Drunk Liar’s Dice is a bluffing drinking game where everyone secretly rolls dice, then takes turns making increasingly ridiculous claims about how many matching dice are hidden across the entire table.
You do not need to actually have the dice you claim.
That would defeat the whole point.
If someone says, “There are eight fours,” the next player can raise the bid or call them a liar. Everyone reveals their dice, the table counts the fours, and whoever was wrong loses a die and takes a drink.
The last player with at least one die wins.
The drinking version is not really a separate game with one official ruleset. It is traditional Liar’s Dice with drinking penalties added, and Liar’s Dice itself has several established variations. The biggest argument is usually whether 1s are wild, so decide that before anyone starts bluffing.
DRUNK LIAR’S DICE RULES — QUICK VERSION
- Give every player 5 dice and an opaque cup.
- Everyone rolls their dice under the cup and secretly looks at their own roll.
- The first player makes a bid such as “four 5s”, meaning they claim there are at least four 5s among everybody’s dice.
- The next player must either raise the bid or call “Liar!”
- Keep bidding until someone calls Liar.
- Everyone reveals their dice.
- If the bid was true, the challenger loses. If the bid was too high, the bidder loses.
- The loser takes one sip and removes one die.
- Everyone rerolls their remaining dice and starts another round.
- Lose your final die and you are eliminated. Last player with dice wins.
To play Drunk Liar’s Dice: each player secretly rolls five dice and players take turns bidding on the minimum number of a particular face they believe exists across everybody’s hidden dice. Each new player either raises the bid or challenges the previous player by calling Liar. The loser of the challenge drinks and loses a die, and the last player with dice remaining wins.
What You Need to Play Drunk Liar’s Dice
- 2+ players
- 5 six-sided dice per player
- 1 opaque cup per player
- A table or other flat surface
- A drink for each player
You technically can play with two people, but 3–6 players is the sweet spot. More hidden dice means more uncertainty, which means more room for somebody to confidently lie straight to your face.
With six players, you start with 30 dice in play. You only see five of them.
Good luck.
Can You Play Without Dice Cups?
Yes. Any opaque cup, mug, or container that can cover your dice works.
The important part is that everyone can secretly inspect their own roll without showing anybody else.
How to Set Up Drunk Liar’s Dice
1. Give Everyone Five Dice
Every player starts with five standard six-sided dice.
Keep unused dice nearby. Once somebody loses a die, however, that die stays out of the game unless you are using a house rule that specifically allows players to earn dice back.
2. Give Everyone an Opaque Cup
Each player puts all five dice into their cup.
The cup needs to hide the dice completely when turned upside down.
3. Decide Whether 1s Are Wild
This is the rule you absolutely want settled now rather than halfway through a challenge.
Many Liar’s Dice and Perudo-style rules treat 1s as wild. That means a 1 can count as whichever face is currently being bid.
Other versions play 1s normally.
Our recommended rules use wild 1s. The full rule is explained below.
4. Pick the First Player
Roll a die. Highest roll starts.
After a challenge, we recommend letting the player who lost the previous round start the next one.
How to Play the Liar’s Dice Drinking Game
ROLL → PEEK → BID → RAISE OR CALL LIAR → REVEAL → LOSER DRINKS & LOSES A DIE → REROLL
1. Roll Your Dice
Everyone shakes their dice inside their cup and flips the cup upside down onto the table.
Carefully lift one side and look at your dice.
Only look at your own dice.
Keep them hidden from everybody else.
2. Make the First Bid
The starting player announces a quantity and a die value.
For example:
“Four 5s.”
That means:
“I claim there are at least four dice showing 5 among every hidden die on the table.”
The bid is about everyone’s dice combined, not just the bidder’s hand.
And yes, you can make a bid that your own dice barely support.
Or do not support whatsoever.
That is called lying. It is literally in the name.
3. The Next Player Raises the Bid or Calls Liar
Play moves clockwise.
On your turn, you have two basic choices:
- Raise the bid
- Call “Liar!”
You cannot simply pass.
If you raise, your bid has to be higher than the previous bid according to your chosen bidding rules.
4. Keep Raising Until Someone Calls Liar
Eventually the bids start sounding questionable.
“Six 4s.”
“Seven 4s.”
“Seven 5s.”
“Eight 2s.”
At some point someone decides the previous player is full of shit.
They call:
LIAR!
The bidding stops immediately.
5. Everyone Reveals Their Dice
Every player lifts their cup.
Count all dice matching the face from the final bid.
If your rules use wild 1s, count those too.
6. Determine Who Lost
Suppose the final bid was:
“Eight 4s.”
