🏺 Forty Thieves
🂡 Cards · 1 playsForty Thieves
Two packs, forty cards in the open, and one strict pass through the stock.
About Forty Thieves
Forty cards are dealt face up in ten columns, and the remaining sixty-four wait in a stock that is dealt one card at a time and never redealt. The rules are austere: columns build down in suit, one card moves at a time, and the eight foundations climb from Ace to King. That austerity is the appeal — with no second pass through the stock, every card played to a column is a commitment, and burying a card you will need is the standard way the game is lost. It has been a byword for a stern game of patience since the nineteenth century, and it has mellowed not at all.
How to Play
Build the columns down in suit, moving one card at a time; any card may fill an empty column. Turn the stock one card at a time onto the waste — there is no redeal. Raise all eight foundations from Ace to King, and think twice before covering anything.
💡 Tips & Strategy
The waste pile is the game. With no redeal, a card played from stock to waste is not gone — it can still be played later — but only in reverse order, so burying a card you need under cards you cannot use is the standard fatal error. Before turning each stock card, know what you are waiting for and what you dare not bury.
Keep at least one empty column at almost any price. One space lets you move two-card sequences in stages, unpick a bad stack, and accept an awkward stock card without burying it in the waste. Two spaces make the middle game nearly comfortable. A board with no spaces and a growing waste is a board losing quietly.
Build down evenly rather than beautifully. A long suit run in one column looks like progress but consumes cards other columns need as landing places, and it can only be dismantled one card at a time. Short runs spread wide keep more cards playable. Watch especially for the second copy: two of everything exist, and stranding both copies of a rank under blockages ends the game as surely as any single mistake.
Send cards to the foundations with mild reluctance. A card on the foundation cannot receive anything, so keep low cards in the tableau while they still serve as building steps — but never hold a card whose twin already went up and whose suit below is complete. Late in the game reverse the caution entirely and race the foundations, because the endgame is a pure count of what the waste will still surrender.