Yahtzee!

Yahtzee! I've Got A Yahtzee!

We've been playing Yahtzee ever since my children were able to do the math, even when that was by counting the dots on the dice, and we're still playing and my children are, well, let's just say they're not children anymore. We played Yahtzee at home, we played it at the campground and we played it on trips. It's wonderfully easy to throw the necessary game bits in a ziplock bag and throw it in the car or the suitcase or the backpack...

Yahtzee is simple and it is a blast.

You have five dice. You put them in a cup or your hands for that matter unless you have small hands. You roll. You collect the required tricks, which include combinations of single digits like ones, twos and threes and poker hands like three and four of a kind, full house and both a small and large straight. You attempt to build the highest score. Occasionally, you get really lucky and roll a great big YAHTZEE, which is worth a whopping 50 points. With a Yahtzee you've made it to the big times but you are still not guaranteed to win because your opponent may roll a Yahtzee, too.

Obviously, Yahtzee is a dice game. It is made by Milton Bradley and has been around since the 1940s, when it was called Yatzie.

Yahtzee is a brilliant game because it is so simple and easy to play. I'm not even going to talk about it being good for your math skills because that would ruin the fun. It is recommended for ages 8 and up.

I've chosen to showcase the vintage book collection edition here, which comes handsomely packaged in a wooden box that is perfect for displaying on your library shelves. I think it is the version I would pick if I was gifting Yahtzee to accomplished game players. If I was giving Yahtzee to a young family, I would pick a more basic and affordable set like the one displayed below unless, of course, I wanted to really treat them to a special version of the game.

Yahtzee is great for the young and the young at heart. It'll teach math skills and it will keep our brains going long after we first learned how to add, which makes it a great game for senior citizens. Every time we visit my mother, we play Yahtzee.

This is the basic version of Yahtzee. It includes everything you need to play including plenty of score pads and it is extremely affordable retailing at this very moment for $12.18. In terms of a travel version, Yahtzee sells the Yahtzee to Go Travel Game. People love the compact scoring pads but dislike the shaking container, which apprently is very loud. Personally, I recommend taking the contents of the basic game shown here and putting them in a tough freezer ziplock bag to creat your own travel edition of the game.

This is a recent vintage-looking version of Yahtzee. I think it would be the perfect choice to give Grandma and Grandpa when you visit. It's easy for even the oldest grandparent to learn if they don't already know how to play and those who have played Yahtzee and remember it from many years ago will appreciate the special packaging.