There are two possible outcomes.
| Actual Count | Result |
|---|---|
| 8 or more matching dice | The bid was valid. The person who called Liar loses. |
| 7 or fewer matching dice | The bid was false. The bidder loses. |
This part causes one surprisingly common mistake:
A bid is a minimum, not an exact prediction.
If somebody bids six 3s and the table actually contains eight 3s, the bid is still correct.
The challenger loses.
7. The Loser Drinks and Loses One Die
Our drinking rule is simple:
LOSE THE CHALLENGE = TAKE ONE SIP + REMOVE ONE DIE.
Do not make the number of drinks equal to the bid.
“You were wrong about 14 sixes, so take 14 drinks” is not clever game design.
It is just an unnecessarily aggressive drinking rule.
8. Start the Next Round
Everyone puts their remaining dice back into their cups and rerolls.
The player who lost the previous challenge starts the next bidding round.
Dice lost earlier stay gone.
How Do Bids Work in Liar’s Dice?
This is the part of Liar’s Dice that varies most between rulesets.
A simple and widely used system is:
- You may bid the same quantity with a higher face value.
- Or you may bid a higher quantity and choose any normal face value.
For example, after:
Four 3s
Legal bids include:
- Four 4s
- Four 5s
- Four 6s
- Five 2s
- Five 3s
- Six 6s
You cannot call three 6s, because the quantity dropped.
You also cannot call four 2s, because neither part of the bid increased.
EASY WAY TO REMEMBER IT
Keep the quantity → face must go up.
Raise the quantity → you may choose another face.
Are 1s Wild in Liar’s Dice?
Often, yes.
There is no single universal Liar’s Dice ruleset, but wild 1s are a major feature of Perudo-style play.
If 1s are wild, they count as the face currently being challenged.
For example, imagine the final bid is:
“Six 5s.”
The table reveals:
- Four actual 5s
- Three 1s
Under wild-1 rules, there are effectively seven matching dice.
The bid succeeds.
What Happens When You Bid 1s?
Traditional Perudo-style rules treat a direct bid on 1s differently because 1s are normally wild and therefore easier to hit when another number is being called.
The common switching rule is:
- To switch to 1s, halve the previous quantity and round up.
- To switch back from 1s, double the quantity and add one.
Example:
Seven 5s → four 1s
Seven divided by two is 3.5, so round up to four.
To switch back:
Four 1s → at least nine of another face
Four doubled is eight, plus one makes nine.
DON’T WANT TO TEACH THE ACE-SWITCH RULE?
Play with 1s as normal dice instead of wilds. It removes an entire layer of rules and is a legitimate Liar’s Dice variation. Just decide before starting.
Example Round of Drunk Liar’s Dice
Four players are playing, so there are 20 dice hidden around the table.
Everyone rolls.
Player 1 secretly sees:
2, 3, 3, 5, 6
Player 1 opens with:
“Four 3s.”
They already know two 3s exist under their own cup, so they are betting that at least two more are hidden among the other 15 dice.
Player 2 says:
“Five 3s.”
Player 3 raises:
“Five 5s.”
Player 4 does not believe it.
“Liar.”
Everyone reveals.
If the table contains five or more 5s — including wild 1s if you are using them — Player 4 loses the challenge.
If the table contains four or fewer, Player 3 was bluffing too hard and loses instead.
The loser takes one sip, removes one die, and starts the next round with four dice.
How Do You Win Drunk Liar’s Dice?
Be the last player with at least one die remaining.
Every lost challenge removes one die from that player.
| Dice Remaining | Status |
|---|---|
| 5 | Starting position |
| 4–2 | Still playing normally |
| 1 | Still alive, but everyone knows you have almost no information |
| 0 | Eliminated |
The decreasing number of dice is important.
A player with five dice has significantly more private information than someone holding one lonely little die and trying to convince the entire table they know what is happening.
Drunk Liar’s Dice House Rules & Variations
Liar’s Dice has been played in enough different forms that claiming there is one universal set of rules would be bullshit.
These are the variations actually worth knowing.
1s Are Not Wild
The simplest variation treats every number normally.
A bid of six 4s means you need six actual 4s.
1s count only as 1s.
This is easier to teach and removes the special bidding rules for switching onto 1s.
Spot On / Exact Call
Some versions add a third option besides raising or calling Liar:
“Spot On.”
This means you believe the previous bid is exactly correct.
If the bid was “seven 3s,” there must be exactly seven matching dice.
Six is wrong.
Eight is also wrong.
Rewards vary. One common version lets a successful caller regain a previously lost die, while other versions penalize every other player.
Because the reward varies so much, agree on the Spot On rule before using it.
We leave it out of our default drinking rules.
Palifico
Perudo includes a special rule commonly called Palifico when a player reaches one die.
