The same opening every time

Addiction Solitaire

Four rows of thirteen with a gap waiting at the end of each. Cards only ever move into a gap, and the card you move leaves a new one behind — so every deal is a question of which four holes to open next.

Gaps at every row end
Aces removed
Three shuffles
Gaps land at random

Ordered0/48

Gaps4

Shuffles3

Moves0

Preserve correct left-side runs, then redeal the unlocked cards and gaps.

Move cards into gaps to build each suit from 2 to king.

Gaps and shuffles

Addiction Solitaire rules

The shuffle is the rule worth reading twice — it moves the gaps as well as the cards.

Addiction Solitaire setup and rules
Setup
Deck	One standard 52-card deck, aces removed.
Layout	Four rows of thirteen cells, holding the forty-eight remaining cards.
The gaps	One at the right-hand end of each row — the same opening shape every deal.
Shuffles	Three.
Moving a card
Where cards go	Into a gap only. The card leaves a new gap where it was.
A gap at the left edge	Takes any 2.
A gap elsewhere	Takes the next rank up in the same suit as the card immediately to its left.
A gap after a king	Dead for the rest of the deal.
A gap after another gap	Unusable until the one on its left is filled.
The shuffle
What survives	Correct runs counted from the left edge of a row: the 2, then 3, then 4 of one suit, and so on.
What is redealt	Every other card — and the gaps, shuffled in among them.
The consequence	Gaps can land anywhere, including immediately after a king.
How many	Three, then the deal is over when nothing moves.

Where this one differs

Every Addiction deal opens the same way

Gaps and Montana lift the aces out of a full grid, so their four holes appear wherever the aces happened to fall — sometimes usefully near the left of a row, sometimes uselessly stacked together. Addiction deals the forty-eight cards into the first twelve cells of each row and puts a gap at the end of every one.

That makes the opening position identical in shape every single time, and it is worth knowing what that shape means. A gap at the right end of a row is only useful if the card in the twelfth cell has a successor you can reach — and if that card is a king, the gap is dead before you have made a move.

Four rows, four gaps

How to play Addiction Solitaire

Forty-eight cards fill four rows of thirteen, one gap left at the end of each. A card may only move into a gap, and it leaves a fresh gap behind it — so the holes travel around the board as you play.

A gap at the left edge of a row accepts any 2. Any other gap accepts exactly one card in the whole deck: the next rank up, same suit, as the card sitting immediately to its left. Gaps after a king accept nothing, and a gap with another gap on its left has nothing to follow.

The goal is four rows each reading 2 through king in one suit. No foundations, no stock, no hidden cards — just forty-eight cards and the order you choose to move them in.

A fixed opening is not the same as a fair one. The four gaps always sit in the right-hand column, but what they are worth depends entirely on the four cards beside them. Check those before anything else: with four kings in the deck, opening deals where one or two of the gaps are already dead are common.

Filling a gap

What a gap will and will not accept

Legal and illegal Addiction moves
The move	Verdict	Why
The gap is at a row's left edge. You move the 2♥ in.	Legal	Any two may start a row.
The gap is at a row's left edge. You move the 3♥ in.	Illegal	Rows start on a two, always.
The card left of the gap is the 9♣. You move the 10♣ in.	Legal	Next rank up, same suit.
The card left of the gap is the 9♣. You move the 10♠ in.	Illegal	Right rank, wrong suit.
The card left of the gap is a king. You move a card in.	Illegal	Nothing follows a king. That gap is finished.
A run of 2♦ 3♦ 4♦ sits at a row's left edge. You shuffle.	Legal	Legal, and those three cards stay exactly where they are.
You shuffle for the fourth time.	Illegal	Three shuffles is the limit.

Working the gaps

Addiction Solitaire strategy

Get a two to a left edge early. Until a row starts with a two, nothing in that row can ever lock, and locking is the only progress that survives a shuffle.

Extend locked runs before anything else. A move that lengthens a correct run from the left edge is permanent; a move anywhere else is on loan until the next shuffle.

Watch which cards sit left of your gaps. Four gaps with kings beside them is a lost position even with cards everywhere; one gap next to a useful card is worth more than three dead ones.

Do not shuffle from a weak board. Because the gaps are scattered along with the cards, a shuffle from a position with nothing locked can easily give you a worse board than the one you left.

Where it freezes

Why Addiction boards stop moving

Treating the opening as four real moves

Every deal starts with one gap at the end of each row, which looks like four options. It usually is not: a gap only accepts the card following whatever sits to its left, so a row ending in a king starts the game with a dead gap. Read all four left-hand neighbours before your first move.

Shuffling to escape rather than to advance

The shuffle reshuffles the gaps along with the cards, so it can hand you a board with two gaps stacked side by side or sitting behind kings. It is not a reset to a clean position — it is a gamble that pays best when you already have long locked runs protecting the left of each row.

Building a row from the middle

Only cards in an unbroken correct run from the left edge survive a shuffle. A beautiful 7-8-9-10 assembled in the centre of a row is worth nothing the moment you shuffle, and it consumed moves that could have extended a locked run instead.

After the shuffles

Is Addiction Solitaire winnable?

Sometimes, and rather less often than the three shuffles suggest. The catch is that the shuffle scatters the gaps too, so it is a genuinely risky action rather than a reliable recovery — unlike Gaps, which places its gaps neatly after the locked runs.

Skill matters most in the first twenty moves, before any shuffle, while you still control where the holes go. We do not publish a win rate: across this family the number is dominated by the redeal rules, and Addiction's are the most volatile of the three.

This version

Row-end gaps, three shuffles, scattered redeals

One deck with the aces removed; forty-eight cards in four rows of thirteen.
Each row is dealt twelve cards, leaving a gap at its right end.
A left-edge gap takes any 2; any other gap takes the next rank up in the suit on its left.
Gaps after a king, or after another gap, cannot be used.
Three shuffles, preserving correct runs from the left edge and scattering the gaps.

Undo is unlimited and unpenalised, with no timer or score. The same puzzle appears here as Gaps and Montana, which deal their holes differently.

Gap games compared

Three ways to deal the same puzzle

The movement rule is identical across all three. What changes is where the holes begin and what a redeal does with them — which turns out to matter more than the count.

Addiction compared with Gaps and Montana
Game	Opening gaps	Second chances	Where the gaps go on a redeal
Addiction	One gap at the end of every row	3 shuffles	Gaps shuffled in with the cards
Gaps	Wherever the four aces fell	3 redeals	Gaps placed after the locked runs
Montana	Wherever the four aces fell	2 redeals	Gaps placed after the locked runs

Addiction and Gaps both allow three attempts, so the last column is what separates them: Gaps hands your holes back in an orderly place, Addiction throws them wherever they land.

Explore

More solitaire games

The two other deals of this puzzle, and a rank-driven classic with no decisions at all.

Tested rules

How this solitaire game is checked

Game logic is implemented and tested by Brian Hamilton, then reviewed by Karan Hamilton for rule clarity, player flow, and correction notes.

How we make and test solitaire games