Modern Homemakers

A Home Guide On How To Celebrate The Chinese Mooncake Dice Game at Home

by Kevyn Gohu
September 8, 2022

No Chinese Mooncake festival is complete without the dice game!

Although everybody’s familiar with eating mooncakes, they usually forget the fun part about the Chinese occasion: the dice game. Testing your luck against six 6-sided dice to win prizes is often the fun part of the Mooncake Festival. A friendly or more family-oriented gambling type game, here’s how the Chinese dice game goes.

What You Need for Your Chinese Dice Game

Six 6-sided dice
1 ceramic/glass bowl
Prizes for the dice combination

Each table in the house will need a ceramic bowl and six 6-sided dice to toss into the said ceramic or glass bowl. The dice game needs at least three players to make the game interesting. Some mooncake dice games go as far as having 10 players per table! Unfortunately, it needs to be ceramic or glass for the bowl because dice don’t bounce well in plastic or steel.

The objective of the game is to get as many prizes as you can. Each prize has a ranking: 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st, or what they call the Chong Wan.

What Prizes to Get for the Dice Combination

Traditionally, it’s mooncake. But that can get exhausting to eat every year. So, it’s okay to change the prizes into goodies like potato chips, tetra bricks of juice, little knick-knacks, etc. The tricky part is managing a budget for the prizes but, it’s possible with a bit of financial juggling. What some families do is they have each person contribute P500 which then turns into P5,000 if there are 10 players. Other families have the elders shoulder the prizes but they dictate how much to spend.

Besides managing the budget, there’s a certain amount of prizes one will need to get per category.

6th Prize – 32 pcs.
5th Prize – 16 pcs.
4th Prize – 8 pcs.
3rd Prize – 4 pcs.
2nd Prize – 2 pcs.
1st Prize – 1 pc.

All in all, it’s 63 prizes. After that, once you have your budget, you can divide it accordingly. Divisoria, anyone?

Chinese Dice Game Combinations

Each prize has a combination that matches it. You get the combination, you win the prize. The combination will be as follows:

6th Prize – One 4
5th Prize – Two 4s
4th Prize – Four of the same number except 4
Third Prize – Three 4s
Second Prize – A pair of triplets (3 of the same number), or the dice must show numbers 1 to 6
First Prize – Four 4s, five of any number (i.e. five 1s, five 2s, etc.), Six 4s, or Six 1s.

First Prize Mechanics

Now, the first prize is where everybody gets competitive. Unlike prizes 2 to 6, people can steal the first prize from you should they roll a higher combination. For example, four 4s are lower than five of a kind. What they do is they get the last number to see who rolled higher. Two people can get five of a kind but if one gets a 2 and the other gets a 6, the first prize goes to the one whose last dice is a higher number. So in this case 6 > 2 therefore, the first prize goes to the one who rolled five of a kind + a dice with 6 dots.

However, this also changes if the dice have red dots or black dots. If the combination has red dots, it’s higher than the combination with only black dots. So that means, even if the person rolled five 6s but the next person rolled five 4s, the one who rolled the five 4s wins the first prize.

Once all the prizes are used up with the first prize standing last, players can choose to have 1 to 2 rounds for the “agawan” or a chance to steal the prize.

Tips on How to Hold a Chinese Dice Game at Home

1. Always have two copies of the combination: one on the wall and another on the table.

Having a large poster version of the dice combination is good for those who have multiple tables playing multiple mooncake dice games. But for a single table, a small, short-bond paper size guide works, too. It’s not easy keeping track of which combination earns which prize.

2. Just “drop” the dice.

Don’t throw or slam dice into the bowl. If one of the dice jumps out of the bowl, the player who threw the dice loses a turn.

3. Have a notebook or your smartphone handy to keep track of the 1st prize combinations.

Once people start rolling first prize combinations, it’s going to be hard to keep track of who has the first prize. Keep a notebook in handy especially in ranking combinations so that the first prize goes to the right person.

4. You don’t have to break the bowl.

There’s a mechanic where if someone gets six 6s, it’s tradition to break the bowl. But nobody does that anymore. If that thing belongs to your lola/ahma/grandma, all the more you shouldn’t!

5. Most of all, have fun!

The Chinese dice game is a celebration of luck and to keep the bad juju away. Some even say it’s to invite more luck for the months to come. Best of luck to those who will celebrate the Chinese Mooncake Festival at home!