5k Poker Dice

5K Poker Dice (v1) is a Macintosh shareware dice game from the Gypsy King Software / ChezMark lineage that crosses traditional five-dice play with poker hand scoring. It descends from the earlier Killer Dice, twice named a ChezMark Mac Pick, and bundles multiple variants into a single playable app rather than shipping each as a separate title.

Gameplay

The core loop is Yahtzee-adjacent: the player rolls five dice, holds any subset, and re-rolls the rest across a fixed number of rolls per turn. Scoring is poker-style — pairs, two pair, three of a kind, full house, four of a kind, five of a kind, and straights all pay according to the active variant's table — rather than Yahtzee's category sheet.

Variants

The lineage offers a slate of game modes that share the dice-poker core but rewire scoring and risk. Documented variants in the Gypsy King line include Roll for Par, Acey Deucey, Early Bird, Wild Cards, and Hearts; later builds expanded this to nine modes including Traditional, Down the Line, Face Off, and Lots of Zingers. Each variant changes which hands are valued and how aggressively to push for re-rolls.

Madame Murghi and presentation

The signature flourish is the Madame Murghi fortune-teller cameo: high scores trigger the Madame, who delivers one of more than a thousand canned fortunes drawn from a mix of upbeat, sour, hippie, and prophetic styles. It is the kind of small personality touch typical of late-1990s shareware that gave the title a distinct identity in a crowded dice-game niche.

Distribution and status

Gypsy King distributed 5K Poker Dice as shareware via gypsyware.com and aggregator sites such as MacUpdate (where the v1 listing is now flagged discontinued). The studio retired in April 2022, ending registration and support. This v1 entry covers the original Mac build; a separately catalogued later release tracks the renamed / rebuilt successor that continued under the Poker Dice name into the OS X era.