Liar’s Dice
The pirate classic of hidden dice and public nerve. Bid on what the whole table is hiding, raise or call the lie, and be the last cup standing.
One link, live dice, up to six players.
How to play
- Everyone rolls five dice and keeps them hidden. Only you see your cup.
- Players bid in turn on the whole table: “four 5s” claims at least four dice among everyone’s cups show a 5. Ones are wild and count toward every bid, which is also why you cannot bid on ones themselves.
- Each bid must raise the last: more dice, or the same number of dice on a higher face. Five 3s beats four 6s; four 5s beats four 4s.
- Instead of raising, call the lie. Every cup comes up: if the bid was good, the caller loses a die; if it was a lie, the bidder does. The loser leads the next round.
- Lose your last die and you are out. The last cup standing wins.
The arithmetic of a bluff
With ones wild, every hidden die supports any given face exactly 1 time in 3. So the only question that matters is: how likely are at least so many supporters among the dice you cannot see? Exact figures, computed rather than guessed:
| You need at least | 5 hidden dice | 10 hidden dice | 15 hidden dice |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 86.83% | 98.27% | 99.77% |
| 2 | 53.91% | 89.6% | 98.06% |
| 3 | 20.99% | 70.09% | 92.06% |
| 4 | 4.53% | 44.07% | 79.08% |
| 5 | 0.41% | 21.31% | 59.59% |
The game shows you this arithmetic live: whenever a bid stands, your table quietly notes how believable it is given your own cup. What it cannot see, and what no table can, is whether the bidder knows something or is simply lying, which is where the game stops being arithmetic and starts being poker.
Hidden dice, honestly hidden
In multiplayer rooms, your cup never leaves the server: each player receives only their own dice over the wire, so no amount of poking at the browser can reveal an opponent’s hand. Even our computer opponents play from the same redacted view a human seat gets; they cannot peek at your cup even in principle. They bid what the arithmetic supports and call when the numbers say the table is lying, and they never bluff, which is their one great weakness. A player who notices their bids are always sincere can read the table through them. Exploiting that is the fun.