Generous rule, hard ceiling

Shamrocks Solitaire

Fans that accept a card one rank up or one rank down, in any suit — and then stop dead at three cards. There is no redeal, so the ceiling is what the whole game is really about.

Eighteen fans
Up or down, any suit
Three cards to a fan
No redeal

Foundations0/52

Tableau52

Fans18

Moves0

Foundations

Build foundations by suit and keep the three-card fan limit in mind.

Fans capped at three

Shamrocks Solitaire rules

Worth printing for the two rules people misremember: the three-card ceiling, and that building runs in both directions.

Shamrocks Solitaire setup and rules
Setup
Deck	One standard 52-card deck, dealt face up.
The fans	Seventeen fans of three and one fan of a single card.
Kings	Any king dealt above the bottom of its fan is slid underneath the others.
Foundations	Four, built up by suit from the ace.
Moving cards
On to a fan	One card at a time, on to a card one rank higher or one rank lower.
Suits	Ignored completely when building on fans.
The ceiling	A fan may never hold more than three cards.
Groups	Never. Only the exposed card of a fan moves.
Empty fans	Stay empty. Nothing can be played into the space.
To a foundation	Ace first, then up in suit.
Winning
Win condition	All four foundations complete from ace to king.
Losing	No legal move remains. There is no redeal and no second pass.

Kings pushed under

How to play Shamrocks Solitaire

The deck is dealt face up into eighteen small fans, and only the last card of each is playable. Aces go up to the foundations, which build in suit as usual. Everything else moves between fans under a rule that is unusually forgiving: a card may land on any exposed card exactly one rank away, higher or lower, whatever the suit.

That would make for a very easy game were it not for the ceiling. No fan may ever hold more than three cards, so the same generosity that gives you plenty of moves also fills your landing squares up and closes them. There is no redeal to reset the damage.

The result plays quite differently from its stricter relative, La Belle Lucie. There you hunt for a legal move. Here you usually have several and the question is which ones you can afford.

What the ceiling allows

Moves the three-card rule permits and blocks

Legal and illegal Shamrocks moves
The move	Verdict	Why
A fan of two shows the 8♥ on top. You play a 9♠ on to it.	Legal	One rank up, and suit is irrelevant. The fan grows to three.
A fan of two shows the 8♥ on top. You play a 7♣ on to it.	Legal	One rank down works just as well. Either direction is legal.
A fan already holding three cards shows the 8♥ on top. You play a 7♣ on to it.	Illegal	Three cards is the ceiling. That fan can never accept another card.
A fan shows the 8♥ on top. You play a 6♦ on to it.	Illegal	Two ranks away. The gap must be exactly one.
A fan shows the 8♥ on top. You play the K♠ on to it.	Illegal	Kings sit one rank above the queen, not above the eight.
A fan is emptied. You play a card into the space.	Illegal	Empty fans are dead ground, exactly as in La Belle Lucie.
A queen is the exposed card of a fan whose bottom card is a king.	Legal	Perfectly normal — kings are tucked at the deal, not during play.

Reading a fan takes two checks, not one. Both fans show an eight, so both look equally inviting. Only the shorter one is actually a target. Getting into the habit of counting the cards before planning a move is most of what separates a comfortable Shamrocks game from a stalled one.

A deal-time rule, not a play rule

Why the kings start underneath

As the fans are dealt, any king that lands above the bottom of its fan is slid underneath the cards below it. It is done once, at the deal, and never again during play.

The reason is that a king is the worst possible blocker. Nothing in the deck outranks it, so under a build-up-or-down rule a king can only ever accept a queen — and it can never be moved on to anything except another king's neighbour. A king sitting on top of two cards would freeze them for the whole game, and with no redeal available there would be no way back. Four of those in a fresh deal would make most games unwinnable before the first move.

Baker's Dozen solves the same problem the same way, sinking its kings to the bottom of their columns at the deal. It is a good sign that a game has no redeal: the designers had to defuse the kings up front.

Working capped fans

Shamrocks Solitaire strategy

Count fans, not cards. At any point the number of fans holding fewer than three cards is your real supply of moves. When that number gets low, the game is closer to over than the foundations suggest.

Spend the ceiling on excavation. Adding a card to a fan is worth it when it uncovers something you need, or clears the way to an ace or a foundation card. It is rarely worth it merely because the move is available.

Look up as well as down. The exposed 8 takes a 7 or a 9. Scanning only for the lower card is the most common way to miss the move that would have kept the deal alive.

Empty fans do nothing for you. As in La Belle Lucie, a cleared fan is not a resource, it is one fewer place to put things. Clearing one is fine as a by-product of good moves and a poor goal in itself.

Three deciding moments

Where Shamrocks games are actually decided

Filling a fan to three for a move you did not need

Every card you add to a fan spends part of a finite resource: the number of cards the tableau can still absorb. A fan at two is a landing square, a fan at three is a wall. Adding a card that neither frees a foundation card nor uncovers something useful converts a square into a wall for nothing, and there is no redeal to undo it.

Forgetting that the rule runs both ways

Because most solitaire builds downward, players reach for the lower card by habit. Here an exposed 8 accepts a 7 and a 9 equally, which roughly doubles the moves available at any moment. Deals are regularly lost with a legal upward move sitting in plain sight.

Digging out a card with nowhere to send it

Uncovering the card you want is only half a move. If the card sitting on top of it can only go to a fan that is already at three, it is not going anywhere, and the card underneath stays buried. Check the destination before you commit to the excavation.

Shamrocks' odds

Is Shamrocks Solitaire winnable?

More often than La Belle Lucie, despite having no redeal. The up-or-down rule with suits ignored is a very large concession, and tucking the kings away removes the single worst thing a deal can do to you.

What ends games is the ceiling rather than a shortage of legal moves. You will usually have something to play right up until you do not, and the transition can be abrupt. We do not publish a win rate here; the figure moves a great deal depending on whether a version caps fans at three, and this one does.

This version

Kings tucked, fans capped, one pass only

One deck as seventeen fans of three and one fan of one, all face up.
Kings dealt above the bottom of a fan are moved beneath it.
Fans take a card one rank higher or lower, any suit, one card at a time.
No fan may exceed three cards.
Empty fans cannot be filled. Foundations build up in suit from the ace.
No redeal and no reshuffle.

Undo is unlimited and unpenalised, with no timer or score. Some published versions omit the king rule or allow a redeal; both make the game markedly easier.

Against La Belle Lucie

Shamrocks among the no-stock games

Four games with the whole deck on the table and nothing held back. The interesting column is the king rule: it is the tell for whether a game expects to give you a second chance.

Shamrocks compared with La Belle Lucie, Baker's Dozen, and Flower Garden
Game	Tableau building	Pile limit	Kings	Recovery
Shamrocks	Up or down, any suit	Three cards	Tucked to the bottom at the deal	None
La Belle Lucie	Down in suit	None	Block like any other card	Two reshuffles
Baker's Dozen	Down, any suit	None	Sunk to the bottom at the deal	None
Flower Garden	Down, any suit	None	Block like any other card	None

Shamrocks is the only one of the four with a pile limit, and the only one that needs one — the others restrict what may land on a card, so their piles police themselves.

Explore

More solitaire games

The stricter cousin, the other king-burying game, and a garden with no ceiling.