Strategy Solitaire

Eight piles, one pass

How to play Strategy Solitaire

Cards come off the deck one at a time. Each one goes either on to a foundation that wants its rank, or on to any of the eight waste piles — and once it is placed, the next card appears. There is no drawing to look ahead and no putting a card back.

The four foundations are built ace to king. Suit plays no part: any ace starts a foundation, any two continues it, and the four piles are interchangeable. What matters is only the rank on top of each.

A card on a waste pile can be moved up to a foundation later, but only from the top of its pile, and it can never move to another waste pile. Everything you bury, you bury for as long as the cards above it stay put.

Choosing a pile

Where a card is allowed to land

Placing for later

Strategy Solitaire strategy

Keep the four wanted ranks in view. At any moment the foundations want at most four different cards, and often fewer. Every placement should be checked against that short list first.

Give the piles jobs. One for high cards you will not need for a long time, one or two kept shallow for cards close to the foundations, and the rest for everything in between beats spreading cards around evenly.

Be most careful in the first fifteen cards. That is when the foundations all want the same low rank and a mistake costs the most. Later, when the four foundations want four different ranks, almost any placement is survivable.

Never bury a card under one of the same rank. Two eights in the same pile means the lower one cannot be reached until the upper one is played, and they are wanted at the same moment.

Three placement errors

How a Strategy deal is thrown away

Sorting the waste piles by habit

There is no benefit at all to a tidy descending pile, because you can never move a waste card on to another waste pile. Only the top card matters. A pile with a useful rank showing beats a beautifully ordered one every time.

Burying the rank all four foundations want

Early on the foundations frequently want the same rank at once — four twos, then four threes. Dropping one of those into the middle of a pile costs you far more than burying a king, and the four wanted ranks are always visible. Check them before every placement.

Spreading cards evenly across eight piles

Eight piles is a lot of room, and using them all evenly wastes it. A better shape is a few piles held shallow and useful, with one or two deliberately used as a dumping ground for high cards nothing needs yet.

Skill, not luck

Is Strategy Solitaire winnable?

Often, with care — noticeably more often than Calculation, because eight piles is twice the room and building plainly from ace to king is far less demanding than four wrapping intervals.

It is also the game on this site where the gap between careless and careful play is widest. Nothing is hidden and nothing is random once the deck is shuffled, so every lost deal was lost by a decision. We do not publish a win rate: published figures for Strategy vary with the number of waste piles allowed, and this version gives eight.

Other sorters

Strategy among the sorting games

A small group of games give you no tableau at all and ask only where each card should go. They run from total control to none.

Calculation is the same game made hard: half the piles, and foundations that climb by ones, twos, threes and fours instead of plainly upward. Play Strategy first.