How to play Solitaire

You play Solitaire with a standard card game of 52 cards – all by yourself. The idea of the Solitaire game is to collect all of the cards in a series in descending order. You do so by alternately placing a red and a black card in a specific order on the piles on the tableau. The Solitaire tableau consists of seven rows of cards. Each row of cards contains one more card than the row before it.

You lay down the game board by beginning on the left with a row of one card, then a row of two cards, etc. The top card of each row is placed ‘face up’, with the picture up. The rest of the cards underneath the top cards are ‘face down’, so you can’t see what they are. The cards that remain after laying down the tableau form the stock pile. Cards may be drawn from this pile. There are also four foundation piles on the tableau. The idea is to only place cards from one suit here. You begin with an Ace and end with a King. If you can place a card on this pile, the rules say that you must do so. The ultimate objective of the game is for all of the laying cards to end up on these four piles.

According to the rules of Solitaire, a red card may only be followed by a black card and vice versa. And the card’s value must be one less than that of the preceding card. A nine of hearts can only be followed by an eight of clubs or spades. The stock pile, which contains cards that are face down, is emptied by adding these cards to the row with cards on the tableau or by placing them on the four foundation piles that begin with an Ace. The cards are drawn one by one from the stock pile and processed into the game. When the stock pile is gone, you turn over the remaining cards and go through them again, one by one, to see if you can place them somewhere in the game. The game is won when all cards have been played and laid down in the correct sequence on the foundation piles that begin with an Ace. Would you like to try it yourself one time? This Solitaire card games website has a great amount of free to play games.