02-002 Standard Dice

02-002
Standard Dice

If French-suited playing cards are the standard of playing card deck, then d6 dice are the standard of dice rolling. Standard dice are, well, standard. Everyone must have some in their home. And they look simple as well. It seems that there is not much to talk about them? If you think so, then you are wrong.

I grew up in the East. And the standard dice that I played along since my childhood looks like this:

Common Chinese Dice

Many casino games involve dice rolling. And when I think of casino, I think of Poker, Monte-Carlo, James Bond & cigars. In my mind, dice are just like playing cards. They are from the west. Only until recently, I started to know that there are actually Chinese dice and western dice. And they are different.

Chinese paints their dice pips in red colour for 1 and 4 and in blue colour for 2, 3, 5 & 6. Pips on dice from other countries are normally in single colour, often either black or white. And there is a slight different in pip arrangement between Chinese and western dice. Moreover, most western dice are right-handed. But our dice are normally left-handed. This is called chirality.

Chirality of dice

Picture source: Wikipedia

So, as we have French-suited playing cards, Spanish-suited playing cards, German-suited playing cards, we also have “Western-suited” standard dice and “Chinese-suited” standard dice. And for your information, there are also Pakistani dice. Pakistani dice are mostly in western style but with pips coloured red for 1 and 6. Anyway, what the heck?

Western Die vs Chinese Die

Standard western dice are generally 16mm or roughly ⅔” in size, but it is not uncommon to see “standard dice” vary between 14mm and 16mm. Chinese dice are usually smaller. The ones that widely available in my country are 13.5mm in size. I do see Chinese dice in bigger size though.

Dice rolling is quick and fun. You can play a lot of little games with just a few pieces of dice on hand. “Bunco”, “Farkle”, “Pig”, “Yacht”, “Ship, caption and crew”, just to name a few. However, unlike playing cards which you can always find a deck hanging around somewhere in your house, it is not always easy to find dice handy. Yes, many board games got dice inside. But if you think you can just get a die from your Monopoly and another one from your Cluedo so that you can play “Sevens, elevens, and doubles” with your kids, don’t! I tell you, you won’t put the dice back to their original box after playing. And one day when you wanted to play Monopoly, you will shout, “Where’s the die?” Trust me!

If you want to play some dice rolling games, it is better to purchase some standard dice rather than getting die here and there. There are plenty of sellers on Amazon selling standard d6 dice. However, if you don’t have any standard dice handy at home, I would recommend to get a proper set of Liar’s Dice as a “starter kit”. A proper medium-price Liar’s dice set normally comes with 4 to 6 dice cups and 20 to 30 dice. Better if you can find one that also comes with a dice tray. 20 dice are enough to play almost any traditional dice games.

There are plenty of traditional dice games that you can play with standard dice. I am going to show “Pig” as an example here. It is probably the simplest dice game you can find. What you need is only 1 standard die and something to keep score. That’s all you need. Nothing else.

General Information

Player	2
Playing Time	10 mins
Age	8+
Year Released	1945
Designer	John Scarne
Publisher	(Unknown)
Family	Push Your Luck
Score	5.3 (Board Game Geek)

Specifications

Dice size	16mm, or any size but not too small
# of dice	1
Faces	6
Details	Standard d6 die with each of its six faces marked with a different number of pips from one to six.

The game play

Where to buy?

Everywhere. Or Amazon.

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