How to Play Uno with a Regular Deck of Cards

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Everyone loves Uno!

The game offers bright colored cards, simple directions, the friendly competitiveness of a well played Reverse or Skip card and of course, the fear and power of the Wild Draw 4 card.

Uno not only comes in their classic card game, but also offers fun variations including Uno Attack, Uno Flip and Uno Dare. They even created Dos, a spin off of the original game.

And while all those games are great, did you know you could play Uno with a regular deck of cards?

To play the game, you will need two regular decks of cards, preferably with the same design on the back.

Uno cards include four colored number cards from 1-9, Skip, Reverse, Draw Two (in those four same colors), Wild and Draw 4 Wild.

Using a regular deck of cards, you will substitute the four colors for four suits. Numbers will be 2-9. That leaves 10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces, plus four Jokers.

Heres a simple cheat sheet:

How to play
Shuffle both decks together, including the Jokers. The dealer gives every player seven cards, placing remaining cards face down in the middle, and flips over the first card in the discard pile.

The player to the right of the dealer goes first. They must play a card to match the top card in the discard pile by either suit or number. For example, if the card on the pile is a 5 of hearts, the player must use any heart card or a 5.

If that player used a 5 of clubs, the next player needs to either play another 5 card or another club card.

Skip Card

A Skip card is represented by 10, so if that is the top card on the discard pile, that player’s turn is skipped.

Reverse

A Reverse card, or Jack, changes the direction of play from clockwise (to start) to counter clockwise. This may happen several times during the game.

Draw 2

This card is represented by the Queen. When a player finds this card on the top of the discard pile, they will pick up two cards from the draw pile, but is not able to discard any on their turn.

Change Suit

The King card means change suit and is replacing the Wild card in the Uno game. You must use the suit that is on the King as it is not just any suit as is the case in the game of Uno. (Don’t complain. It’s more challenging this way and if you don’t like it, change it back to a regular Wild card. I will never know!)

So how will this work? Simple, if the card on the discard pile is a 5 of hearts and the player doesn’t have a 5 or another heart card, they may use a King and change the suit to whatever their King suit is.

Draw 4 Wild

The Ace will be the Draw 4 in this game. When playing an Ace, the next player has to draw 4 cards from the draw pile. The person laying down the Ace can choose any suit, not just the suit on the card. Again, you can change it to match how the King is played. It’s up to you.

Switch Hands

There are only four Jokers between the two decks, so this will be a rarer occurrence. When a player lays down a Joker, he gets to switch hands with any other player in the game, usually the person with the least amount of cards.

I don’t know when became part of the Uno game, but it is included in my 2015 version. It’s really is a game changer – ha!

When you need to Draw

Apart from the Draw 2 and Draw 4 Wild Card, players will need to draw from the pile if they don’t have a card that they can play or if they are choosing to hold onto a playable card (like a Joker). At that time, they just select one card from the top of the Draw pile and then their turn is over.

Going Out

The object is to get rid of all your cards, but when you have just one in your hand, you must say “Uno” before the next player takes their turn. If you don’t say “Uno” in time, you will be forced to pick two more cards from the Draw pile.

Scoring

In Uno, the player who goes out first will get all the points from the cards leftover in the other player’s hands. The first person to get to 500 is the winner.