I'm also a fan of playing cards and card games, particularly solitaires. Some
years ago, I came up with two completely original solitaire variations which
can be played with a single deck, drawing some inspiration from the 2-deck,
2-player game Russian Bank, also called Crapette or Stop,
which I used o play with my grandmother (who passed away back in 1987) and
with my mom, too, but in the laste few years, she doesn't want to play
anymore, due to her advanced age. So, I started thinking how could the game
altered to be played by a single person, since it's considered to be a
two-handed patience game after all. In the end, the game I came up with was
different enough from it to be considered a completely original one. I did
some research, and I haven't been able to find any description anywhere of a
similar solitaire game. I decided to call both variations just
"MAChFsol 1" and "MAChFsol 2", after first thinking of just
calling them "MySolitaire 1" and "MySolitaire 2" and deciding
those names would be too generic. Another reason for that choice is that this
way, the name is only 8 characters long, which will allow me to nicely program
them in Atari BASIC and save them, as I did with some other solitaire games I
programmed on my Atari 800XL computer back then in
the 1990s.
As for the rules, they are as follow: take a single deck of cards, and after thoroughly shuffling it, you deal 8 cards which are placed at the center of the table in 2 columns of 4 (the tableau). Any Aces are removed and placed to the left of those columns, and any Kings, similarly, to the right (the suit order usually being, from top to bottom, Spades, Hearts, Clubs and Diamonds). These will be your foundations (main and auxiliary, respectively, for the Aces and Kings).
Then you start drawing more cards from the deck and placing them on what will be the discard pile. The top card on the discard pile is the only one that can be played; if there are any empty spaces in the tableau (after having removed any Aces or Kings), you place the top card in one of them (and continue taking cards from the pile until no empty spaces are left in the tableau). Any new Aces or Kings you draw from the deck should pe placed on their corresponding foundations.
On the Aces, you can build in ascending order by suit, while on the Kings, you build in descending order, removing any cards from the tableau which match. You keep drawing cards from the deck, placing them on the pile, filling gaps on the tableau, and building on the foundations from the tableau, until you have turned all the cards from the deck. No redraws are allowed ! I'd say at least 99% of the time, picking up the discard pile, turning it over, and redrawing a single time will allow you to finish the game successfully (unless you're a REALLY lousy player), thus no redraws should be allowed.
Once you're done, you can transfer the cards built on the Kings over to the Aces to finish the game and pack the deck again, having won the solitaire. If there are still cards left on the discard pile which you couldn't place on the tableau's empty spaces or on the foundations, it means you've lost.
The second variation of the game also implies building on the Kings in descending order, but in alternating colors, instead of following suit; the rest of the rules stay the same.You may think switching from following suits to alternating colors may make the game easier, but that's not necessarily true, since you won't be able to transfer cards from the Kings' foundations to the Aces' ones while they are blocked by cards from a different color (and you can't move cards between the different Kings' foundations to "free" the cards underneath them: once you've placed a card on one of them, it stays there until you can move it to the corresponding Ace's foundation).
You can play this game with a standard French/English deck of 52 cards
(removing any jokers), or with a Spanish or Italian deck of 48 cards; if you
use a Spanish/Italian deck of 40 cards instead, the tableau should consist of
just 2 rows of 3 cards each instead of 4... and since they don't have colors,
for the second variation you alternate long (Swords and Clubs) and short (Cups
and Coins) suits on the Kings in descending order. And anyway, usually Swords
map to Spades, Cups to Hearts, Clubs to Clubs, and Coins to Diamonds, ot it is
already as if you were alternating colors. You can also keep tracx of them by
the oultine (or orla, in Spanish) around the cards' drawings:
coins have no interruptions, cups have a single interruption both at the top
and the bottom, swords have two, and clubs have three.
Further tests I made led me to determine the ideal tableau size for different decks sizes to keep the game challenging enough: for a 52-card or 48-card deck, the tableau, as already mentioned, should be of 8 cards (2 columns of cards each); for a 44-card or 40-card deck (like the traditional Spanish deck), it should be of 6 cards (2 columns of 3 each); for a 36-card or 32-card deck (like the ones for Piquet or Skat), it should be of 4 cards (2 columns of 2 each, or a single column of 4); for 28-card or 24-card decks, it should be of 2 cards (in a single row or column of 2); and for a deck of 20 cards or less, there shoiuld be no tableau, meaning cards should be played directly to the foundations or to the discard pile.
