Uno

How to Play

Dealing

Players can choose to play against one to three other people. The object of the game is to be the first person to lay down all of your cards.

Each player is given seven cards, and the game starts at the top and works its way around.

Playing

You can lay down cards that match the middle card's color (yellow, green, red, or blue) or number (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

You have to draw another card if you can't match either. You can put the card you draw from the stocks on the waste pile before the end of your turn.

You should not draw another card without making a move if you have a play you can make.

If the whole deck is used up during play, the top card on the discard pile is put away, and the rest of the cards are shuffled to make a new deck. After that, play goes on normally.

Remember to Call Uno

Immediately after laying your second to last card you have to click the 1 button on the screen or else you will be dealt 2 more cards.

Special Cards

There are a number of special cards including a color wildcard, cards which force competitors to pick up more cards, and cards which reverse direction of the playing field.

Strategy

When you have a lot of cards, try to play the ones that are most over-represented so that you can choose from a number of different ways to lay.

It's possible that you would want to lay a red card if you can if you have seven cards and four of them are red.

In the same way, if you have seven cards and three of them are priced at five, you should try to lay one of those fives.

You have a better chance of being able to make a play on the next hand if you hold on to cards of different colors and numbers until you have very few left.

If you know pretty much what color a person with one card left is holding, you can play your hand in a way that isn't optimal on purpose to try to stop them from winning. You could throw a blue 4 on a yellow 4 even if you already had several yellow cards in your hand if they only have one card left and you think it is a yellow 4.

When you play against a single computer opponent, the action cards are very strong. This is because whenever you change the direction of the deal, skip their hand, or deal a +2 or +4 wild card, it is your turn again. When you deal them several +2 or +4 cards in a row, you get rid of cards in your hand and give them a lot of points.

Scoring

Winning a hand is called "going out" and is accomplished by getting rid of all your cards.

Only the winner of the hand scores points & their score is based on the sum of the value of cards held in the hands of losing players.

• Numerical cards are worth their face value.
• Wild cards are worth 50 points.
• Other action cards (reverse, skip turn, and deal 2 cards) are worth 20 points each.

If player 1 got rid of all of their cards, they would score 45 points. Player 2 has cards worth 8, Player 3 has cards worth 12, and Player 4 has cards worth 25.

The next player must take a Wild Draw 4 or a Draw 2 card if the previous player goes out with them. These cards are used to figure out the total number of points.

Hands are given over and over again until a player scores 250 points or more for the whole game.

The number of points next to each player's name shows how many hands they have won.

The online multiplayer version of this game is described above. On this page, we also have a version that is very similar to that game but has cards with pictures of monuments on them. The name of that game is Four Colors Monument Edition.

History of Uno

In 1951, American barber Merle Robbins made up the game to help his son Ray understand Crazy Eights. Taken out a mortgage on the family home to get $8,000 to make 5,000 decks of cards for the game. In his barber shop, he sold the decks, and at school, his son showed them to other kids. International Games bought the rights to the actual card game for $50,000 in 1972, plus 10 cents for each copy that was sold.

The deck comes with 108 cards:

• 4 Wild
• 4 Wild Draw Four
• 2 Skip of each color (8 total)
• 2 Draw Two of each color (8 total)
• 2 Reverse of each color (8 total)
• 1 zero for each color (4 total)
• 2 of each numerical value from 1 to 9 for each color (72 total)

The game originally had a scoring goal of 500 points.

Penalties

• If you do not press the Uno button in this game when you should 2 cards are added to your hand. In the physical version of the game the player after you can call you out for failing to call Uno, but if you catch it before they call you out there is no penalty.
• This video game does not allow an illegal use of the Wild Draw Four, but in the physical card game the player receiving the 4 cards can challenge the play to ensure the person who laid the Wild Draw Four did not have any cards of the same color in their hand. If the player was holding other cards of that color then the person who laid the Wild Draw Four must eat the 4 cards. If they in fact did not have any cards of that color then the person challenging the play must pick up 6 cards instead of 4.

Gameplay Variations

Using the print cards there are 3 additional house rules options players can choose to incorporate into gameplay.

• Progressive Stacking Uno: If there are penalties like Draw 2 or Draw 4 the next player can lay the same card, which causes the subsequent player to have to draw twice as many cards. This feature can be chained consecutively until such a play is no longer possible. So, for example, if 4 players in a row laid a Draw 2 card then the next player would have to draw 8 cards if they did not have a Draw 2 to lay. While these variations are part of the "House Rules" game variations described by Mattell, in 2019 Mattel stated this was not part of standard Uno rules.
• Seven-O: Every time a "7" is played, the player who played the "7" trades their hand with another player of their choice. Every time a "0" is played all players pass their current hand forward in the direction of play to the next player.
• Jump-In: If you have the exact same card numerical value in the same color you can play it even if it is not your turn. The game then continues as though that player just played their regular turn. If you Jump-In with 2 consecutive cards in your own hand you must lay them one at a time. The second identical player using a Skip, Reverse, Draw Two, or Wild Draw 4 cancels out the first & then the second card plays like normal.

The Enduring Popularity of Uno

Due to its ease of use, the game has become a family favorite for sharing memories and stories across generations, even after more than 50 years.

Different kinds of Uno games, like Uno Flip, Uno Dare, Uno Attack, Uno Shwodown, and Minimalist Uno, are sold on Amazon.com, along with big cards. There have also been spin-off games like Dos.

Amazon sells cross branded versions of the game themed after Star Wars, Minions, Disney parks, Super Mario, Mariokart, Jurassic World, Minecraft, The Office, Harry Potter, Schitt$ Creek, Space Jam, Mickey Mouse & Friends, Hot Wheels, Sonic the Hedgehog, Lion King, Shark Week, wilderness, Barbie, emoji, Marvel Avengers, Trolls, BTS, Rick and Morty, Masters of the Universe, Frozen, USA, Incredibles, Zelda, Dragon Ball, Cars, Saved by the Bell, American Girl, Toy Story, Ryan's World, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Chhota Bheem, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Spider-Man, cricket, MLB, Pokemon, The Simpsons, Arby's, Justice League, Ford, WWE, Marvel Avengers, BTS, Thank You Heroes, The Muppet Show, Tokidoki, Care Bears, Hairspray, Batman, Shreck, A Bathing Ape, Elvis, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Peanuts, Hanna-Barbera, Hello Kitty, Superman, Star Trek, Rugrats, Drew House, Vivetta, Nike Zoom, Pixar, Tokyo Olympics, Bearbrick, and hundreds of other partners.

The game is so well-known that most of the above versions have hundreds to thousands of reviews, and the main game itself has over 43,000 reviews on Amazon. The game was ranked #1 for specifically deck-based games on Amazon.com in May 2022, and #37 for toys and games in general.

Most decks cost around $10, but some that are rare or out of print can go up to $20 or $30. Sets that were made too much can sell for as little as $4 to $6 each.

For more than $60 to $80, you can find rare limited edition sets on eBay that honor artists and designers like Jean-Micel Basquiat, Shepard Fairey, Keith Haring, and Nina Chanel Abney.

Over $300 has been paid for sold-out copies of the co-branded game marketing Gary Vaynerchuk's VeeFriends on eBay. The game's original price on Mattel's website was $25.

Click the following links to explore Uno card games on Amazon or eBay, or go to the Mattel Creations website to see which new exclusives they currently have for sale.

 

Enjoy Playing Uno!!!