There is no holding dice, no pressing your luck, and nothing to decide. You roll, you either hit the target or you don't, and the sheet moves on. Below are the full rules, a free printable score sheet, the variants worth adding, and an explanation of which "Chicago" this is. At least five unrelated games carry the name, so check that you and your table mean the same one.
On this page
What do you need?
- Two ordinary six-sided dice. You don't need a board, a cup, or special dice.
- A score sheet: one column per player, eleven rows. There's a free printable one further down this page.
- 2 or more players. There is no upper limit; see why big groups work.
No dice on hand? Chicago needs exactly two. Roll them for free with the online dice roller and pass the phone or laptop around the table.
How to play
The game is eleven rounds long. Each round has a fixed target number, and the targets run straight through every possible total of two dice:
- Round 1's target is 2, round 2's target is 3, round 3's target is 4, and so on. Round 11's target is 12. The target always equals the round number plus one.
- Each player rolls both dice once in the round, in turn, going clockwise around the table.
- If your two dice add up to exactly the round's target, you score that many points. Hit the target in round 6 and you score 7. Hit it in round 11 and you score 12.
- If they add up to anything else, you score zero for that round. Nothing is deducted, and nothing carries over.
- When everyone has rolled, the round is done and the table moves on to the next target.
That is the entire game. Eleven rounds, one roll per player per round, eleven turns each, and the highest cumulative total wins. If two or more players finish level, the usual convention is that they share the win.
A worked round. It's round 4, so the target is 5. Ana rolls 3 and 2 for a total of 5, so she scores 5 points. Ben rolls 6 and 4 for 10, which is not the target, so he scores 0. Priya rolls 1 and 4 for 5 and scores 5 as well. Everyone has rolled, so the table moves to round 5 and starts chasing a 6.
Turn order is the only thing worth agreeing on before you start. The standard way is round by round: the whole table attempts the target, then everyone moves to the next one together. That's what makes the game feel shared. It makes no difference at all to anyone's odds if one player instead rattles through all eleven of their own rolls in a row, so if you're playing in a noisy room where passing the dice is a pain, feel free, but the round-by-round version is more fun to watch.
Scoring, and what a good score looks like
Because the target is also the payout, the rounds are not equally valuable, and they are not equally hard either. With two dice there is only one way to roll a 2 and only one way to roll a 12, but six ways to roll a 7. Multiply the chance of hitting a target by what that target pays and you get how much each round is worth:
| Round | Target | Ways to roll it | Chance | Average points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 1 of 36 | 2.8% | 0.06 |
| 2 | 3 | 2 of 36 | 5.6% | 0.17 |
| 3 | 4 | 3 of 36 | 8.3% | 0.33 |
| 4 | 5 | 4 of 36 | 11.1% | 0.56 |
| 5 | 6 | 5 of 36 | 13.9% | 0.83 |
| 6 | 7 | 6 of 36 | 16.7% | 1.17 |
| 7 | 8 | 5 of 36 | 13.9% | 1.11 |
| 8 | 9 | 4 of 36 | 11.1% | 1.00 |
| 9 | 10 | 3 of 36 | 8.3% | 0.83 |
| 10 | 11 | 2 of 36 | 5.6% | 0.61 |
| 11 | 12 | 1 of 36 | 2.8% | 0.33 |
Three things follow from that table, and it helps to know them before you keep score for the first time.
- A perfect game is 77 points (the sum of 2 through 12), and you will never see one.
- The average total for a whole game is exactly 7 points. Add up the "average points" column and it lands on 7.00 on the nose, which is a pleasant coincidence in a game built around two dice.
- About a third of players score nothing all game. The chance of missing all eleven targets in a row is close to 35%, so in a group of nine you should expect roughly three people to finish on zero. That is normal, not bad luck, and it's why a single hit in the late rounds so often wins outright.
Rounds 6, 7 and 8 (targets 7, 8 and 9) decide most games: they're both reasonably likely and worth a lot. The opening and closing rounds hardly matter. If you want the full picture of how two-dice totals are distributed, the page on dice probability lays out all 36 combinations.
There is no strategy. That is on purpose. You never choose anything, so nobody can play badly, nobody needs the rules explained twice, and a five-year-old has the same chance as the person who read this whole page. For a two-dice game with decisions in it, try Shut the Box. For a game about nerve, try Pig.
Free printable score sheet
Chicago needs a score sheet more than most dice games do, because the targets change every round and a big table forgets fast. Here's a blank one for up to six players and all eleven rounds, with the targets already filled in so nobody has to remember what they're chasing. It's free and there's nothing to sign up for. Click the button and only the sheet prints, without the rest of this page. With more than six players, print two copies and split the table.
Chicago score sheet (dice-together.com)
| Round | Target | Player 1 | Player 2 | Player 3 | Player 4 | Player 5 | Player 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | |||||||
| 1 | 2 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | ||||||
| 3 | 4 | ||||||
| 4 | 5 | ||||||
| 5 | 6 | ||||||
| 6 | 7 | ||||||
| 7 | 8 | ||||||
| 8 | 9 | ||||||
| 9 | 10 | ||||||
| 10 | 11 | ||||||
| 11 | 12 | ||||||
| Total | max 77 |
Variants and house rules
The base game is bare, so most groups add something to it. These are the three you'll come across, and they all make scoring more likely, which helps in a game where a third of the table otherwise finishes on zero.
| Variant | Dice | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Double Roll | 2 | If your first roll misses the target, you may reroll one of the two dice, never both. You keep whichever die you like and try again with the other. |
| Three Dice | 3 | Roll three dice and choose which two of them count toward the target. A big jump in your odds, especially on the middling targets. It stacks with Double Roll if you want a very generous game. |
| Twelve rounds | 1 and 2 | Add a round 1 in which you roll a single die going for a 1, then play the usual eleven rounds with two dice for targets 2 through 12. A neat idea, but treat it as a house rule rather than the standard game: it circulates as a reader suggestion rather than as published rules. |
The sources differ on how much of this counts as "the game". Dice Game Depot publishes Double Roll and Three Dice as named variants; the widely shared party-blog write-up gives the bare eleven-round game only and treats the twelve-round idea as a reader's suggestion. Nobody disagrees about the core, though. Every source we checked has round 1 chasing a 2 and round 11 chasing a 12, in that order, so a version that numbers the rounds differently is someone's house rule.
