Dudo Rules

What you need

• 2 to 6 players.
• Five dice and an opaque cup each (on Lizumo you start with 3 dice for shorter games).
• A table to slam the cups down on.

The goal

Be the last player with at least one die left. Every time you make a bad bid or a wrong call of “Dudo!”, you lose a die: run out and you're out.

How a round works

1. Everyone shakes their dice in the cup, turns it upside down on the table and only looks at their own.
2. The player who opens the round makes a bid on the whole table: for example “there are at least four 5s”, counting everyone's dice, not just their own.
3. The next player has a choice: raise with a higher bid, or shout “Dudo!” (“I don't believe you”).
4. Bids keep going up until someone calls “Dudo!”. Then everyone lifts their cup and the dice are counted.

How to raise

A bid beats the previous one if it has more dice (of any value) or the same number of dice with a higher value.

• After “four 5s” you can say “four 6s”, or “five 2s”, “five 3s” and so on.
• You can't say “four 3s”: same number of dice, lower value.

1s are wild

1s count as any value: if the bid is on 5s, every 1 on the table counts as a 5. The only exception is when the bid is on 1s themselves: then only actual 1s count.

Because 1s are half as likely (they come up one time in six, while any other value comes up one time in three once you add the wilds), bidding on 1s has special rules:

• Switching to 1s: half the dice is enough, rounded up. After “six 4s” you can say “three 1s”; after “five 4s” you can also say “three 1s”.
• Switching back from 1s: you need double the dice plus one. After “three 1s” you must bid at least “seven” of another value.
• On Lizumo you can't open a round with a bid on 1s.

Dudo! Who loses a die

When someone shouts “Dudo!”, all the dice are revealed and you count the ones that match the bid (wilds included).

• If there are fewer than the bid, it was a bluff: the bidder loses a die.
• If there are at least as many as the bid, the bid was good: whoever called Dudo loses a die.

The next round is opened by the player who just lost a die. If they're out of dice, the first player to their left who's still in opens instead.

A quick odds trick

On average, a third of the dice you can't see will match the value being bid (because 1s count too). Add your own matching dice to a third of everyone else's, and you have an estimate of how many are out there.

Example: there are 12 dice in play, you have 3 and two of them are 5s. The other 9 dice will show about 3 fives on average, so roughly 5 in total. A bid of “four 5s” is safe, while “seven 5s” is a pretty big bluff. For 1s, count a sixth instead: with 9 hidden dice, expect about 1 or 2.

In Lizumo's assisted mode, the game tells you how likely a bid is to be true, taking your own dice into account.

Lizumo's rules

• You start with 3 dice each; whoever creates the game can choose from 1 to 5 (5 is the classic rule).
• 1s are wild, with the rules for switching to and from 1s described above.
• A round can't open on 1s.
• No special variants: no “palifico” round and no “calza” (see below).

Popular variants

• Palifico: when a player is down to their last die, in the next round 1s aren't wild and the value can't change, you can only raise the number of dice.
• Calza (or “spot on”): instead of calling Dudo, you bet that there are exactly as many dice as the bid. If you're right you win back a die; if not, you lose one.
• Opening on 1s: some house rules allow it.

Dudo is the traditional South American dice game known in English as Liar's Dice. You'll also find it in our guide to dice games to play with friends.

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