Solitaire
This is ordinary Klondike, played against other people instead of against the pack. Everybody at the table is dealt exactly the same cards in exactly the same order, each of you plays your own private copy of it, and nothing you do touches anybody else's layout. There are no turns and nothing waits for you. THE FIRST TO CLEAR THE DEAL WINS IT. There is no clock on the play: you have as long as you need, and the only way to lose is for somebody else to finish first.
What you are dealt, and why it is the same for everybody
- Two to four players, one pack of fifty-two cards, and one deal. Every seat gets that same deal, card for card, from the game's seed.
- Seven piles in a row. The first has one card, the second two, and so on up to seven, and only the last card of each pile is face up. That is twenty-eight cards.
- The other twenty-four go face down as your stock.
- Four empty foundations above, one for each suit. Filling all four is how you win.
- Because the deal is identical, nobody is luckier than anybody else. If the deal is a hard one it is hard for all of you, and whoever finds the way through it first takes the game.
How the cards move
- A foundation is begun with an ace and built up in its own suit: ace, two, three, and so on to the king.
- The seven piles build downwards in alternating colour. A red six goes on a black seven.
- A run of face-up cards already in order moves as a block. Take the six and whatever is sitting on it together.
- Only a king, or a block headed by a king, may go into a pile you have emptied.
- When you move the last face-up card off a pile, the face-down card underneath is turned over. That is the move that opens a deal up.
- A card may come back off a foundation onto a pile if you need it there. It is allowed, and it is sometimes exactly what an awkward deal needs.
The stock and the waste
- Turn ONE card at a time from your stock onto the waste. Only the top card of the waste is available to you.
- When the stock is empty, turn the waste over and it becomes your stock again, in the same order, as many times as you like.
- Turning one at a time rather than three means every card in the pack is reachable, so far more deals can be finished. It also means the stock is never an excuse: if you are stuck, you have not looked hard enough.
How the game ends, and who wins it
- Everybody presses ready, there is a three second countdown, and then all of you start at once on the same deal.
- THE FIRST PLAYER TO GET ALL FIFTY-TWO CARDS ONTO THE FOUNDATIONS WINS. The game ends the moment somebody does.
- There is no deadline, on a move or on the deal. Take as long as you like; nobody is waiting on you, because nobody is waiting for a turn. That is the one way this differs from every other game on the site, where a move deadline ends a game somebody has walked away from.
- If you run out of legal moves altogether you are out, and the others play on.
- If nobody can finish, the deal is a draw. Not every Klondike deal can be won, and the same deal being unwinnable for everybody at once is why a draw is the honest answer rather than a points count.
- You may give up a deal at any time. Doing so puts you below everybody who stayed in it.
- A table that is simply abandoned is closed after an hour so it does not sit open for ever. Nobody wins one of those.
What this is not
- It is not scored on points. How many cards you got up decides nothing at all: finishing is the only thing that wins, and a seat with fifty-one cards up has not won anything.
- It is not played against a clock. An earlier version of this game ended after three minutes and gave it to whoever was furthest along; it does not any more.
- It is not your own private game with a scoreboard bolted on. The deal being identical is the point: when you are stuck, so is everybody else, on the same card.
Worth knowing before you start
- Turn over face-down cards before you bank aces. A buried card helps nobody, and a deal is won by opening the columns rather than by filling the foundations early.
- An ace and a two are always safe to send up. After that, think: a card on a foundation can come back down, but the cards that want it may still be buried.
- Empty a pile only if you have a king ready. An empty pile with no king is a hole you cannot fill and a column you have lost.
- Go through the stock early rather than saving it. You can turn it over as often as you like, and knowing what is in it is most of the planning.
- Speed still matters, but only because somebody else is solving the same deal. Think as long as you need to on a move that decides the game.
The deal comes from the game's seed, which is published when the game ends, so anybody can check afterwards that every seat really was given the same cards. Nothing here is played for money, and the site takes none.
Solitaire terms
- a foundation
- one of the four piles above, begun with an ace and built up in suit to the king; filling all four wins the game
- the tableau
- the seven piles you play in, built downwards in alternating colour
- the stock
- your twenty-four face-down cards, turned one at a time
- the waste
- the face-up pile the stock is turned onto; only its top card is available
- a space
- a pile with nothing in it at all, face up or face down; only a king may go there
- a block
- a run of face-up cards already in order, which moves from pile to pile as one
- the deal
- the one layout everybody at the table is given, identical for every seat and dealt from the game's seed