Uno Rules — How to Play and Keep Score
Uno is the commercial descendant of Crazy Eights and Mau-Mau: a shedding game where you race to empty your hand by matching the top of the discard pile, while action cards let you punish whoever sits next to you. Scoring it properly turns a five-minute filler into a proper match, because a single ugly hand full of Wilds can cost more than three good deals earn.
Overview
Uno is the commercial descendant of Crazy Eights and Mau-Mau: a shedding game where you race to empty your hand by matching the top of the discard pile, while action cards let you punish whoever sits next to you. Scoring it properly turns a five-minute filler into a proper match, because a single ugly hand full of Wilds can cost more than three good deals earn.
Setup
Shuffle the 108-card deck and deal seven cards to each player. Turn the top card of the remainder face up to start the discard pile and leave the rest face down as the draw pile. If the starting card is a Wild Draw Four, bury it and turn another. Play passes to the left to begin with.
How to play
On your turn, play one card that matches the top of the discard pile by colour, by number, or by symbol. Wilds may be played at any time and let you name the colour that must be followed. If you cannot or will not play, draw a card; if that card is playable you may put it down straight away, otherwise your turn ends.
Skip jumps the next player. Reverse flips the direction of play, and in a two-player game it works as a second Skip. Draw Two makes the next player pick up two cards and lose their turn. Wild Draw Four does the same with four cards, and by the printed rule you may only play it when you hold no card of the current colour.
Say "Uno" out loud as you play your second-to-last card. Get caught silent and you take the penalty cards.
Scoring
One deal produces exactly one non-zero entry under the standard method. When somebody plays their last card, every other player totals the cards still in their hand, and the winner records the combined figure. Everyone else records 0.
| Card | Points |
|---|---|
| Number cards 0-9 | Face value |
| Skip | 20 |
| Reverse | 20 |
| Draw Two | 20 |
| Wild | 50 |
| Wild Draw Four | 50 |
A complete deck is worth 1240 points: 360 in number cards, 480 across the 24 action cards, and 400 across the eight Wilds. That is the hard upper bound for a single entry with one deck, and 2480 with two.
Under the alternative method each player instead records the value of their own remaining cards as a positive number, and the player who went out records 0. The totals then run the other way: lowest wins.
Ending the game
Deals continue until one player's running total reaches the target, normally 500. That player wins immediately. With the alternative method, reaching 500 ends the game too, but the player who got there has lost and the lowest total takes it. Groups short on time often play to 200, or fix a number of deals and take the best total.
Common variations
Stacking draw cards is the most common house rule and the one most likely to cause an argument, so agree on it before the first deal. Seven-Zero hand swapping keeps a runaway leader in check. Some groups forbid finishing on an action card, forcing the last card played to be a plain number.
Scoring at a glance
| Who wins | First to target |
|---|---|
| Played to | 500 points by default |
| Score sheet | One number per player per round, with a running total |
| Typical round score | 0 – 200 |
| Negative scores | Never — scores only go up |
| Worth knowing | In standard scoring only the player who went out gets a number; everyone else records 0. A full deck is worth 1240 points, which is the theoretical ceiling for one deal. |
Uno — score sheet
Worked example
Two matches, because the two scoring methods do not merely change the numbers — they reverse who the numbers favour.
Standard method. Settings: default — targetScore: 500,
scoringMode: winnerCollects, roundLimit: 0. Players: Anna, Ben, Cara, Dan.
Anna goes out in deals 1, 3, 5 and 6.
| Deal | Anna | Ben | Cara | Dan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 87 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 0 | 0 | 132 | 0 |
| 3 | 154 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | 0 | 96 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | 175 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | 118 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 534 | 96 | 132 | 0 |
Expected standings: Anna 534, rank 1 — winner; Cara 132, rank 2; Ben 96,
rank 3; Dan 0, rank 4. finished: true — Anna crossed 500 on deal 6. One deal
earlier she is on 416 and the match is still running.
Alternative method. Settings: scoringMode: ownHandCounts, target still 500.
Now the player who goes out records 0 and everybody else records what is left in
their own hand.
| Deal | Anna | Ben | Cara | Dan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | 34 | 51 | 22 |
| 2 | 19 | 60 | 0 | 45 |
| 3 | 0 | 88 | 27 | 63 |
| 4 | 41 | 76 | 30 | 0 |
| 5 | 0 | 95 | 38 | 70 |
| 6 | 25 | 92 | 0 | 55 |
| 7 | 0 | 87 | 44 | 66 |
| Total | 85 | 532 | 190 | 321 |
Expected standings: Anna 85, rank 1 — winner; Cara 190, rank 2; Dan 321,
rank 3; Ben 532, rank 4. finished: true.
