How to Set Up and Play Solitaire?

Most people around the world play card games as their favorite pastime activity. Ideally, you would want to play against other people, which is not always possible. This card game requires only a single-player and a deck of cards. Of course you can always play solitaire online if you would like a digital version of the game. Read on to find out all you need to know about this card game.

How Do You Setup and Play Solitaire

When you deal the cards, you’ll form four critical areas of the game setup. These areas include;

• Tableau – Seven piles on the table that form the main playing area;

• Foundations – The objective of solitaire is to move all cards from the tableau to the foundations. Foundations are four different piles, each for a separate suit.

• Talon – If you draw a card from the stock and realize it cannot fit in the foundations or tableau, the rules of the game require you to add it to the waste pile or talon.

• Stock – All the cards that remain after arranging the necessary ones on the table. If you want to introduce additional cards to the game, you pick them from the stock.

Setting Up the Tableau

You set up the tableau by creating seven piles. You place a card face up and place other cards face down on the subsequent six piles. On the second pile, put one card face up, and the following five cards face down on the next five piles.

You place a card face up in the third pile, and four cards face down for the subsequent piles. To complete the solitaire setup, you must continue with this pattern until the final pile has one card facing up and six cards with faces down.

At the beginning of the game, the foundation and the talon do not have cards in them. However, as the game continues, these two piles will start getting cards.

How Do You Play Solitaire

The objective of the game is to move all the cards to the foundations. You use the cards facing up to achieve this objective. Transferring a card from one pile to another frees up the immediate next face-down card. You can now turn the card’s face up and use it to play.

You can only move in descending order. For instance, you can move a queen on top of a king. Also, cards should not be of similar colors. For example, red cards can only fit with black ones.

As you continue with the game, you will come across aces, which are the most crucial cards in this game. Transfer the ace to the foundations’ area to grow the foundation, i.e., diamonds, spades, hearts, and clubs.

Solitaire rules require that you fill the foundations in ascending order, and the foundations should match the appropriate suit.

For instance, if you find an ace of hearts, you can place the two and three of hearts on top of it. You start with an ace and finish with the king to fill the suit. The ace and the king should be of the same suit.

When you move an entire row to other positions, you create a vacancy in the tableau. You can use a king of any suit to fill this space. If you exhaust all the moves with the available cards, you can use the first card in the stockpile. If you cannot play with this card, transfer it to the talon and use the next card.

The game ends when you successfully move all the cards to the foundations or have no more moves to play.

Final Thoughts

Whether on a long journey or stuck home alone, solitaire is a fantastic way to pass the time. The game has simple rules that you can quickly grasp after a few plays. You can look up different ways to play this game on sites such as playsolitaire.io. The game also requires just a little space to play.

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