Rules for the Dice Game Pig or Hold'Em
The dice game "pig" is a folk game—its origins are unknown. It has only a couple of simple rules but it has become a model for teaching children probability, for computer science classes as a programming example, for machine learning enthusiasts and as a serious subject for consideration by famous mathematicians.
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Rules with One Die
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The dice game pig first appearance in print in a book written for the U.S. Army in 1945 by the magician and gambling expert John Scarne. It is played with one die and any number of people. A running total is kept of the points each player makes during his turns and the first player to reach 100 wins. A player can roll the die as many times as he wants, record the cumulative scores and pass the dice to the next player at any time. If a player rolls a "one," he must pass the die immediately and his score for the turn is zero.
Rules for Two Dice
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There is also a version involving two dice. The rules are exactly the same except that if two "ones" are rolled, all the cumulative points are lost. If only one "one" is rolled, the score for the turn is zero and the dice are passed. The game has been used to teach probability at several different age levels. It has also been used in computer science classes to teach both programming and artificial intelligence. The computer science department at Gettysburg College maintains a pig website. There is an optimum solution: keep rolling as long as your cumulative score is less than 21. Computer simulations have verified that this is a winning strategy.
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Variations
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There is a card game called pig, but it has no relation to the dice game pig—except the obvious, and completely coincidental, connection of having the same name. Games like the dice game pig can be played with things other than dice. For example, it can be played while in a traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway as the cars in the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane slowly inch past the cars stalled cars in the "fast lane." Players add the number of occupants in the passing vehicles and change players at will or when a single passenger vehicle passes. A single passenger vehicle in the HOV lane is illegal but not extremely rare.
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References
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- Photo Credit dice image by Tananda from Fotolia.com
