Submitted:
31 December 2025
Posted:
04 January 2026
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Abstract
Skyjo is a simple stochastic card game with partial information, local replacement decisions, and score-reducing column removal events. This paper develops a formal mathematical model of the game, derives expected-score rules for turn-level actions, proves several dominance and threshold results, and evaluates a family of heuristic strategies through Monte Carlo simulation. The focus here lies on local optimality under explicit belief assumptions rather than a full equilibrium solution of the multiplayer game. Finally a simulation code is provided for reproducibility.
Keywords:
Skyjo
; stochastic games
; partial information
; expected value
; Monte Carlo simulation
; heuristic strategies
; card games
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
