Uno Champion of the World!
pamelamyers | January 16, 2017
This weekend, Sam asked me to play Uno with her. We really have only played a handful of times. Like in most games that are not necessarily aimed at kids her age, she gets the general concept, but she doesn’t get the nuances that actually let you win. I don’t tend to let her win games board games or card games often because I don’t think that’s a very good lesson, but I have been known to make a few bad moves or not make a good play just to sort of even the board, so to speak.
In this round of Uno, I didn’t do anything that would even remotely constitute “throwing the game.” I just played how I normally would with anyone else. And the kid kicked my butt. Multiple times! We played five games and she won 3 out of the 5. The next day, we played again. We played three games and she beat me EVERY TIME. I finally got my comeuppance when we played one final round of hands and I won each game. She was so mad that she lost her Uno Champion of the World title to me, but only in a dramatic, silly way.
It was fun to watch her be so excited at winning, but even more than that, it was really interesting that she did win. It really shows how her mind is changing, and growing. She truly strategized, keeping her “pick 2” and “skip turn” cards until the end when she knew she needed them, she held on to Wild Cards when we both had a ton of cards left to play and she knew she was in no danger of losing, and she made plays that showed she did remember to some extent what color cards I was leaning towards.
My little card shark. Now if we can just teach her some poker and find a few saps…