Game Description: Jono Hey
What's it all about
The aim of the game is to be the last person left still playing. While everyone starts the game with five dice each, at each round, one person will lose one die, so at the end of the game there will be just one player left in. The game is played with each player looking at their own dice and making bids, in turn, about how many of any number there are, say, Six Threes. The bids go up until someone is forced to challenge and who will lose a dice is decided.
The game is great because it can be played anywhere with just a few dice and it's great with up to about 6 players. I regularly pack it when i'm going somewhere because all I need is a bag of dice.
The game is fun because, like poker, it's not at all about what you've got but what other people think you've got. In other words you end up playing against the people and not your luck. It's also social in that it leaves plenty of room for talking, eating and drinking and you play in a close circle which makes all of the above easy.
Getting started
Enough talk, here's the basics of how to get started:
- Everyone shakes their dice and puts them on the table. If you're playing with a proper set you shake them in a cup and keep them under the cup so that noone but you can see them.
- The real aim is to not get stuck in a tricky situation in the rounds of bidding that follow
- The first person starts out by making a guess at how many of a number on the dice has been rolled among all the dice - obviously you can only see a fraction of them. So the bidder would start out by saying something like "I think there are five fours."
- You'd like your bids to be a safe bet in that if, for example, you guessed five fours you want to be confident that there are at least five fours. Among everyone.
- The next person has to decide whether they think the first bidder is right or not. They do this by looking at their dice and, say, seeing how many fours they have, and making an estimate at how many there are likely to be around the table.
- If they conclude that there aren't five fours among everyone then they challenge them by calling 'Dudo' - which means "I doubt" in Spanish.
- Once challenged everyone has to show their dice and the fours would be counted. If it turns out there are less than five fours then the bidder had it wrong and they would lose a die. On the other hand if there were at least five fours, say, six of them, then the person who challenged would lose the die. Once a die has been lost, the game starts again with everyone rolling once more.
Raising the bid
Of course, the next person in the circle may think that there are at least five fours around the table (they may have three themselves). So then, deciding not to challenge the other player, they have to raise the bid. This always takes a little explaining but fortunately I can lay it out more simply here.
| Initial bid: | Five Fours | |
| Possible bids: | Five Sixes Six Twos Six Threes Six Of anything Seven or Eight or more |
because sixes are higher than fives because Six of anything beats Five of anything ditto |
One way I try to explain it is the next bid can be a higher number on the dice (i.e. five sixes is higher than five fives), or a higher number of dice (i.e. six of anything beats five of anything)
So, if the next player doesn't want to challenge they have to raise the bid according to the rules above. The bids quickly get to the stage where it's a very tricky call and if you've played well hopefully you won't be in the spot of being one of the two people, the bidder, or the possible challenger, at that time.
One extra, but crucial twist, is that ones are called 'aces' and they count like wildcards. In other words, if you're curently guessing on fives, then all ones are fives, if you're guessing on twos, then all ones are twos. Simple.
Aces are neat because, a) they add some mystery, and b) they allow another bidding option which is the possibility of calling aces at half the number of the previous bid. So, if the previous bid was Four Threes, you could also say Two aces as your bid. Handy.
Emergent Play
I love this game because it has a ton of emergent play. It really changes as people begin to figure out the game and what would be a good strategy. Then you start to guess at what strategies others are using and try and outdo those and so on.
For example, it's common for beginners to start by playing safe, making guesses based on what they've got in their hand. If you have a handful of fives then it's good to bid fives. But if you bid fives then others might figure out that you have that and adjust their bids by, for example, bidding high fives also. When it comes back to the beginner they confidently raise the fives call only to find out the other player was bluffing and they didn't have any fives.
The game becomes a lot about bluffing and trying to gauge people's confidence levels in their bids and trying to camouflage the confidence level in yours. The game gets extra interesting when the number of dice gets low and the bluffing becomes even more important. There's a lot of satisfaction, funnily enough, in managing to fool your friends.
February 2007