Created by Claire Hubble, Spring 2024
LIS 759 01 | Digital Libraries
The first page of rules from the 40th Anniversary edition of Yahtzee, released in 1996.
This site is home to the digital collection of Yahtzee scorecards belonging to library science student Claire Hubble and logistics operator Tanner Gipson. Avid board game players, the couple has miles of handwritten scoreboards from a number of different games including Five Crowns, Uno, Monopoly, and Trivial Pursuit. Specifically, the Yahtzee scorecards were created 2020-2024, in Houston, Texas and Forest Park, Illinois. Although there are numerous cards used by Hubble and Gipson personally, scorecards used by their friends are also found in this digital collection.
Yahtzee is a very popular, five-dice game that concludes after multiple rounds of each player throwing the dice and scoring based on the numbers rolled. Each scorecard has multiple columns, so as many as six games can be tallied on one card. The Yahtzee Scorecard Collection is made up of 30 individual scorecards. Roughly half of the scorecards in this assembly are originally produced by Hasbro (that came with the game when Hubble purchased it) and are made of thin, cardstock paper. These measure 7 inches x 4.75 inches. The other half have been printed on copy paper and cut by Hubble and Gipson themselves. The latter half measures roughly 6 inches x 4 inches, but varies slightly. All scorecards are marked throughout in pencil, black pen, and colored pen and some are badly stained by eraser marks, food, and drink.
Yahtzee has historically been one of the most popular board games in America, however many people belonging to younger generations have not ever heard of it. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a huge spike in the amount of board games the average American was playing. Incidentally, 2020 was the year Hubble began to actively save and store used Yahtzee scorecards. Though there are many more Americans playing board games today, this collection specifically represents a generations-old game being enjoyed by the young people of the early 21st century.
These records not only expresses the entertainment and escape wants of a couple living through a horrific global pandemic, but also conveys an especially American sense of competitiveness. On the back of some of these scorecards, Hubble has written the scores of each player for specific games, as if to say to the archives: “Look at me, I won!” High scores are embellished with pencil drawings of confetti. Curse words are scratched into the margins when a particularly bad roll affected the final score. Doodles of boredom sit near the game title printed on each card. Beyond understanding a classic American pastime, the collection simply shows the love of board games (and competition) Hubble and Gipson share.