Which high cards should you replace first?
Prioritise exposed 10s, 11s and 12s when a clearly lower replacement is available.
Large visible cards are reliable sources of points. Replace the biggest clear liability first unless another move completes a valuable column or prevents a dangerous end.
An exposed 12 is usually more urgent than a hidden card because the hidden card may already be low.
Also: the nerdy view
For a known-to-known swap, score improvement is exact: old value minus new value. Hidden replacements introduce uncertainty. This makes high exposed cards efficient targets, particularly late in the round when variance is costly.
Do not preserve three high cards solely because they might form a column. The time and card cost of completing the set can exceed the possible saving.
- Average value of an unseen card
- ≈ 5.07
- Chance a blind draw beats your 11
- 87%
- Chance it is worse than your 11
- 7%
- Expected change from swapping blind
- -5.93 pts
Confidence: Moderate: a real mid-round deck is depleted. Full workings on the methodology page. Methodology ↗
Written in our own words and checked against the official rulebook. Skyjo.co.uk is an independent guide, not affiliated with Magilano. Spot an error? Tell us and we fix it.