How to Play Solitaire

From LoveToKnow BoardGames

If you're interested in learning how to play solitaire, you'll be pleased to know that it is not a difficult game. You should be able to pick up the rules to this one player card game fairly easily. You can play it with any poker deck after you remove the jokers.

How to Set Up the Cards

In solitaire, you start with seven different piles that you can play on. To set up these piles, do the following:

Deal out seven cards, left to right, face down.
Starting at the leftmost card, deal six cards left to right, leaving the rightmost pile with only one card.
Repeat this process dealing five cards, then four cards, etc., until each pile has one less than the pile to the left of it.
Place the remaining cards in your hand, facedown.
Flip over the top card in each pile.

Understanding How to Play Solitaire

Once you have the cards set up, it's time to play the game. First, look at the cards you just turned face up. If there are any aces, place them above the row of piles to create finish piles. You will eventually have four finish piles; one for each suit. Once you've pulled the aces off, flip over any facedown cards that are now exposed.

Now take a look at the remaining faceup cards, excluding the ones in the finish piles. If you have any twos, you can play them on the aces in the finish piles if they are the same suit. Then you can play threes on the twos, and so on. If not, try to build tableaux, which basically means moving the faceup cards in the lower piles around.

To do so, take cards of smaller denominations and place them on cards that are one denomination higher and of the opposite color. For example, if you have a three of clubs faceup and a four of diamonds faceup, you can move the three so it sits on top of the four. Then you can flip over the facedown card that was underneath the three.

You can move cards singly or in a descending group. For example, if you have a black four, a red three and a black two in sequence, you can play all three cards, in order, on a red five. If you end up with a pile that becomes completely empty due to these actions, you can move a faceup king to that empty space. You can never have more than seven piles in the tableaux.

Using the Remaining Cards

Once you've done as much as you can with the tableaux, turn over the top card from the stack in your hand. See if you can play it on a finish pile or in the tableaux. Then move any additional cards you can as a result of playing it. If you cant play it, place it on the bottom of the stack in your hand and proceed to the next card. Continue through your stack until you either win the game or can no longer play. You are not allowed to shuffle the cards.

The goal of the game is to get all of the cards faceup and moved to the finish piles. To win the game, you must have one finish pile for each suit in ascending order from ace to king. Depending on the order of the cards in your hand and in the piles, your solitaire game may or may not be winnable.

Dealing Three

Once you thoroughly understand the game you can make it a bit more challenging. To do so, start flipping over three cards from your stack, in sequence, instead of one. You can only use the top card each time, which is the third one you deal out, with one exception. If you play that third card on your tableaux, you can proceed to the second one. If you also play the second one, you can proceed to the first one.