The Game of Pig ( home | game | solution | links )

The game of Pig is a very simple jeopardy dice game in which two players race to reach 100 points. Each turn, a player repeatedly rolls a die until either a 1 is rolled or the player holds and scores the sum of the rolls (i.e. the turn total). At any time during a player's turn, the player is faced with two decisions:

• roll - If the player rolls a
  • 1: the player scores nothing and it becomes the opponent's turn.
  • 2 - 6: the number is added to the player's turn total and the player's turn continues.
• hold - The turn total is added to the player's score and it becomes the opponent's turn.

Instructions: You are playing against the computer. The blue rectangle indicates the current player. To roll, click or the die in the lower left corner. To hold, click . Click and hold the "Hint" button to display the optimal decision. When the applet starts running, it starts computing the probability that you will win. As soon as the probabilities are computed, they will display.

The key decision facing a player is how large a turn total should be risked to possibly get an even larger total. To learn more about the game of Pig, visit our Pig web page. An iPhone Pig Dice app with optimal play is also available.

(For browsers with Java applets disabled, you can run the optimal Pig player applet from a Unix terminal window with the command "appletviewer http://cs.gettysburg.edu/projects/pig/piggame-original.html".)

Author: Todd Neller