you need
Five six-sided dice and an opaque cup for each player. Any cups will do as long as nobody can see under them. Liar’s dice comes from Dudo, a bluffing game of the Inca Empire that spread through Latin America and Spain. Commercial editions have been sold under names such as Liar’s Dice (Milton Bradley, 1987) and Bluff (winner of the 1993 Spiel des Jahres), but the game itself is traditional.
There are two families of rules. The single hand game below, where every player has their own dice, is the one most people mean today. The older common hand game is described under variants.
Setup
Each player takes five dice and a cup. Agree on two points before the first round: whether ones are wild (most groups say yes), and which raises are allowed (see “Bidding”). Pick a first bidder at random.
How to play
Rolling
Everyone shakes their dice under their cup at the same time and slams the cup down. Peek at your own dice without showing anyone. You now know your five dice; everyone else’s are hidden.
Bidding
The first player makes a bid: a quantity and a face value, for example “four fives”. It means “there are at least four dice showing five under all the cups together”. When ones are wild, every 1 counts as whatever face is being bid.
Going clockwise, each player must either:
- raise the bid, or
- challenge it by calling “Liar!”.
A common rule is that a raise must increase the quantity (five fives, five sixes, six twos) or keep the quantity and increase the face (four sixes after four fives). Some groups allow any higher quantity with any face; agree which version you play.
The challenge
When someone calls “Liar!”, everyone lifts their cup. Count the dice showing the bid face, plus any ones if they are wild.
- If there are at least as many as the bid, the bidder was right and the challenger loses one die.
- If there are fewer, the bidder loses one die.
The loser of the round starts the bidding in the next round. If they have just lost their last die, the next player starts.
Scoring and winning
A player with no dice left is out. The last player who still has at least one die wins.
Common variants
- No wild ones: harder to estimate and makes high bids riskier.
- Reset bids: a looser rule lets you bid a higher quantity of the same face, or any quantity of a higher face.
- Common hand (dice-play.com): one set of five dice is passed round under a cup. The roller announces a poker hand (pair, two pairs, three of a kind, straight, full house, four or five of a kind), which may be true or a lie. The next player either challenges, or accepts the dice unseen, may re-roll some of them, and must announce a higher hand. A wrong challenge or a caught lie costs a counter; the last player with counters wins.
Tips for first games
- On average one die in six shows any given face. With wild ones, it is about one in three.
- Count what you can see: if there are 20 dice in play and you hold three fives and a one, “seven fives” is a fair bid.
- A bid of about the expected number of dice, rounded down, is right more often than not.
- Bid your strong face early to steer the table, or bid a face you do not have to mislead.
- The fewer dice you hold, the less information you have, so cautious challenges become more valuable late in the game.
Frequently asked questions
Are ones always wild? No, it is a house rule, though a common one. Agree before you start.
Do my own dice count towards the bid? Yes. A bid is about every die on the table, yours included.
Can I lower the quantity if I raise the face? Only if your group plays a looser bidding rule. In the strict rule you either raise the quantity or keep it and raise the face.
What if the count is exactly the bid? The bid is correct, so the challenger loses a die.
How many dice can a player lose per round? One, either the bidder or the challenger.