Here's an example from a game I played on Friday of the first variation using an old 40-card Spanish deck from the 1930s which belonged to my grandmother, and which I shared on the Barajas y Naipes blog back then in October 2023:
We draw 6 cards and place them on our tableau (remember, this is a 40-card deck in this example). We notice we have the Ace of Cups and the King of Swords among them so we move them to the correspondingplaces for the foundations. Next, since we also happened to draw the 2, 3 and 4 of Cups, we place them one by one over the Ace of Cups.
Since we were left with 5 vacant spaces on the tableau, we draw another 5 cards to refill them. Now, among these new cards, we get the King of Coins, the Knight of Swords, and the Squire of Swords, so we place the first of them on its corresponding foundation to the right, and the other two, in descending order, over the King of Swords. After that, we are left with 3 vacant spaces, so we draw 3 more cards from the deck.
Among those 3 cards we just drew from the deck is the Ace of Coins, so we move it to its foundation on the left, and draw another card from the deck, which happnes to be the Knight of Coins. We place it over the King of coins, and draw yet another card from the deck. This time, it's the 7 of Swords, which goes over the Squire of Swords (this being a 40-card deck, there are no 8s or 9s, and the Squire is the 10), followed by the 6 of Swords which we had drawn from the deck at the very beginning of the game. Then we draw 2 more cards from the deck to fill the vacanat spaces left wy the 6 and 7 of Swords.
The last 2 cards we just drew happen to be the Ace of Swords and the 2 of Coins. We palce the Ace on its corresponding foundation to the left, while the 2 goes over the Ace of Coins, followed by the 3 of Coins which
we had previously drawn. Then, we draw 3 more cards from the deck to fill the vacant spaces, among which we get the 5 of Cups, which we then palce over the 4 of Cups, and proceed to draw another card from the deck to replace it on the tableau. This time we get the Squire of Clubs, which can't be placed anywhere else. We now draw another card from the deck, which is the 5 of Coins. Since it can't be placed anywhere else, either, it goes to the discard pile (the first one to do so until now).
Now we draw another card, and it's the King of Cups. We place it on its foundation to the right, and then take the Knight of Cups which was on the tableau and place it over the King. The 5 of Coins, which had remained on the discard pile under the King of Cups we just drew, now goes to fill the vacant space left by the Knight of Cups, before drawing another card from the deck, which turns out to be the 2 of Swords.
Now the 2 of Swords goes over the Ace, and we draw another card, which
happens to be the 7 of Coins. This one can't be played anywhere, so it stays
on the discard pile, and we draw another card, which is now the 5 of Swords.
It goes over the 6 of Swords on the right, and the 7 of Coins remains the only
card on the discard pile.
We draw another card from the deck, and this time it's the 4 of Coins. We place it over the 3, followed by the 5 and 6 of Coins, which were on the tableau, and the 7, which laid on the discard pile, under the 4 we had just drawn. We draw 2 more cards from the deck to fill the vacant spaces on the tableau, which turn out to be the 7 and 4 of Clubs, and can't be played anywhere. Then we draw another card from the deck, which turns out to be the King of Clubs.
We place the King of Clubs on its foundation to the right (the only one which was still empty until now), and draw another card from the deck. This time it's the 3 of Swords, which goes over the 2 to the left, so we draw yet another card from the deck. Now it's the Squire of Cups. We place it over the Knight of Cups to the right, and then we place the 7 of Cups over it. We draw another card from the deck to fill the vacant space left on the tableau, and it turns out to be the Knight of Clubs.
The Knight of Clubs goes over the King to the right, followed by the Squire and the 7 of Clubs which were also on the tableau sicne earlier in the game. Now we draw 3 more cards from the deck to fill the vacant spaces, which happen to be the 4 of Swords, the 6 of Cups, and the 6 of Clubs. The 4 of Swords goes over the 3 of Swords on the left, and then we proceed to move all the cards from the 5 to the King of Swords on the right over them. Similarly, the 6 of Cups goes over the 5 of Cups on the left, and then we move the rest of the suit on the left, from the 7 to the King of Cups, to the left, over the 6. Finally, the 6 of Clubs goes to the right over the 7, and we are left with 3 vacant spaces on the tableau yet again.
Now we draw the final 3 cards left on the deck to left the vacant spaces on the tableau: the 5 of Clubs, the Squire of Coins, and finally, the Ace of Clubs. The Squire of Coins goes over the 7 on the left, and then we move the Knight and King of Clubs from the right over it. The Ace of Clubs goes to its foundation to the left, and we immediately place the 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Clubs, which were also on the tableau all this time, right over it. Finally, we move all the rest of the Clubs suit on the right, from the 6 to the King of Clubs, over the 5 on the left, and now we have all 4 suits built from Ace to King on the left. We have successfully won the game!
