Redealing rules
The next set of rules involves redealing or reshuffling the deck after all moves have been made. Some games don’t allow any redealing, while others allow one, two or even unlimited redeals.
Some games like La Belle Lucie, require all the unfinished piles to be picked up, shuffled and dealt back to the layout. In other games, the player has to pick the piles up in a certain order and redeal them back without shuffling.
This is when computer solitaire games can really come in handy as this hard tedious task is done for you instantly with one mouse click. Other common dealing rules involve dealing one card each to a row of piles.
In Spider Solitaire, when all possible moves are made, the player deals ten cards to the layout. One card for each oiled of cards in the table.
This of course covers all previously built sequences and the entire has to be reorganized as best as possible to make sure than game can be won.
This makes the four suit version of Spider solitaire very challenging, but has also help make it a very popular solitaire game.
Position rules
Some solitaire games have rules that involve moving cards based on their position in relation to each other.
Accordion involves removing cards based on what ranks and suits cards are three spaces further down a 'row' that is created as cards are dealt in a spiraling line down the layout.
Foundation rules
Another rule that many solitaire games possess is a varying foundation base card to build on. This card basically becomes the high card and can sometimes be chosen by the payer at the beginning of the game.
Chessboard is a good example of this. The player chooses a card from the tableau and places it on one of the foundation piles. Once this is done, all the foundations will have to start with the same rank of the first card.
If the foundation is not completed and a king is played, the following card played is an ace as the foundations wrap around to accommodate all 13 cards.
Deck rules
Some solitaire games are played with more or in some cases less than 52 cards. Many games today use two decks and with the advent of computer solitaire games, three and four deck games are easily possible.
The popular Spider solitaire is played with two decks. Have two decks makes more varieties of games possible.
There are some games that use Pinochle decks which is actually two decks with all but the aces, kings, queens, jacks and tens removed totaling 48 cards.
Matching rules
Finally, a whole category of rules involves matching cards. The most common is pairing, but many games require the ranks of cards to total a certain value. In Pyramid, pairs of cards totaling 13 are removed.
In this case, the ace is worth one, the jack 11, the queen 12 and the king is removed singly as it is equal to 13. Pyramid has become popular due to its high level of skill and ability to see ahead of time if the game can be won.
This article only covered a small percentage of unique rules solitaire games possess today. As you learn more solitaire games, you will discover intriguing rules that just might make that next game addicting for you.
Enjoy playing solitaire and be sure to follow the rules.
About the Author
Trisha Ellington works for Softgame Company, maker of
card games, video poker and puzzles. She works on web sites, designs games and does graphic work.
Softgame Company also makes
solitaire card games.
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