How to Play Pass the Pigs

Pass the Pigs is a dice game played with two small model pigs instead of dice. You throw both pigs and score points depending on how they land: on their backs, on their feet, on their snouts, or balanced on an ear. Keep throwing to build up your turn score, but if the pigs land on opposite sides you Pig Out and lose everything from that turn. The first player to reach 100 points wins. It is a commercial version of Pig, the classic push-your-luck dice game, which is explained further down this page.

Pass the Pigs Rules at a Glance

How to Play Pass the Pigs

1. Pick a scorekeeper. The rules call this player the swineherd. Choose who goes first; play passes to the left.
2. Throw both pigs onto a smooth surface and add up the points for how they land (see the scoring table).
3. Stop or keep throwing. If you stop, your turn total is added to your score and you pass the pigs on. If you keep going, add each throw to a running turn total.
4. Watch for the bad throws. A Pig Out ends your turn with no points for that turn. An Oinker ends your turn and wipes out your whole score. A Piggyback puts you out of the game.
5. Win. The first player to reach 100 points wins.

Pass the Pigs Scoring

A useful rule of thumb: the harder a position is to throw, the more it scores, and two pigs in the same position score four times the single value.

Hog Call

The rule sheet’s variant “for gutsy pig players”. Just before someone throws, any other player with at least 20 points can shout “Sooee!”. The first to shout calls the position the pigs will land in (both positions for a Mixed Combo; you can’t call a Pig Out, Oinker or Piggyback).

• Right: the caller scores double the points thrown, and the thrower loses the same amount (but never goes below 0).
• Wrong: the caller loses double the points thrown, and the thrower gains that amount.

Pass the Pigs Rules Questions

Pass the Pigs Odds

A statistician, John Kern, threw a single pig 11,954 times with a standard surface and a trap-door rolling device. It landed on its side with no dot 35.0% of the time, on its side with the dot 30.2%, on its back 22.4%, on its feet 8.8%, on its snout 3.0% and as a Leaning Jowler 0.6%. Treating the two pigs as independent, that gives:

Oinkers and Piggybacks aren’t part of the measured data, so the real chance of a bad throw is a little higher than these figures show.

Pass the Pigs Strategy

• Stop at around 20 to 30. Stopping once your turn reaches 25 banks the most on average (10.0 points a turn), with 20 and 30 almost as good. Stopping at 10 banks only 8.2.
• Play to the score. Near the end, a player close to 100 should bank sooner, and a player far behind has to take bigger risks.
• Throw gently onto a smooth surface. Pigs that skid together risk an Oinker, which costs far more than a Pig Out.
• Use Hog Call when you’re ahead. Calling a Razorback or a Sider is the safest guess, because those are the most common results.

Pig: the Classic Dice Game

Pig is the simple dice game Pass the Pigs is based on, first described in print by John Scarne in 1945. All you need is one die.

1. On your turn, roll the die as many times as you like, adding each roll to your turn total.
2. If you roll a 1, you score nothing for the turn and play passes on.
3. If you hold, your turn total is added to your score.
4. The first player to reach 100 points wins.

Two-dice Pig is a common variant: a single 1 ends your turn with no points, and two 1s wipe out your whole score. Some groups add that a double means you must roll again. Teachers often use Pig to introduce probability.

These comparisons come from Todd Neller and Clifton Presser’s work on perfect play in two-player Pig. With one die, the chance of building a turn total of 20 before rolling a 1 is 38%, and of 25, 30%.

Where Pass the Pigs Comes From

Pass the Pigs was created by David Moffat and first published in 1977 as Pig Mania! The licence later went to Milton Bradley, who renamed it Pass the Pigs. Winning Moves Games USA took over North American publishing in 1992 and bought the game outright in 2017. A Big Pigs edition with foam pigs about 6 inches long came out in 2016.

More Games to Try

For more push-your-luck dice games, try Farkle and Ship, Captain and Crew. Left Right Center and Bunco are good for a crowd, and Liar’s Dice adds bluffing.

Pass the Pigs: frequently asked questions