Balut is a game from the Philippines originally created by United States soldiers after WW2 as a poker alternative.
Set Up
Each player will need five six-sided dice and a score card.
Game Play
Play is simultaneous. Each player rolls their dice, setting aside any desired ones, and, optionally, repeating this up to two more times. Once the dice are all set aside, the player chooses a category to apply it to. There may be no more than four results applied to a given category. Once the card is filled out, the player's turn is over and they will calculate their score.
Categories
There are seven categories, which are loosely based on poker hands.
- Fours (all fours rolled)
- Fives (all fives rolled)
- Sixes (all sixes rolled)
- Straight (either small or large)
- House (three of a kind and two of a different kind)
- Choice (anything rolled)
- Balut (five of a kind)
Scoring
The scoring is quite comprehensive. It's a combination of scores from each category and several incentive bonuses based on categories and total points.
Based on the faces
- Fours, fives, and sixes score equal to their number of pips of the corresponding faces.
- Small straights score 15.
- Large straights score 20.
- House scores based on the total number of pips.
- Choice scores based on the total number of pips.
- Balut scores 20 plus the total number of pips.
Incentive Bonuses
There are a few incentive bonuses based on what happened in the categories and total score.
- 52 or more points in fours is worth 2 points.
- 65 or more points in fives is worth 2 points.
- 78 or more points in sixes is worth 2 points.
- If every straight box is filled, it is worth 4 points.
- If every house box is filled, it is worth 3 points.
- If there are 100 or more points in total for choice, it is worth 2 points.
- Every Balut is worth 2 points.
Once these points are totaled, there are a final set of scoring based on this value and will yield the final score:
| Intermediary Score | Points |
|---|---|
| 0 - 299 | -2 |
| 300 - 349 | -1 |
| 350 - 399 | 0 |
| 400 - 449 | 1 |
| 450 - 499 | 2 |
| 500 - 549 | 3 |
| 550 - 599 | 4 |
| 600 - 649 | 5 |
| 650 - 812 | 6 |
This is the player's final score. The player with the highest score once all cards are filled out, wins.
Variants
There is one slight variant so far developed by myself.
Olathe
Olathe is played almost exactly like Balut except the card proceeds from top to bottom and left to right. This means Fours must be attempted before attempting Fives. Due to the added complexity on assigning scores to a category, instead of up to three rolls, five are possible.