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The Rules and history of Solitaire PDF Print E-mail
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Friday, 31 October 2008 00:00

Solitaire
Like many card games, it’s hard to pinpoint the origin of Solitaire. Some historians say that Solitaire can be traced to France, as early English texts refer to it by the name of “Patience” and the Napoleon Bonaparte was said to have played the game “patience" while he was exiled.

The first known collection of solitaire games was Lady Adelaide Cadogan’s “Illustrated Games of Patience” in 1870. Other collections began cropping up such as “Patience” by E. D. Cheney, Amusements for Invalids by Annie B. Henshaw, and Dick's “Games of Patience.” In a short span of time, more than 150 Solitaire variations have come to fore.



Beginning Play
With so many Solitaire variations, it’s hard to pin down a specific set of rules, as rules vary for each game. For those new to solitaire, here is how to play probably one of the oldest, most popular, and most well known Solitaire version: Klondike – or just Solitaire.

Solitaire is played using the standard 52-card pack is used. The first thing you do is to remove the Joker and shuffle the deck and afterwards, create the Tableau. The tableau refers to your “Table Cards.”
The table cards consist of 28 cards arranged in seven piles or lines. The first pile is one card facing up, the next is two cards, with the top card facing up. The third line has three cards, with the first two facing down and the third facing up and so on and so forth until the seventh pile which should have seven cards – six facing down and the top card facing up. The piles or lines are set together from left to right.

There should be spaces allotted for the four “Foundation” cards on top of the tableau. The four foundation cards are the four Aces, which should be put on the foundation area once they become available.

The rest of the deck not used for the Tableau is called the stock, whose use we will tackle later.

The Objective
The objective is to complete the four suits one on top of the other, starting from the Ace to the King in order.



How To Play
On the Tableau, only the face-up cards can be moved around. Cards can be moved onto a next-number card onto an opposite suited card. For example, a 5 of clubs can be taken from a line/pile and placed on top of a six of hearts – a queen of diamonds can be moved on top of a King of spades. When moving a card, all cards already attached to it can be moved too. For example, a pile that has the six of hearts and the five of clubs can be moved to a pile that has a seven of spades.

Once the face up card on a pile is removed, the next face down card is turned over to face-up and becomes available for play. If a space on the Tableau gets cleared, a King (and only a king) may be placed there.

Using The Stock
Once all moves have been exhausted on the Tableau, the player can now use the Stock. The stock is held face down by the player, who takes three cards from the stock and turns them face up. The top-most face-up card is then available for play. The face-up cards under the top card cannot be used until the top card is used in play. If the top card from the three cannot be used, another three are taken from the stock until the stock is used up.

When the stock is exhausted, the unused cards - called a talon - are turned upside down to reform the stock. No shuffling please. This is repeated until all cards are used or no further play is possible.

Winning

The game is won when all the tableau has been opened up and the four suits all arranged up with the foundations from the ace to the king.

Last Updated on Friday, 19 December 2008 18:28