I've never heard of anyone playing like that. I think it's just that if it can reverse turn order, it can reverse ANYTHING!
That and it's just a joke.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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it can reverse ANYTHING!
Chaos, chaos!
Uno reverse… it reverses nothing.
I've not seen anyone play as the meme would imply, I think that entire meme basically just comes from the card being called "reverse" and nothing to do with the actual rules :p
I spent a month in Thailand, teaching English in a rural village on the border of Laos. Over the years the Thai teachers had acquired multiple decks of Uno. They merged them into one giant deck and developed some brutal house rules that I still use. They stacked every plus card. So if you put down a +4, the next person could put down a +2, etc. They’d secretly conspire with each other to run a gauntlet of plus cards. I once got in on the action and we went around the circle like three times stacking plus cards. We were targeting my best friend, who was teaching with me. Got like +40 cards or something built up.
Then bro holds up the reverse and that meant the whole plan turned on me. Everyone was roaring with laughter.
Reverses the order of play when 3 or more people play or behaves like a skip when only 2 are left.
My kids brought home from kindergarten the house rule that you can discard all cards you hold with the same number at the same time when it is your turn so long as the bottom card matches the suit being played. Very chaotic but they love it.
Grouping like cards is essential if the ruleset forces you to pick up a lot of cards.
It also works to rubberband the game a bit, since more cards increases your chances of playing multiple cards.
I’ve never heard of anyone playing like that. My understanding was inline with the rules.
- reverse just reverses order
- but that means I can now attack you next time around
- you can no longer attack me (assuming more than two people playing)
So if you hit me with “draw 2”, I can hit you with “reverse”, then next turn can make you “draw 2”
The reverse card reverse the direction play and therefore does whatever you just did to me and sends it back to you.
It achieves both results.
Oh hell yea. It’s a big house rules game. In the drug and alcohol program I worked with I got to go to all sorts of detention centers for minors.
They had so many fun rules. One group called it Spicy Uno and had rules for regular cards too.
A 7 is played and no one can talk until another 7 is played, each word or sound is draw a card regardless of active turn.
A 6 was waterfall, last person to raise their arms over their head draws a card.
If the reverse card matches the color, anything can be reversed. Even on a multicolor draw card, whoever played the multicolor has to pick one of the colors.
If you have the twin(same color and symbol) of a card just played you can “jump in” to the turn rotation and continue in the same direction as if it was the “jumpers” original turn. This one was my favorite I think.
We never played that way in my circles but when I would play with 2 people reverse basically did nothing so we would start with 9 cards and reverse would do the same thing as a skip.
Yeah reverse really doesn’t make sense for two people
Yes, we used to play that way. Basically any attack card could be stacked on top of a previous one (of a matching colour or type), and the first person who couldn't add to the stack got all the effects combined (so you might pick up 6 cards from a stack of +2s)
I've also played with this variation before.
My FAVORITE house rule was that when "reverse" was played by anyone, EVERYONE had to give their hands to the person on their left.
I literally only encountered this rule at one person's house, but it really made the game less predictable and more fun.
That's a cool rule! Kinda destroys that strategy though (TBH I can't even remember if uno has viable strategy)
I thought so too at first, but it also introduces a 2nd level of strategy: you are guessing whether or not the other people are likely to use a Reverse before you can go out, and if yes, you're making plays with that in mind -- planning to give a less optimal hand to the person on your left, balanced against the chance that you might be able to win with your current hand.
How do you use the Uno reverse card?
I have never seen Uno played that way. If a player plays "reverse", then the order of play switches from counterclockwise to clockwise or vice versa. The effects of the previous player's card still land on their usual targets.
That seems to me to imply that in the game, the reverse card turns things around on the other player. Like if they play a +2, you can play the reverse card and make them pick up 2. Is that the way some people play?
Exactly, as I am used to, action cards do add up: E.g. if someone (player A) plays "draw 2", the next player (B) can lay another "draw 2" on top without drawing 2 cards themself forcing the next player (C) in line to draw 4 if they themself don't lay another "draw 2" or a reverse card of matching colour. The latter would then chang the direction of play and force player B to act accordingly.
There actually is a game very similar to UNO that has a card that works like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mad_Magazine_Card_Game
I only played it in German, where the names are different, but according to that article, the card is called "What Me Worry? You Worry!" in English: if you are getting something bad done to you, you can play that and instead do the same thing to the person who did that to you.
I guess the name of that card wasn't as catchy as uno reverse card
It's also a much more obscure game, my parents have a copy of it (so I played it many times in my childhood) but I've never encountered anyone else with one, nor do I remember seeing it sold.
Also we usually didn't call it by its German name "Was soll ich mich sorgen? Mach du dir Sorgen!" (more or less a direct translation of the above English), but just called it the "Selbstverteidigungskarte" (self-defense card).
Yeah, that's a house rule not the official one. Like playing Monopoly with the Free Parking rule (where money from negative chance/community chest cards and the income tax space go to free parking instead of the bank and if you land on free parking you get the cash). I've only ever played Uno that way in one of the video game versions.
Yes. Most people I've played with do some variant of the super stacker ruleset.
All draw cards function as a skip your own turn and add to the draw stack. Skip and reverse can also function as passing the stack to someone else. This adds an additional element of risk/reward, do you play a scarce action card to pass the large stack at the risk of it backfiring and you possibly receiving an even larger draw stack, or do you just take the draw now?
The variants were popular enough that the UNO Facebook page has officially suggested them, for what it's worth.
Rules for Stacking Draw Cards in UNO | Uno Variations - https://www.unovariations.com/uno-variation-stacking
This just feeds into the notion that "the rules of Uno are whatever you can convince other people they are"
Uno is indeed Calvinball
This was how we played growing up. We knew it wasn’t official, but knew it was more fun.
The game comes with official rules.
Obviously, but not everyone plays by the official rules. See the famous Monopoly example
My particular UNO deck came with several blank Wild Cards. The family is supposed to decide what goes on them. If I'm playing with new people we usually just say that those are Plus Twos.
I've seen plenty of variations of the rules.
One 'house rule' is that if you don't have a matching card you keep picking up cards until you do match. Other times the player just has to take one card.
That's how always played it, picking up cards until you get a match
I've seen it played both ways.
I checked the official rules. You're only supposed to pick up one card if you aren't holding a match.
That was our one customization
- normally we draw one, following the rules
- if we’re in more of a hurry, draw until you match can make the game faster
My friends and I would play like that for shits and giggles usually after drinks. You can play reverse on top of pick up on top of skip, etc. so inevitably someone ends up with a massive hand and a plan to exact (friendly) revenge that often backfires spectacularly. But I wouldn't say most people play that way. Just one of those figures of speech one says without really thinking about.
There’s a version of Uno called No Mercy. We play it a lot. Hell hath no fury like a player receiving a +10.
It sounds fun playing that way. You just played a change the colour card? Well now I get to pick the colour
The free parking rule gave a reason for the space and a bit of financial padding to the game. I'm pretty sure there were a few more extra enhancements back when I played it as a kid, just to add to the game. As long as everyone agrees to the changes. We used to mess with chess variations in high school, learned very quickly that some games get really screwed up if you bend rules or add things too much.