Two more things you may want to settle out loud before the first roll, because published rules are silent on them: whether a tie is a shared win or is played off with one extra round, and whether latecomers join at the current target or start from round 1 on their own sheet.
Which Chicago is this?
"Chicago" is one of the most overloaded names in games, and searching for the rules will hand you at least five unrelated ones. This page describes the two-dice, eleven-round party game, which is also known as Rotation. Here is everything else that goes by the name, so you can tell whether you're in the right place:
| Game | Equipment | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Chicago / Rotation (this page) | 2 dice | Eleven rounds, one roll each, targets 2 through 12. Score the target's value or nothing. |
| Chicago (German-speaking pub game) | 3 dice + cup | A completely different game played in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (where it's called Tschigg), often as a drinking game. Up to three throws per turn, setting dice aside as you go; ones and sixes are worth either their face value or 100 and 60, and three ones, the "Chicago", wins on the spot. Sources differ on the big values: some have the starting player announce each round which valuation applies, others simply fix ones at 100 and sixes at 60. |
| Chicago (poker) | Cards | A seven-card stud variant with a split pot. In High Chicago the pot is shared between the best poker hand and the highest spade in the hole; face-up spades don't count. Low Chicago splits on the lowest spade instead. |
| Chicago (bridge) | Cards | Also called four-deal bridge or short bridge: a form of contract bridge played and scored in sets of four deals. |
| Chicago (the Finnish card game) | Cards | A points game combining poker hands with trick-taking, played to 52 points and popular in Finland. |
| Chicago (pool) | Billiards | A money-ball rotation game on a pool table: balls are pocketed in numerical order and the 1, 5, 8, 10, 13 and 15 are the ones that pay. |
Heads up if you use our app. The entry called Chicago in the Dice Together game picker is the three-dice German pub game, not the eleven-round game on this page. For this one, set the table to two plain dice. That's all it needs.
If it's the three-dice, three-throws family you were actually after, Going to Boston is the one we've written up: three dice, three throws, and one die set aside after each. Cee-lo is the other three-dice game here, though it settles a round with all three dice at once rather than in stages.
Why it works for eight or more people
Most dice games stop working beyond four or five players. Yahtzee with ten people is a long wait between turns, and anything with holding and rerolling gets slower with every extra chair. Chicago doesn't, for these reasons:
- A turn is one roll. There are no decisions, no rerolls and nothing to hold, so a turn takes about three seconds. Twelve players get through a round in under a minute.
- Everyone is chasing the same number. Because the whole table wants a 7 at the same moment, other people's rolls are interesting. That's the thing group games usually fail at.
- The game length is fixed. Eleven rounds is eleven rounds whether you're four people or twenty, which helps when it's a filler between other things.
- Nobody is eliminated and nobody has to concentrate. You can hold a drink, talk over it, join at round 6, or wander off, and none of it breaks anything.
- The scoring is one number per player per round. A single sheet handles the whole table.
The one thing that does get awkward with a crowd is a pair of dice rattling around a big room. This is where a shared screen earns its keep: our free Android app casts the dice onto a TV or streaming device, so everybody in the room watches the same roll land instead of craning over a table. If you're planning a full games night around this, Bunco is the other classic that scales to a dozen people, and the dice games for kids list has more short, low-rules options for mixed-age groups.
Frequently asked questions about Chicago
What is the Chicago dice game?
Chicago is a party dice game for two or more players, sometimes called Rotation. It runs for eleven rounds. Each round has a target number, starting at 2 in round 1 and climbing by one each round up to 12 in round 11. On your turn you roll two dice once. If the two dice add up to that round's target you score that many points, and if they add up to anything else you score nothing for the round. After eleven rounds the highest total wins.
How does scoring work in Chicago?
You only ever score the target number of the round you are in, and only when your two dice add up to exactly that number. Hitting the target in round 4, where the target is 5, is worth 5 points. Rolling anything else scores zero for that round. There are no bonuses and nothing is deducted, so your score simply climbs as the game goes on. If two players finish level, most groups treat it as a shared win.
What is the highest possible score in Chicago?
The perfect game is 77 points, which is what you get by hitting all eleven targets from 2 through 12. In practice that essentially never happens. The average total across a full game works out to exactly 7 points, and roughly a third of players finish an eleven-round game without scoring at all, so a total in the teens is usually enough to win.
Is this the same as the German pub game called Chicago?
No, they are two different games that happen to share a name. The game on this page uses two dice and eleven fixed targets. The pub game played in German-speaking countries, and known as Tschigg in Switzerland, uses three dice and a cup, gives you up to three throws per turn, and is won outright by rolling three ones. In that game ones and sixes are worth either their face value or 100 and 60; some published rules have the starting player announce which valuation applies each round, others simply fix them at 100 and 60. If you open our app's game picker, the entry named Chicago is that three-dice game.
How many people can play Chicago?
Any number, and it is one of the few dice games that gets better with a big group. Every player takes exactly one roll per round, so a turn lasts a couple of seconds and the game does not slow down as the table grows. Eight, twelve or twenty players all work as long as your score sheet has enough columns. It also means anyone can join late or drop out without breaking the game.