Crazy Eights

Players and equipment

Two to eight players and a standard 52-card pack, jokers out. Two packs shuffled together from six players up, or when one pack is running thin. The folk game Uno was built from — Switch and Mau Mau are the same game under other names, and the Uno tab has the boxed version.

The deal

Five cards each, or seven when only two play. The rest goes face down as the stock, and its top card is turned face up beside it to start the pile. If that first card is an eight, bury it in the stock and turn the next.

Play

On your turn, play one card onto the pile that matches the card showing in either rank or suit. Any eight may be played on anything, and whoever plays it names the suit that must follow. The next player has to match that suit, or play another eight.

If you cannot play, draw from the stock until you can. The gentler house rule is to draw one card and pass if it does not play; agree which you are using before the first deal. When the stock runs out, the pile is shuffled below its top card to make a new one.

House rules

All optional, all worth agreeing in advance, and any table that says none is playing the plain game.

A two

Stacks — a two on a two makes the player after draw four

The next player draws two cards and misses a turn

A queen

The next player misses a turn

A jack or an ace

The direction of play reverses

Last card

Caught silent and you draw two

Announce it as you go down to one card

An eight as the last card is legal in the plain game. Tables that dislike it either refuse the play or count an eight left in a hand at double, and say so before the first deal.

Scoring

The first player out of cards wins the deal and collects the value of every card left in the other hands. Enter that total against the winner; everybody else scores nothing for the deal.

Each eight

50

The card you were hoarding

Court cards

10

Jack, queen or king

Aces

1

Low in the count

Everything else

Face value

Two through seven, nine and ten

A worked deal

Four play. Alice plays her last card and the deal ends at once. The other three turn their hands over and add them up.

Ben

50 + 5 = 55

♠8 and ♥5

Cara

10 + 10 + 1 = 21

♣K, ♦J and ♥A

Dev

9 + 4 = 13

♠9 and ♣4

Alice

89

Out first: the three hands added together

Alice enters 89 and the others enter nothing. Ben's single eight cost more than Cara's three cards put together: an eight is the best card in the pack while it is in play and the worst to be holding when somebody else goes out. Four players traditionally play to 400, a hundred times the number at the table, and the totals build deal by deal until somebody crosses the line.

Ending

A single deal, or play to an agreed total — a hundred times the number of players is traditional. Set a finish line on the sheet and the first to reach it takes the match; leave it blank and end the match when the table is done.

Hold your eights

An eight plays on anything, so it is the one card that can never be stuck in your hand for want of a match. That makes it a rescue card: keep it for the turn when you have nothing else to play and would otherwise be drawing from the stock. The other side of it is the fifty in the count. Once a player near you is down to two or three cards, an eight in your hand is fifty points waiting to be given away, and the safe thing is to play it early and name a suit, not to wait for the perfect moment. The same goes for a Wild in Uno, and for the Wild Draw Four most of all.

Count the suits

Watch what people play and, just as much, what they draw on. A player who drew three cards when hearts were showing has no hearts, or had none then, and every heart you lead later will send them back to the stock. Keep a rough tally of how many cards of each suit have gone down: a suit that has hardly been played is a suit the other hands are full of, and changing to it hands everybody a free turn. Your own hand tells you the rest. The suit you hold most of is the one to steer the game towards, because every card of it you play is a turn you do not have to draw.

When to change the suit

Change suit when the current one is running against you, not just because you can. A matching rank changes the suit without spending an eight: a ♥7 on a ♠7 moves the game into hearts for nothing, and the ranks you hold two of are your cheapest suit changes. Save the eight for when no rank matches. When you do play one, name the suit you hold most of, unless one particular opponent is about to go out, in which case name the suit they have shown they do not have, even at the cost of a turn of your own.

Going out

The hand you hold shrinks at the same rate as everybody else's, so the race is decided by the turns you lose to the stock. Play your long suit first and keep one card of a second suit as a way out when the game changes. Coming down to two cards, aim to hold a pair of the same rank or an eight and one other, so that whatever is showing when your turn comes you have a play. When somebody else is on one card, the table's job is to keep them from it: change the suit away from what they need, and play the punishing cards, the twos and the queens, or Uno's Draw Two and Skip, on them rather than on anyone else.

With action cards

Where the table plays with the two, the queen and the reversing jack, or with the printed cards of an Uno pack, hold them for the players who are closest to going out and do not waste them early on a player with a full hand. A draw-two played on somebody holding eight cards costs them little; the same card on somebody holding one turns the deal round. A reverse is a way of giving the turn back to a player who has just drawn, or of taking it away from one who is about to finish. Say your last-card warning loudly and in time: the two cards it costs when you forget are two more turns before you can go out.

Can you end on an eight in Crazy Eights?

In the plain game, yes: an eight is a legal play on anything, so it is a legal last card, and you name a suit that nobody has to follow. Some tables refuse it, on the grounds that the wild card should not be the one that finishes, and some make an eight as the last card count double against whoever is left holding one. Neither is standard, so agree it before the first deal. Whatever the table decides, an eight in a hand that is not yours is fifty points to the winner, so nobody wants to be caught with one.

What happens when the stock runs out?

Take the top card of the pile and set it aside as the card showing, shuffle the rest of the pile and turn it face down as the new stock. Play carries on from the card that was showing. Under the gentler rule of one draw a turn, a table that runs out with nobody able to play simply passes round until somebody can.

How do you score Crazy Eights?

The player who goes out scores the value of every card left in every other hand: fifty for an eight, ten for a jack, queen or king, one for an ace and face value for everything else. Nobody else scores anything for the deal. Under the Uno pack the numbers are different, twenty for a coloured action card and fifty for a Wild, and the number cards count their own value. The totals build over deals to a finish line the table agrees, or the game is a single deal.

Is Uno the same game as Crazy Eights?

Yes, in everything that matters. Uno is Crazy Eights with a dedicated pack of four colours instead of four suits, the wild eights printed as Wild cards, and the common house rules printed on as Skip, Reverse and Draw Two. Anyone who plays one can play the other in a minute, and the app treats them as two tabs of one game. The scoring numbers differ and the Uno pack has 108 cards to a standard pack's 52, which is why Uno takes up to ten players.

How many cards do you deal in Crazy Eights?

Five each, or seven when only two are playing. Uno deals seven whatever the number at the table. With six or more players a single standard pack runs thin quickly, so two packs shuffled together is usual.

Do you have to draw until you can play?

The traditional rule is yes: you keep drawing from the stock until you draw a card that plays, and you play it. Many tables soften this to one card a turn, and if it plays you may play it at once and otherwise pass. The one-card rule keeps hands smaller and the game faster; the draw-until-you-can rule punishes a player who has let their hand run into one suit. Either is fine, and the table should say which before dealing.

Can you play an eight on an eight?

Yes. An eight plays on any card, including another eight, and the player who lays the second eight names the suit afresh, overriding whatever the first player called. It is the standard answer to being handed a suit you do not hold.

What if the first card turned up is an eight?

Most tables bury it in the stock and turn the next card, so that the first player has an ordinary card to match. Some instead let the player to the dealer's left treat it as any suit they like, which amounts to the same thing as the dealer having played it. Under the Uno pack the boxed rule is that an action card turned first takes effect as if the dealer had played it.