12), Whist (Chapter 8), and Euchre (Chapter 10).
If your deck of cards is defective, you want to play a game that doesn’t deal out all the cards. You can play Oh Hell! (Chapter 9), Spite and Malice (Chapter 2), and Setback (Chapter 15) with a deck that has missing cards.
If you’re selecting the game based on the experience level of the players:
For beginners: Oh Hell! and Ninety-Nine (both in Chapter 9) have simple, easy-to-understand principles.
For children: Go Fish and Cheat (both in Chapter 3) are simple, but they require younger players to think in order to win. Whist (Chapter 8) is the best introduction to trick-taking games for children.
For groups with mixed experience levels: Whist (Chapter 8) and Fan Tan (Chapter 7) rely heavily on luck, which gives everyone a sporting chance. Rummy (Chapter 4) also comes easily to inexperienced card players.
For experienced card players: Pinochle (Chapter 14) and Cribbage (Chapter 16) offer new thrills and challenges.
Chapter 2
Solitaire
IN THIS CHAPTER
You see many different versions of Solitaire in this chapter. The different games don’t have all that much in common, except that you can play them with a single deck of cards (and they happen to be my favorite Solitaires). Some Solitaires need more than one deck, but not the ones included in this chapter (apart from the two-player, Solitaire-like game Spite and Malice at the end of the chapter). These games range from automatic Solitaires, where you can make every move immediately without thought or forethought, to Solitaires where you can plan your game strategy for at least 10 minutes if you want to. These games aren’t easy, so if you win any of them, you’ll feel a sense of achievement. In fact, I have never managed to win some of the Solitaires that I discuss in this chapter.
One player
One standard 52-card deck of cards (you usually don’t need jokers in games of Solitaire)
Space to spread out the cards
Acquainting Yourself with Solitaire Terms
Before you start enjoying the various games of Solitaire, you need to know a little technical vocabulary:
When you initially deal the cards, the pattern is known as a layout or tableau. The layout can consist of rows (horizontal lines of cards), columns (vertical lines), or piles of cards (a compact heap, frequently of face-down cards, sometimes with the top card face-up). Sometimes the pile of cards is all face-up, but overlapping. Accordingly, you can see all the cards in the pile, even if you can only access the top, uncovered card. You can move tableaus under the correct circumstances, which are dictated by the rules of the particular Solitaire you’re playing.
Building involves placing one card on top of another in a legal move. The definition of a legal move varies according to the individual rules of the Solitaire.
In games where the objective is to build up cards on some of the original cards, the base cards are known as foundations. As a general rule, after you place cards on a foundation pile, you can’t move them. You may build on a tableau in some cases.The tableau and the foundation may sound like very similar items, but they differ in a few important ways. The object of a Solitaire is to build up the foundation; a tableau is just an intermediary home for the cards as they make their way to the final destination: the foundation. You use tableaus to get the cards in the right order to build on the foundation.
When you move a complete row or column, you create a space or gap into which you can often move whatever card(s) you like.
Frequently, you don’t use all the cards in the initial layout; the remaining cards are called the stock. You go through the stock to advance the Solitaire.
When working through the stock, you frequently have cards that you can’t legally put into the layout. In such cases, the unused cards go into the waste pile.
Redeals take place in the middle of a Solitaire when you’ve exhausted all legal moves. The rules of the Solitaire may allow you to redeal by shuffling and redistributing the unused cards in an attempt to advance the game.
Many Solitaires permit one cheat — you can move an obstructing card or otherwise advance the game. This process is also known as a merci.
After you build your own foundation of Solitaire knowledge, you can begin to explore the many variations of the game. The following sections detail some of the specific types of Solitaires.
Putting the Squeeze on Accordion
The game Accordion is also known as Methuselah, Tower of Babel, or Idle Year (presumably because of the amount of time you need to keep playing the game to win it).
Accordion is a charmingly straightforward game that can easily seduce you into assuming that it must be easy to solve. Be warned — I’ve never completed a game of Accordion, and I don’t know anyone who has! This challenge, I can only assume, makes success at the game doubly pleasurable.
Accordion also takes up very little space — a major benefit because you tend to play Solitaire in a cramped space, such as a bus station or an airport lounge.
The objective of Accordion is to finish up with a single pile of 52 cards. Relative success is reducing the number of piles to four or fewer. Your chances of complete victory may be less than 1 in 1,000, based on my experiences, but don’t let that deter you from giving this game a try! The fact that it is a very fast game to play means that you can abandon unpromising hands and move on to another, without wasting much time.
Looking at the layout
The layout for Accordion is simple. Follow these steps to begin your long journey:
1 Shuffle the deck well, and then turn