By Joey Pickus and Eden Barnes, Staff Writers
The popularity of Uno at River Hill has exponentially grown throughout the building. Uno is an American card game that is played with a specific color and number deck. Depending on many different house rules, the game can be played in a multitude of ways. With the variety of decks to choose from, card decks can range from classic Uno to the more updated customizable deck that allows players to make their cards. There is even an online version of the game called Crazy 8’s. With all the varieties of the game, one thing is for certain, it is crazy competitive, leaving many players how Senior Zoe Frey feels, “angry and depressed”.
There are 108 cards in a deck with 76 of those being number cards, 24 action cards, and 8 wild cards. Of the 76 number cards, there are 19 cards for each color which are blue, red, green, and yellow. The numbers of these cards range from zero to nine. There are two skips, reverses, and 2’s per color for the action cards. Of the wild cards, there are four plus four cards and four wild cards.
The game starts with someone shuffling the deck and dealing seven cards to everyone who is playing. Uno can realistically be played with 3-7 people; any more than 7 would result in unnecessarily long games when the group can be split in half, to play more than one game at a time. After shuffling, someone flips the first card from the middle deck to become the first card. The winner of the last game always goes first and playing continues from there.
Senior Phoebe Island shared her feelings during the game: she tends to get “excited yet stressed” as the rounds go on. Those feelings were comparable to how senior Joey Pickus was feeling after starting the Uno season with three wins in a row.
In the original Uno game rules, there is a penalty for swapping cards and sharing with other players what cards you possess. However, depending on the house and number of people, there can be alliances, betrayal, or a full-out war to try and stop the person with one card. The house rules are what give Uno its variety. Depending on the version you are playing, dictating house rules can help and harm you in-game. Senior Beza Mangesha elaborated how she “thinks it’s funny how people play with their rules/version in mind but still overall enjoy it because you can play at any age, anywhere.”
Many play the version with progressive or stacking standards. For example, when a plus-four card is played on the stack, the following player is allowed to combat that with another plus-four card, making the number of cards from four to eight, for the next player to draw. This can be an easy way to dodge drawing cards, however, this can lead to players having to pick up 20 or 24 cards when the stack lands on them. The stacking rule also applies to the general number/color cards. If the stack card is a yellow 7, players can not only put down yellow cards or “7” cards but also can stack the same number on top. So, the player could throw down all his or her “7” cards. Many rules leave some players not willing to follow. Senior Kevin Herrera states, “Uno can sometimes be brutally terrible; there be mad cheaters.”