Forty Thieves Solitaire

How to play Forty Thieves Solitaire

Forty Thieves is a demanding double-deck patience game that trades Klondike's alternating-colour flexibility for a stricter, single-suit discipline. You play with two full 52-card packs shuffled together — 104 cards in all — dealt straight into ten tableau columns of four cards each, every card showing its face from the very first deal. There is no long hunt for buried cards here: what you see is what you have to work with. Instead the challenge lies in sequencing — building strict same-suit descending runs one card at a time and feeding eight foundations upward from Ace to King, two foundations for every suit. A face-down stock backs up the tableau, releasing one card at a time to a waste pile you may draw from whenever the tableau stalls. This version keeps a full move counter, unlimited undo, a restart-this-deal option and a ranked leaderboard score, all running entirely in your browser.

The goal

Clear all 104 cards onto the eight foundation piles at the top of the table. Each foundation is dedicated to a single suit once its first card lands, and it fills upward in strict order: Ace, 2, 3 … 10, Jack, Queen, King. Because two full decks are in play, every suit needs two separate foundations to hold its 26 cards, so you are really solving four suits twice over. The moment the last King settles and all eight foundations read complete, the game is won. Every move you make — drawing from the stock, shifting a card between tableau columns, or sending a card home to its foundation — counts toward your final move total, so the puzzle rewards both patience and planning.

Origins of a fearsome patience game

Forty Thieves belongs to a family of double-deck patience games that took shape in Europe and Russia during the nineteenth century, when players who had mastered the standard single-deck games went looking for a sterner test. Early collections of card-game rules already listed variants under names like “Napoleon at St Helena” and “Le Cadran”, all sharing the same bones: two decks, narrow columns, and a single-suit stacking rule that makes every move feel consequential. The name “Forty Thieves” nods to the tale of Ali Baba — a fitting label for a game with forty cards laid out face up from the very first deal, tempting you with everything you need to see and nothing you are allowed to touch carelessly. Unlike its looser cousin Klondike, Forty Thieves rewards careful counting over lucky flips; its reputation as one of the harder classic patience games is well earned, and this digital table keeps the traditional rules intact.

The table

Ten tableau columns are dealt across the table, four cards in each, and every single card is turned face up the moment it lands — there are no hidden cards to reveal later. That accounts for 40 of the 104 cards; the remaining 64 form the face-down stock in the top-left corner, with an empty waste pile beside it and eight empty foundation slots along the top-right, ready to receive Aces. Use New Deal for a completely fresh shuffle, or Restart Deal to replay the identical layout you are currently on from scratch — useful when you spot a smarter opening after the fact.

How to move cards

• Tap any playable card to pick it up — the top card of a tableau column or the single face-up card sitting on the waste pile — then tap the pile or foundation where it should go. Tap the same card again to put it back down without moving it.
• Tableau columns build DOWNWARD in the SAME suit only: a 9 of spades may land only on a 10 of spades, never on a 10 of hearts, diamonds or clubs. This is stricter than Klondike's alternating-colour rule, so plan a few moves ahead before committing.
• You may move only ONE card at a time. Even if several top cards already form a perfect same-suit descending run, you cannot pick them up together as a group — each card is relocated individually, one tap at a time.
• An empty tableau column has no restriction at all: any single card, of any rank or suit, may be dropped there. Emptying a column is valuable, but remember you can only refill it one card at a time as well.
• Foundations build UPWARD by suit starting from the Ace. An empty foundation slot accepts only an Ace — either deck's copy, since there are eight slots for four suits, two apiece. Once a foundation holds a card, only the next-higher card of that exact suit may follow. Double-tap any playable card to send it straight to a foundation automatically, without choosing a slot yourself.

The stock, the waste, and no redeals

Tap the stock to turn its top card face up onto the waste pile, one card at a time — there is no draw-three option here. Only the topmost waste card is ever in play; cards buried beneath it must wait their turn. The crucial difference from Klondike is that Forty Thieves has NO redeal: once the stock is empty, it stays empty for the rest of the game, and the waste pile is never turned back over and reshuffled into a new stock. Every card you draw is a one-time look, so think carefully about whether the tableau still has a useful move before you commit to turning the next stock card.

Winning and scoring

The moment all 104 cards rest safely on the eight foundations, the game declares a win, shows your final move count and submits your score to the leaderboard automatically. Your best result on this device is remembered and shown beneath the table, and if you are signed in your top scores also appear in the global rankings. Because Forty Thieves is unforgiving about wasted motion, tight, efficient play is rewarded far more than simply grinding out a win eventually.

Strategy tips

• Study the whole tableau before you touch anything. Because every card is dealt face up from the start, you already have all the information you will ever get about the ten columns — there is no guesswork about what a face-down card might be, so plan several moves ahead rather than reacting one tap at a time.
• Send Aces and low cards to their foundations as soon as it's safe, but don't rush every playable card up immediately — a card parked on a foundation can no longer help you extend a tableau run, so sometimes it pays to hold a low card back a moment longer to unblock a column.
• Guard your empty columns fiercely. Since only one card moves at a time, an empty column is your single most flexible resource — a temporary parking spot for whatever awkward card is currently blocking your plan. Don't fill one back up carelessly the turn after you clear it.
• Because there is no redeal, treat every stock card as precious. Before drawing a fresh card from the stock, make sure you have genuinely exhausted the useful moves available on the tableau and waste — once a stock card is buried under others in the waste, you may not see it again for a long time, if at all.
• Watch for matching pairs across the two decks. With two copies of every card in play, you sometimes have a choice of which physical card to send to which foundation slot — favour the move that frees up the tableau card underneath it, since untangling columns matters more than which specific slot a card lands in.

Frequently asked questions