Section 1: Introduction
Liar's dice is a bluffing game played with hidden dice. Each player conceals their own roll under a cup, then players take turns bidding on how many dice of a given value are showing across the entire table — including everyone else's, which nobody can see.
Each bid must raise the previous one. At any point a player may call the last bid a lie; the dice come up, and whoever was wrong loses one. Lose all your dice and you are out.
This describes the common-hand form (often sold as Perudo). It is traditional and in the public domain.
Section 2: Components
- Five six-sided dice per player.
- An opaque cup per player for rolling and concealing — essential, not optional.
Section 3: Setup
- Each player takes five dice and a cup.
- Everyone rolls simultaneously under their cup and looks at their own dice without revealing them.
- The first bid is made by a randomly chosen player; the loser of each round starts the next.
Section 4: Gameplay
Bidding
A bid names a quantity and a face value — "four fives" claims that at least four dice showing 5 exist across the whole table.
Each player must either raise or challenge. A raise must increase the quantity, or keep the quantity and increase the face value.
Ones Are Wild
In the common form, 1s count as any value. This is what makes bids far more likely to be true than they first appear, and it is the rule newcomers most often forget when deciding whether to challenge.
Challenging
- A player says "liar" and all cups are lifted.
- Count the named value across every die, wilds included.
- If the bid was met or exceeded, the challenger loses a die.
- If it fell short, the bidder loses a die.
A player who loses their last die is eliminated.
Section 5: Scoring & Winning
There is no score. The last player holding dice wins.
Because losing dice makes your information thinner but your bids harder to disprove, the endgame between two short-stacked players is where most of the tension sits.
Palifico
Many groups play that when a player is reduced to a single die, the next round is palifico: 1s are no longer wild, and the face value cannot be changed once set — only the quantity may rise.
Section 6: Variants & House Rules
- Individual hand: bids describe only your own dice, turning it into a pure poker-dice bluff.
- Exact call ("spot on"): claim the bid is precisely right — if so, everyone else loses a die instead.
- Ones not wild: removes the wild rule entirely and makes bids much easier to break.
- Dudo / Perudo / Cacho: South American names for the same game, with regional variations on palifico.
