UNO™ Blackjack Ruleset

December 16th, 2021

This document is dedicated to the public domain (CC0)

On July 14th, 2019, a summer camp student suggested that the camp play a game of UNO™ Blackjack. Instructor Kube assembled rules for this game, since the camper's remark was off-hand and not founded in reality.

Goal

Be the last person with a queue of cards to win. If your queue is empty at the end of a round, you're out of the game!

Requirements

• 2-10 players, with 1 dealer (towards whom this guide is directed).
• 1 or more decks of standard UNO™ cards, put together into a single deck.

Setup

1. Deal 15 cards from the deck to each player's queue, moving clockwise. Keep these cards face-down, and don't let any player see them.
2. Place the deck to the side of the playing area.
3. Begin the round, starting with the first player to receive cards in their queue.

Card values

Round instructions

1. The Reveal Phase
   1. Flip a card over from the top of the player's queue onto the top of their stack. Regular UNO™ rules apply, except all Draw X cards count as Draw 1 cards.
   2. Repeat until:
      1. everyone has a card in their stack, and...
      2. there is no more need to flip cards, based on the appearance of Draw X cards.
   3. Begin the Match Phase.
2. The Match Phase
   1. Start with the first player to reveal a card during the Reveal Phase.
   2. Ask each player to hit or pass, in accordance with normal Blackjack rules. Move clockwise at first, then change direction based on the appearance of Reverse cards.
   3. Repeat until:
      1. all the remaining players pass, or...
      2. there is only one player remaining.
   4. Begin the Reward Phase.
3. The Reward Phase
   1. Collect each player's stack and count how many cards total you collect.
   2. Draw this number of cards from the top of the deck.
   3. Distribute these cards to the winning player(s) in this round.
      1. If only a single player won this round, put the drawn cards on the bottom of their queue.
      2. If multiple players won this round, distribute the drawn cards equally among their queues. Players who reached their stack total earlier in the round have rounding preference.
   4. Put the cards taken from each player's stack into the trash.
   5. Loop back to the Reveal Phase, starting with the person clockwise from whoever began this round.

Clarifications and tips

• If you run out of cards in the deck, shuffle the trash and add these cards to the deck.
• If a player busts (their stack value is over 21), collect their stack before taking any other actions.
• If a player is out of cards in their queue and chooses to hit, draw cards from the deck as you would from their queue.
• If a player would like to join mid-game, wait until the beginning of the Reveal Phase, then draw cards from the deck as you would from their queue. As soon as this player earns a queue, proceed as normal. If after three rounds the player is left without a queue, they are out of the game.
  • If players are quickly losing the game, consider dealing losing players back in each round using the rules above, omitting any three-round restriction.
• If you're having trouble keeping track of who's set to begin each round, consider using a physical token to demarcate the last round's starting player.