Banana Run

Grab dice from the bag and roll for bananas — but three crocodiles and your run is over. Push your luck, bank the loot, and be first to 13.

Objective

Be the first to collect 13 bananas. On your turn you keep rolling dice, banking bananas as you go — but each roll can turn up a crocodile, and three crocodiles ends your turn with nothing to show for it. Quit while you're ahead, or press on for more.

How To Play Banana Run

What the faces mean

Banana

You collected one — it counts toward your total.

Footprints

The critter ran off — keep this die and reroll it next time.

Crocodile

A strike. Three in one turn and you're caught.

A turn, step by step

Draw 3 dice from the bag and roll them.
Set aside the bananas (they're yours) and the crocodiles (strikes). Footprints stay in hand to reroll.
Top your hand back up to 3 from the bag, then choose: roll again for more, or bank your bananas into your score.
Hit 3 crocodiles before you bank and you bust — the whole run's bananas are lost.

Run out of dice mid-run? The set-aside dice are reshuffled back into the bag, so a long run can keep going.

The dice

The bag holds 13 dice in three colors — you never know which you'll draw. The color tells you the risk:

Grove

safe — banana country · 6 in the bag

Thicket

even odds · 4 in the bag

River

risky — croc-infested · 3 in the bag

Winning

The moment someone reaches 13 bananas, everyone else gets one last turn to catch up. Most bananas wins — and if two players tie, they share the win.

One tip

Every crocodile raises the stakes. With no strikes a bust is almost impossible; at two strikes, a single croc ends the run. Banking around three bananas is the steady play — push past it mainly when you're behind.

Odds

Grab three dice from the bag, roll, and pray. Every banana banks toward 13 — but three crocodiles in a turn and you lose the lot. Here's what's actually lurking in that bag, and when the smart chimp walks away. Every number below is measured from the game's own dice.

Three strikes and you're out

A turn ends in a chomp when you've rolled three crocodiles — and everything you'd gathered that turn vanishes. The danger isn't one roll; it's how the risk balloons as crocs pile up. Here's the chance your next throw of three dice ends the turn, by how many strikes you're already carrying:

0 strikes2.5%

1 strike20.9%

2 strikes65.3%

Chance your next roll chomps the turn, by strikes already showing.

Fresh, you're almost untouchable — a clean turn busts only 2.5% of the time, about 1 in 40. One croc down, and every push is a 1-in-5 gamble. On two strikes you're playing with fire: two rolls in three end it right there. That jump from 2.5% to 65% is the whole nerve of the game — the crocs you've already banked are exactly what makes the next roll deadly.

What's in the bag

You never choose your dice — you draw them blind from a bag of 13. But the bag isn't fair, and knowing its makeup is the edge. Three colors, three temperaments:

color	In bag	Banana	Footprint	Croc
Grove (safe)	6	50%	33%	17%
Thicket (even)	4	33%	33%	33%
River (risky)	3	17%	33%	50%

The bag leans green: six friendly grove dice, only three treacherous river ones. So a blind draw averages out to 37% banana, 33% footprint, 29% croc — a roll of three yields about 1.1 bananas and 0.9 crocs, and lands at least one banana 75% of the time. The catch: footprints stick around and get re-rolled, and every banana and croc you set aside leaves the bag — so a turn that's already spat out grove dice is quietly getting more dangerous.

When to bank

Push for more bananas, or lock them in? Here's how a simple "stop at K bananas" rule pays out over thousands of turns — the average you actually keep, versus how often you get chomped chasing it:

Stop at…	Avg banked	Bust chance
1 banana	1.33	11%
2 bananas	1.67	29%
3 bananas	1.86	45%
4 bananas	1.74	60%
5 bananas	1.47	73%
6 bananas	1.18	82%

Averages over 40,000 simulated turns.

The sweet spot is three bananas: it banks the most per turn (about 1.86) even though you'll get chomped nearly half the time reaching it. Push past three and the math turns on you — a fourth banana is only worth grabbing when you're behind and need to gamble. The reason the peak sits so high is that footprints keep your dice count topped up, so a good run can roll on and on; the danger is purely the crocs stacking toward three.

The golden rule

Bank at three bananas most of the time. Push harder only when you're trailing and a safe total won't catch you — and once you're sitting on two crocodiles, bank almost anything, because the next roll ends it two times in three. The AI opponents follow exactly this, pushing when behind and banking sooner when ahead.

The rare and the spectacular

1 in 40Instant chomp — three crocs on your opening roll

75%Rolls that land at least one banana

1.1Average bananas per three-dice roll

0.9Average crocs per three-dice roll

Because banana and croc rates per roll are so close (1.1 vs 0.9), a turn is a slow tug-of-war: you're gathering fruit at almost exactly the rate the crocs are gathering to eat you. That's why banking early wins races — the longer you stay in, the more the crocs catch up.

How long a game runs

Banking around 1.9 bananas a turn at the sweet spot, the first to 13 gets there in roughly 8 turns of play. A hot streak of grove dice can bury that; a run of rivers can leave you stuck near zero, chomped turn after turn. The bag is kind on average and cruel in the moment — which is the whole fun of it.

Per-color and blended draw odds are exact; roll, bust, and pacing figures come from 40,000+ simulated turns using the game's own bag and dice. Footprints are re-rolled and set-aside dice leave the bag, so live odds during a long turn drift from the fresh-draw figures shown here.