In that round, bidding becomes more restrictive and 1s generally stop acting as wilds.
It adds strategy, but it also adds another explanation right when everyone finally understands the normal rules.
Great for people who already know Liar’s Dice.
Unnecessary for somebody trying to teach six people at a pregame.
Drink Without Eliminating Dice
Some drinking groups skip dice elimination and simply make the challenge loser drink.
That works, but it removes the built-in ending condition.
You now need to decide when the game actually stops.
Keeping normal dice elimination makes for a cleaner game.
Different Drinking Penalties
You will find versions where players drink for every die lost, take multiple drinks for bad challenges, or assign drinks after winning.
There is no need.
One lost challenge = one sip.
The bluffing is already the game.
Our Recommended Drunk Liar’s Dice Rules
COLLEGEWARES DRUNK LIAR’S DICE RULES
- Start with 5 dice per player.
- Use one opaque cup per player.
- Bids refer to all dice currently in play.
- Bids mean at least the stated quantity.
- Raise by increasing the quantity, or keeping the quantity and increasing the face.
- 1s are wild.
- Use the standard half/round-up rule when switching to a bid on 1s.
- Use double-plus-one when switching back from 1s.
- No Spot On rule for the first game.
- No Palifico for the first game.
- Only the current player may challenge the previous bid.
- Lose a challenge: take one sip and lose one die.
- The loser starts the next round.
- Zero dice = eliminated.
- Last player with dice wins.
This keeps most of the recognizable Liar’s Dice mechanics without loading the first game with every Perudo exception ever created.
Once everybody actually knows what they are doing, add Spot On or Palifico if you want the more detailed version.
Liar’s Dice vs. Perudo vs. Dudo
These names overlap, but they are not always used to mean precisely the same ruleset.
| Name | What It Usually Means |
|---|---|
| Liar’s Dice | The broader family of bluffing games involving hidden dice and increasingly high claims. |
| Dudo | A South American form of the game and one of the major rules traditions behind modern Liar’s Dice. |
| Perudo | A commercialized ruleset closely related to Dudo, commonly using five dice, wild 1s, special 1-bidding rules, and Palifico. |
| Drunk Liar’s Dice | Usually standard Liar’s Dice gameplay with drinking penalties added after lost challenges. |
If somebody learned Liar’s Dice from a different game set, bar, video game, or friend group, their rules may differ slightly.
That does not automatically mean one of you is wrong.
It means you should spend 30 seconds agreeing on the rules before starting instead of holding a constitutional convention after someone loses a challenge.
Drunk Liar’s Dice vs. Liar’s Bar
They are not the same game.
Liar’s Bar is a video game built around bluffing games that includes its own version of Liar’s Dice. Some online explanations use Liar’s Bar mechanics such as poison, lives, or other penalties that are not traditional tabletop Liar’s Dice rules.
For an actual party game with physical dice, use the rules on this page rather than trying to recreate the video-game punishment system.
Drunk Liar’s Dice Strategy
Use Your Own Dice as Information
Your dice are the only part of the table you know for certain.
If you have three 5s under your own cup, a moderate bid on 5s is much safer than if you have none.
Pretty straightforward.
The bluff comes from making everybody else wonder whether your bid is based on an absurdly good roll or absolutely nothing.
Remember How Many Dice Are Still in Play
Early in the game, large bids are plausible because there may be 20, 25, or 30 dice on the table.
Later, the same bid can become mathematically stupid.
If only seven dice remain in the entire game and somebody confidently announces “eight 4s,” you do not need a poker face.
You need basic counting skills.
Do Not Bluff Every Turn
If every bid you make is absurd, people stop wondering whether you are lying.
They just call you.
A believable player is considerably harder to read than someone performing a low-budget supervillain monologue every time they touch the cup.
Is Liar’s Dice Good for Parties?
Yes, especially for smaller groups sitting around a table.
It is competitive without requiring athletic ability, takes very little space, and gives people something to do besides stare at each other during a pregame.
It is less useful for a huge house party because everyone needs to follow the current bid.
Once you have 14 people yelling over music and nobody remembers whether the bid was nine 4s or eleven 5s, you are no longer playing Liar’s Dice.
You are operating a casino with severe administrative problems.
If you want another dice-based drinking game with less bluffing and more immediate dice outcomes, check out the Three Man drinking game rules.
Can You Use Liar’s Dice for Beer Olympics?
Yes. Liar’s Dice produces a clear winner, so it works better for Beer Olympics scoring than drinking games that simply continue until everybody gets bored.
The downside is time.
A full elimination game can take longer than Beer Pong, Flip Cup, or other short head-to-head events.
If you use Liar’s Dice in a tournament, keep groups small or use a shortened format such as three dice per player.
