August 7th, 2009

Card Games: Uno

Uno is a card game, played with a special deck, which was developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins and now it is Mattel's product. The game is usually following the principles of the "Crazy Eight" family card games. In the beginning the slogan of the game was "the colored card game", but now they have "you know", and the motto is "you get one, you get Uno".

The cards deck has 4 color card types (red, green, blue and yellow), and they rank in each color between 0 and 9. There are some action cards too, and their names are: "skip", "draw two" and "reverse". The black cards are also special and they are called "wild" and "wild draw four" The total number of cards in the deck is 108, and this number includes two copies of each regular and action card, and there are also four "wild" and "wild draw four".

The dealer gives each player seven cards and the top card of the deck stock is flipped and if this card has some special ability is applied on the first person who must play a card. The game starts with the person in the left of the dealer (clockwise).Each player should play a card of what they have in their hand, and this should happen only when the player has a card that matched the color or the rank of the card exposed on the pile. The wild cards can be played at any time, and if someone doesn't have what to play, they should draw and then the next person's turn comes. When the stock empties, the pile is shuffled and turned so that the stock replenishes. When someone has only one card left in his hand, he must say "Uno!" otherwise he will draw cards again.

card-games-uno

The "Uno" game is over when someone of the players finishes all the cards he had in his hand, and the dealer must count the number of points given by the cards they still have, but taking into account that special cards are twenty points, and the wilds worth fifty. The player who goes out gets the points of all the people who remained in the game, and the one who reaches first 500 points wins.