1 Overview
Left Center Right (LCR) is a dice game for 3 or more players published by George & Company. Players roll special dice to pass chips left, pass them right, or put them in the center pot. The last player with chips wins the pot. No strategy, no counting -- pure luck that works for any age and any group size. Games take 5 to 15 minutes.
LCR is one of the most popular party dice games ever made. It requires no setup, no rules explanation beyond "roll and follow the symbols," and works equally well with 3 players or 30. Often played with dollar bills instead of chips for real stakes.
2 Components
- 3 special LCR dice (marked with L, C, R, and dots)
- 24 poker chips (or use dollar bills)
3 Setup
- Each player starts with 3 chips (or 3 dollar bills if playing for stakes).
- Players sit in a circle. The center of the table is the pot.
- Youngest player goes first.
4 Gameplay
- On your turn, roll as many dice as you have chips -- up to 3 dice maximum.
- If you have 1 chip: roll 1 die. If you have 2 chips: roll 2 dice. If you have 3 or more: roll all 3 dice.
- For each die result, follow the symbol immediately.
- After all results are resolved, your turn ends.
If you have zero chips, you are still in the game -- you skip rolling (no dice to roll) but can receive chips from neighbors on their turns. You are only out when one player holds all the chips.
5 What the Dice Faces Mean
Each LCR die has: L (1 face) · C (1 face) · R (1 face) · Dot (3 faces)
| Symbol | Action |
|---|---|
| L | Pass 1 chip to the player on your LEFT |
| C | Place 1 chip in the CENTER pot (it's gone forever) |
| R | Pass 1 chip to the player on your RIGHT |
| Dot (●) | Nothing happens. Keep your chip. |
Each die has 3 dot faces and one each of L, C, and R. So any individual roll has a 50% chance of doing nothing, and a 50% chance of moving a chip somewhere.
6 Winning
The game ends when only one player has chips remaining. That player wins the pot of center chips (or all the dollar bills). If playing for money, the winner takes everything in the center plus typically all chips in play convert back to cash.
7 Tips
There is no strategy in LCR -- it is 100% luck. The only "decisions" are:
- How much to put in per chip when playing for real money
- Whether to play the Wild variant (see below) which adds one small decision
The appeal of LCR is precisely this lack of decisions: everyone plays on equal footing, no one can blame a loss on bad play, and the chaos keeps everyone engaged until the very last roll.
8 Variants
LCR Wild
Replace one dot face on each die with a star (wild). When you roll a star, you choose: pass left, pass right, put in center, or keep. The only version with any player agency.
Dollar Bill LCR
Play with $1 bills instead of chips. Same rules. The center pot of dollars goes to the winner. Works for any denomination -- some groups play with $5 or $20 bills for bigger stakes.
Large Group LCR
Works identically with 20 to 30 players in a big circle. Just make sure everyone starts with 3 chips and the circle is complete. One of the few games that genuinely scales to any group size.