Chicago is a pub classic played with three dice and at most three rolls. The twist: you are not looking for the winner but for the loser – and whoever leads decides which rules the round is scored by.
The game is completely free. You can play it on one device that is passed around, or as a Dice Round – everyone on their own phone. Two players minimum.
Tap Chicago on the app's home screen and pick how you want to play: Play on one device, or as a Dice Round with Create party or Join party. Before starting you choose:
Who leads the first rolling round is drawn by lot – leading is an advantage.
Chicago can also be played as a Dice Round: everyone on their own phone, with no internet at all. One player creates the party, the others join.
The host alone picks the variant and the number of searches. On the guests' phones the two switches are therefore greyed out – but they do show what the host chose, so everyone can read up on the right rules before the start.
In a Dice Round, Chicago is played open: everyone sees every roll, every die set aside, and the full standings. Only the call is made by the leader on their own device – the others learn it once it stands.
Once a rolling round has been scored, anyone may tap Continue. That way the table isn't waiting for the host to happen to look at their phone.
A roll is worth the sum of its three dice. Only ones and sixes are unusual, because what they count is called by the lead player:
An example: the dice 6 · 3 · 5 add up to 68 with “sixes 60”, but to just 14 with “sixes 6”. Two ones and a four are a hefty 204 with “ones 100” – and a miserable 6 with “ones 1”.
A rolling round is one pass around the table. The lead player starts and may roll up to three times. After each roll you can set dice aside by tapping them – dice that are set aside stay put and are never rolled again.
Tapped the wrong die? Tapping it again takes it back, as long as you have not rolled since. Until then it has had no effect at all: it merely settles which dice stay put on the next roll. That roll makes the decision final – „what has once been laid down may not go back into the cup“.
If two dice show a six, the button Turn two sixes appears: one six is turned over to a one and stays put, the other goes back into the cup and has to be rolled again. That is why it only works while you still have a roll left. Three sixes can not be turned into two ones.
Done ends your turn. The lead player then moves on to the call.
Only after their last roll does the lead player decide how the whole rolling round is scored – so they already know their own dice. The call dialog shows those dice at the top and, below them, what they are worth under the currently selected scoring. Three things are called:
That is where the real tactics live: whoever holds a six but no one likes to call “sixes 60, but ones 1” – taking the strongest dice away from the whole field without weakening their own roll.
On top of that, the lead player's number of rolls caps everyone else: stopping after a single roll forces the whole field down to one roll. Stopping earlier is always allowed, rolling more often is not. So that everyone can keep the call in view, it stays on screen for the whole rolling round, for example “Ones 100 · sixes 60 · High · on 1”.
Three ones in a single roll are a Chicago and beat everything – no matter what was called.
Ones collected over several rolls are not a Chicago. They count normally, according to the call – and that can turn out very differently:
| Call | Value | What it means at the table |
|---|---|---|
| Ones 100 · high | 300 | the best possible roll |
| Ones 100 · low | 300 | the worst roll |
| Ones 1 · low | 3 | the best possible roll |
| Ones 1 · high | 3 | the worst roll |
There is an obvious misunderstanding hiding here: a value of 300 does not imply that „high“ was called. Scoring and direction are two separate levers. „Ones 100 · low“ is a legal and even sensible call – whoever holds 2 · 2 · 2 = 6 themselves turns every one at the table into a disaster that way.
So three ones always sit at one extreme: with „ones 100“ they are the highest roll there is, with „ones 1“ the lowest. Whether that extreme helps or hurts is decided by the direction alone.
And one small but consequential rule: matching is not beating. Reaching the same value as the current best does not overtake them. At the other end it works the other way round: on a tie the later player stays the worst – after all, they did not roll themselves clear.
Everything described so far applies to all variants alike. What differs is only what happens at the end of a rolling round:
| Basic | Bavarian | Tschigg | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What counts | tally marks | coasters | coasters |
| How many in play | – | number of players + 1 | 2 × number of players − 1 |
| The best of a rolling round | sits out and is safe | puts a coaster down | passes a coaster to the worst |
| The worst | leads the next rolling round | takes a coaster (handing-out phase) | takes a coaster (handing-out phase) |
| Who loses | whoever has the most tally marks | whoever holds coasters last | whoever holds coasters last |
| Match length adjustable | yes (1, 3, 5 or 10) | no, it ends by itself | no, it ends by itself |
| Special feature | knock-out system | a Chicago removes its roller and their coasters | extra call “sand” |
The best player of each rolling round is safe and sits out for the rest of the round. The others carry on among themselves – rolling round after rolling round – until only one player is left. That player has lost the search and takes a tally mark. With five players that means four rolling rounds with 5, 4, 3 and finally 2 participants.
The worst player leads the next rolling round each time. A match consists of as many searches as you picked during setup; whoever collected the most tally marks has lost. Each following search is led by the player who just lost.
Played with coasters – one more than there are players. At the start nobody holds one: they all sit in the middle and are only given out as the game goes on. The game runs in two phases:
The last player still holding coasters has lost.
A Chicago removes its roller from the game at once and for good – they have won and sit out the clearing phase too. Thrown during the handing-out phase it means they never have to clear a single coaster; thrown while clearing it sheds all of their coasters in one go instead of one per rolling round. Their coasters vanish with them and do not go back to the middle: the others still have just as many to absorb, but fewer shoulders to carry them. The remaining players do finish the rolling round, because there is still a coaster riding on the worst of them.
The Swiss relative of Bavarian Chicago. There are twice as many coasters as players, minus one. They are handed out as in the Bavarian variant: here too nobody holds a coaster at the start, and after each rolling round the worst player takes one from the middle, until none are left there.
While clearing, the best player of each rolling round passes a coaster to the worst – so the coasters travel instead of disappearing. Whoever has none left has won and leaves the game, which also lowers the target number of coasters. Again, whoever holds coasters last has lost.
Tschigg alone offers the extra call “sand”. It turns the rolling round on its head: the value of the roll stops mattering entirely. Only one question is left – is there a one or a six in it? Whoever has neither has made “sand”. On a single roll that works out for barely one in three (with three dice ⅔ × ⅔ × ⅔ ≈ 30 %).
And because that makes everyone who succeeds equally good and everyone who fails equally bad, what decides is not the pips but the turn order:
An example from the handing-out phase, with Anna having called “sand”:
| Order | Player | Roll | Sand? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna | 2 · 3 · 4 | yes |
| 2 | Ben | 1 · 3 · 4 | no (a one) |
| 3 | Chris | 5 · 5 · 2 | yes |
| 4 | Dora | 2 · 6 · 3 | no (a six) |
Ben and Dora failed alike – but the coaster goes to Dora alone, because she comes later. Ben gets away with it. While clearing it would mirror that: Chris would be the one to pass a coaster on, not Anna.
Two special cases: if everybody makes sand, no coaster is handed out at all and the rolling round passes without effect. If nobody does, no one passes a coaster on while clearing.