A recent arXiv paper (2609.02716) reports a new direction in card-based cryptography: simulating virtual players in physical card games. The abstract describes protocols developed for games such as Old Maid, UNO, and President, where a deck of physical cards is used to represent a hidden player's actions.
The work is presented as distinct from conventional card-based cryptography, though the abstract's summary cuts off before explaining exactly what that contrast is. The key idea appears to be moving beyond secure computation of functions toward interactive game settings, where a virtual player must take part in a real card game without revealing its strategy or hand.
Because the abstract is brief, the full mechanics of the protocols are not available from the summary alone. Still, the paper points to an emerging research area that applies card-based techniques to richer, game-like interactions.