The press-your-luck maths
When to stop rolling
Weigh the simple arithmetic of greed, deciding whether to risk another toss or bank your points safely.
Every roll offers you a few points and a one-in-five chance of losing everything you have built this turn. Those two numbers are all you need to work out where the sensible stopping point sits.
- points from an average roll
- About 4.71
- of rolls end the turn
- About 21.1%
- points is where banking beats rolling
- Around 22
The arithmetic, plainly
Take the chance of each landing, pair them up, and you get an average roll worth about 4.71 points. Roughly 21.1 rolls in a hundred end the turn with nothing.
So each roll gambles your whole turn total against a small gain. While your turn total is under about 22 points, the gain is worth more than the risk. Above that, you are risking more than you stand to win, and banking is the better move.
Which is not the same as playing that way
The number assumes you want the highest average score. Near the end of a game you do not: you want to beat whoever is ahead. Trailing badly with one turn left, rolling on past thirty is correct even though the average says otherwise.
Two honest caveats. The figure treats the two pigs as independent, and they are not quite, since they leave the same cup together. And Oinker and Piggyback are events of the pair, absent from the per-pig counts entirely, so the real risk of rolling on is a little higher than 21.1%. Read 22 as a rough marker, not a rule.
Where the numbers come from
The rarity scale
Counts over eleven thousand rolls of one pig. The shape barely shifts between samples, so a fresh set of pigs will behave much the same as an old one.
Notice how much of the chart the two flat landings take. That is why turns end so often, and why a run of four or five good rolls feels remarkable.
Try it without doing sums
The scorekeeper adds up as you tap, so you can watch a turn total climb past 22 and feel exactly how uncomfortable that gets.
Or teach it
This is a well-worn probability lesson, and the pigs make it concrete in a way coins and dice never manage.
Carry on from here
- How to play Pass the PigsRead how a turn works, when to hand the little porkers across, and how the winner finishes.
- Every pig position and what it scoresCheck what each landing is worth, with clear drawings showing how the little rubber porkers can rest.
- Pig Out, Oinker and PiggybackLearn about the few disastrous tosses that wipe out a turn or erase a whole running tally.
- Hog Call and other table rulesExplore common house rules people invent around the table, along with where those extra twists came from.