Simulating Virtual Players for UNO without Computers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel physical protocol to simulate virtual players in UNO without computers, enabling random valid card selection while maintaining privacy of each virtual player's hand.

Contribution

It presents an unconventional, computer-free protocol for simulating virtual players in physical UNO, adaptable to other turn-based card or tile games.

Findings

Protocol can uniformly select a valid card at random

It can report if no valid card exists

Applicable to other turn-based games

Abstract

UNO is a popular multiplayer card game. In each turn, a player has to play a card in their hand having the same number or color as the most recently played card. When having few people, adding virtual players to play the game can easily be done in UNO video games. However, this is a challenging task for physical UNO without computers. In this paper, we propose an unconventional protocol that can simulate virtual players using nothing but physical UNO cards. In particular, our protocol can uniformly select a valid card to play from each virtual player's hand at random, or report that none exists, without revealing the rest of its hand. The protocol can also be applied to simulate virtual players in other turn-based card or tile games where each player has to select a valid card or tile to play in each turn.