Three things this is built to catch:
The target ends the game without saying who won it. Ben is the player who
reached 500, and Ben finished last. The ceiling and the win condition are two
separate questions, and an implementation that reads targetScore as "first to
500 wins" inverts the result of every match played the alternative way while
leaving the standard method looking perfectly correct.
One deal, one number. Under the standard method exactly one entry per deal is non-zero — the player who went out banks the whole table's leftovers. A deal where two players score is a data-entry error, and the biggest a single entry can legitimately be is 1240, the value of a whole deck, or 2480 with two.
The same entries rank the other way when the setting moves. Feed the second table to the default mode and Ben wins with 532 while Anna comes last with 85 — the entries never change, only the direction they are read in. That is what lets a table that started scoring the wrong way fix it mid-match instead of starting over.
House rules and settings
Every table plays Uno a little differently. These are the 13 rules groups argue about. Each one is a setting in the app — and changing it recalculates a match that is already in progress, which is the thing no other score keeper does.
Play to: what is the default in Uno?
The game ends as soon as one player's running total reaches this number. Set it lower for a shorter game.
Default: 500. Adjustable from 100 to 1000 in steps of 50.
In the app: “Play to”.
Stop after this many deals: what is the default in Uno?
Leave at 0 to play until someone reaches the target. Any other number ends the game after that many deals, and the best total at that moment wins.
Default: 0. Adjustable from 0 to 30 in steps of 1.
In the app: “Stop after this many deals”.
Who gets the points: what are the options in Uno?
In the first method the player who empties their hand adds up everybody else's cards and scores them, and the highest total wins. In the second, each player records the value of the cards left in their own hand, and the lowest total wins when someone hits the limit.
Default: Winner banks everyone's leftovers. Two options:
In the app: “Who gets the points”.
Number cards: what are the options in Uno?
Number cards normally score whatever is printed on them. Some groups simplify by counting every number card as ten.
Default: Face value (0-9). Two options:
In the app: “Number cards”.
Skip, Reverse and Draw Two value: what is the default in Uno?
Points charged for each Skip, Reverse or Draw Two still held when someone goes out.
Default: 20. Adjustable from 0 to 50 in steps of 5.
In the app: “Skip, Reverse and Draw Two value”.
Wild value: what is the default in Uno?
Points charged for each plain Wild card left in a hand.
Default: 50. Adjustable from 0 to 100 in steps of 5.
In the app: “Wild value”.
Wild Draw Four value: what is the default in Uno?
Points charged for each Wild Draw Four left in a hand. Kept separate because some editions price it higher than a plain Wild.
Default: 50. Adjustable from 0 to 100 in steps of 5.
In the app: “Wild Draw Four value”.
Stacking draw cards: on or off in Uno?
Lets a player who is hit with a Draw Two or Draw Four answer with one of their own, passing the growing pile of penalty cards to the next player instead of drawing. Not an official rule, but very widely played, and it changes how many cards people are left holding.
Default: off.
In the app: “Stacking draw cards”.
Jump-in: on or off in Uno?
Anyone holding a card identical to the one on top of the pile may slap it down immediately, even when it is not their turn, and play carries on from them.
Default: off.
In the app: “Jump-in”.
Seven-Zero swap: on or off in Uno?
Playing a 7 lets you trade hands with a player of your choice, and playing a 0 makes everybody pass their whole hand to the next player.
Default: off.
In the app: “Seven-Zero swap”.
Draw until you can play: on or off in Uno?
When you cannot play, keep drawing until you get a usable card instead of drawing just one and passing.
Default: off.
In the app: “Draw until you can play”.
Cards for forgetting to say Uno: what is the default in Uno?
How many cards a player must pick up if they are caught not announcing Uno as they play their second-to-last card. Set to 0 to switch the penalty off.
Default: 2. Adjustable from 0 to 10 in steps of 1.
In the app: “Cards for forgetting to say Uno”.
Decks in play: what is the default in Uno?
Two decks shuffled together keep the game workable with seven or more players, and double the points available in a deal.
Default: 1. Adjustable from 1 to 2 in steps of 1.
In the app: “Decks in play”.
Variants of Uno
One and done
Skip scoring entirely. The first player to empty their hand simply wins, which is how the 2022 rulebook presents the default game.
Uno Flip
The deck has a light and a dark side. A Flip card turns the whole deck over, and the dark side adds a Draw Five and a brutal Wild Draw Colour.
Knockout
Play the own-leftovers scoring method and remove any player who passes 500. The last player still under the limit wins.
Uno is also known as
UNO, Uno Classic. These are the same game — the rules and the score sheet above apply to all of them.
Keep score offline
The sheet above works in your browser. Cardzo for iPhone remembers your players, survives a closed tab, and works in a field with no signal.
Coming to the App Store.