Section 6: Variants & House Rules
UNO is unusually prone to house rules, and because there is no sanctioning body none of them are "wrong" — they simply are not the published rules. The most common:
- Stacking: answering a Draw Two with another Draw Two so the penalty accumulates. Mattel has stated publicly that stacking is not part of the published rules, yet it may be the most widely played variation in the game.
- Jump-in: any player holding an identical card (same colour and number) may play it out of turn, and play resumes from them.
- Seven-Zero: playing a 7 swaps hands with a chosen player; playing a 0 passes all hands around in the direction of play.
- Draw to match: a player who cannot play keeps drawing until they can, rather than drawing a single card.
- No bluffing: the Wild Draw Four colour restriction is dropped entirely and the card may be played at will.
Agree which variations are in play before dealing. Nearly every UNO argument is a disagreement about which house rules were assumed, not about the published ones.