And now here's another example from a game I played on Saturday of the second variation (building alternating colors in descending order on the Kings) using a 52-card English/French deck which I designed in April 2024 to commemorate the Ford Mustang's 60th Anniversary and which can be found on my other blog, Mustang Fan Peru:
We start by drawing 8 cards from the deck and placing them on our tableau, forming 2 columns of 4 cards each (since this time we are using a 52-card deck). Since the first of those 8 cards happen to be the Ace of Hearts and the Ace of Diamonds, we place them on their corresponding foundations to the left, and draw two more cards to fill the vacant sapces left by the aces. This time we get the King of Diamonds and the 4 of Hearts. The King goes to its foundation on the right, and we draw another card to fill the vacant space, which is the Jack of Clubs. Since we can't move it anywhere, we draw another card from the deck, the 10 of Diamonds, which goes to the discard pile.
The next 2 cards we draw from the deck are the 5 of Clubs and the 5 of Diamonds, which also go to the discard pile. Then the third one we draw is the Queen of Clubs.
Since we can build over the Kings alternating colors in descending order, we place the Queen of Clubs over the King of Diamonds on the right, and then place the Jack of Hearts over the Queen. We take the 5 of Diamonds from the discard pile to fill the vacant space left by the jack on the tableau, leaving the 5 of Clubs at the top of the discard pile. The next 2 cards we draw from the deck are the 4 of Diamonds and the 9 of Clubs, which also go to the discard pile.
Then we draw the 6 of Clubs, 9 of Hearts, and 3 of Hearts, all of which go to the discard pile, since we can't place them anywhere. Will this be a lost game?
Now, as we keep drawing cards from the deck, we get the 3 of Diamonds, the 6 of Spades, and the 3 of Spades, which can't be placed anywhere, either, and so have to go to the discard pile, too. Yes, it certainly looks like this will be a lost game...
On the next draw, we finally get the Ace of Spades, which goes to its foundation on the left, but the next 3 cards (Queen of Clubs, Queen of Hearts, and 7 of Hearts) are unplayable again and have to go to the discard pile, This is discouraging...
We keep drawing cards from the deck, and first we get the 8 of Spades, which also has to go to the discard pile. But then we finally get the King of Hearts, which goes to its foundation on the right. The 7 of Diamonds which comes next goes to the discard pile, once again. But then we get the Ace of Clubs, which we place on its foundation to the left, and we begin to regain some hope...
We place the 2 of Clubs over the Ace, and move the 7 of Diamonds from the discard pile to the vacant space left on the tableau. The next card we draw from the deck is the 7 of Spades, whic goes to the discard pile yet again. But then we get the King of Clubs, which goes to its foundation on the right, and the 10 of Clubs, which goes over the Jack of Hearts on the right. Then the 8 of Hearts goes to the discard pile. Next we draw the 2 of Hearts, which goes over the Ace to the left, and the 10 of Hearts, which goes to the discard pile.
Next we draw the 9 and of Spades, which both also go to the discard pile. But then we draw the Queen of Diamons, and place it over the King of Clubs on the right, allowing us to place the Jack of Clubs over the Queen. We take the 10 of spades from the top of the discard pile anf place it on the vacant space left by the Jack. The next card we draw, however, is the 7 of Clubs, which goes to the discard pile...
But then, the next cards we keep drawing from the deck (including the King of Spades, among others) finally allow us to keep building on the foundations on either side, taking cards from the discard pile, until we reach all the way back to the 9 of Clubs (with only 3 more cards underneath it: the 4 of Diamonds, 5 of Clubs and 10 of Diamonds) and have to draw again from the deck, which also has only 4 more cards left. The next 3 cards we draw are the Jack of Diamonds, 3 of Clubs and 4 of Hearts, which finally allow us to clear the remaining card from the discard pile by building over
the foundations on both sides. And the final card we draw from the deck is the 5 of Hearts, which finally allows us to finish building everything over the Aces on the right. We managed to succesfully win this game in the end, too!
As you can see from both examples, it's not that difficult to succeed in winning this game of solitaire... I'd say the chances are maybe close to 50/50 (though I haven't actually calculated them). And as I mentioned earlier, even allowing a single redeal increases those chances to almost 100%, which is why the "no redeals" rule is enforced.
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