That maintains the same game while cutting down the number of elimination rounds.
Common Liar’s Dice Mistakes
Thinking the Bid Only Refers to Your Dice
It does not.
The bid refers to every hidden die currently in play.
Treating the Bid as an Exact Number
Normal bids mean at least that many dice.
“Five 6s” succeeds if there are five, six, seven, or more matching dice.
An exact count only matters if your group specifically uses the Spot On variation.
Changing the Wild-1 Rule Mid-Game
Do not.
Pick wild or non-wild 1s before the first roll.
Forgetting How Many Dice People Have Left
Removed dice stay removed.
The total number of dice on the table gets smaller as the game continues, which changes what counts as a believable bid.
Calling Liar Out of Turn
Some house rules allow this.
Our version does not.
Only the player whose turn comes immediately after the bid may challenge it.
Otherwise the loudest person at the table gets a strategic advantage for having no impulse control.
Drinking Rules That Actually Work
Treat every penalty as a small sip.
Liar’s Dice already lasts multiple rounds, and the same unlucky player can lose several challenges in a short stretch.
- Do not use shots as the standard penalty.
- Do not multiply drinks by the size of the bid.
- Do not require eliminated players to finish drinks.
- Water, soda, or another non-alcoholic drink works with exactly the same game mechanics.
The bluffing works perfectly fine without alcohol. The dice do not care what is in your cup.
Drunk Liar’s Dice FAQ
How do you play the Liar’s Dice drinking game?
Secretly roll five dice, bid on how many matching dice exist across the entire table, and either raise the previous bid or call Liar.
When somebody challenges, reveal every die. If the bid was valid, the challenger loses. If the bid was too high, the bidder loses. The loser drinks and removes one die.
How many dice do you need for Liar’s Dice?
You normally need five dice per player.
Four players therefore need 20 dice. Six players need 30.
How many players can play Drunk Liar’s Dice?
Liar’s Dice can be played with two or more players, but roughly 3–6 works especially well.
Two-player games are more predictable because fewer dice are hidden. Very large games become harder to follow because the number of dice and bids gets excessive.
What does “four 5s” mean in Liar’s Dice?
It means the bidder claims there are at least four dice showing 5 across all players’ hidden dice combined.
If your rules use wild 1s, those 1s also count toward the total.
Do you have to tell the truth in Liar’s Dice?
No.
You may make a bid regardless of what you actually rolled.
The entire game is built around making believable claims with incomplete information and deciding when somebody else has pushed their bluff too far.
Can you lie about your dice?
Yes. Your bid does not have to match the dice under your own cup.
You are making a prediction — truthful or otherwise — about the total dice hidden across the entire table.
Are 1s wild in Liar’s Dice?
1s are wild in many major Liar’s Dice and Perudo rulesets, but not every version uses that rule.
Decide before playing. Our recommended rules use wild 1s.
What happens when someone calls Liar?
Every player reveals their dice and the table counts the face from the previous bid.
If enough matching dice exist, the challenger loses. If there are fewer than the bidder claimed, the bidder loses.
What if there are more dice than the player bid?
The bid is still correct.
A normal Liar’s Dice bid means “at least this many,” not “exactly this many.”
Who starts the next round?
A common rule is that the player who lost the previous challenge starts the next round.
That is also the rule we recommend.
When do you lose a die?
You lose one die whenever you lose a challenge.
If you challenged a truthful bid, you lose a die. If somebody correctly challenged your false bid, you lose a die.
What happens when you lose your last die?
You are eliminated from the game.
The remaining players continue until only one player has dice left.
What is Spot On in Liar’s Dice?
Spot On is an optional call that means you believe the previous bid is exactly correct.
If someone bid six 4s, a successful Spot On requires exactly six matching dice — not five and not seven. Rewards for a successful call vary between versions.
Is Drunk Liar’s Dice the same as Perudo?
Not exactly.
Perudo is a specific commercial rules tradition within the broader Liar’s Dice family. Drunk Liar’s Dice usually borrows the same core hidden-dice bidding system and adds drinking penalties.
Is Liar’s Dice the same game as Liar’s Bar?
No.
Liar’s Bar is a video game containing bluffing games, including a Liar’s Dice mode with its own penalties and mechanics. Traditional tabletop Liar’s Dice does not require the poison or elimination systems used by the video game.
Can you play Liar’s Dice without drinking?
Absolutely.
Remove the drinking penalty and keep the normal rule where the loser of each challenge loses one die. Nothing else needs to change.
Drunk Liar’s Dice in One Sentence
Hide your dice, keep raising the table’s collective bullshit until someone calls Liar, then reveal everything and make whoever was wrong drink and lose a die.
