Sultan Solitaire

Eight foundations, eight spaces

How to play Sultan Solitaire

Nine cards form the palace: a king of hearts in the centre — the Sultan — and eight foundations arranged around him. Seven of those are kings and one is the ace of hearts. Eight more cards form the Divan, a reserve beside the palace, and the rest become the stock.

Every foundation builds upward in its own suit. The seven that start on kings go straight to the ace and carry on from there; the ace of hearts simply climbs from where it is. All eight stop when they reach a queen.

Cards come from the eight Divan spaces, which refill from the stock as they empty, and from the top of the waste. You may go through the stock three times in all — the initial pass and two redeals.

Feeding the Divan

What the palace will accept

Spending the redeals

Sultan Solitaire strategy

Learn to read a king pile as starting at the ace. Once the king is down, the pile wants an ace, then a two — the same cards you would want in any ordinary game. Only the first step is odd.

Keep the Divan turning over. Eight cards refilled from the stock is your only way of seeing cards other than the one on the waste, so a Divan full of dead cards halves your board.

Watch the paired suits. Diamonds, spades and clubs each have two foundations wanting the same rank at once, so their low cards are in demand twice over.

Spend the redeals late. Eighty-seven cards is a long pass and the second and third are worth far more once several foundations are climbing.

Three quiet endings

Where a Sultan deal goes quiet

Playing the heart foundations without noticing which is which

Hearts are the odd suit here: one heart king sits in the centre doing nothing, a second heart king anchors a foundation, and the ace of hearts anchors another. Three heart cards with three different jobs, and mixing them up wastes moves you cannot get back.

Emptying the Divan for its own sake

The eight Divan cards are your only cards outside the waste, and they refill from the stock. Clearing a space is worth it when the card does real work, but spending Divan cards on marginal moves simply pulls the stock forward and gets you to the redeal sooner.

Drawing on past a card you could have used

Only the top of the waste is available. With eighty-seven cards and two redeals, most cards pass you three times at most — and each pass buries the ones you skipped under the ones you did not.

Two redeals, two decks

Is Sultan Solitaire winnable?

Reasonably often for a two-deck game. Eight foundations already seeded, an eight-card reserve that refills itself, and three passes through the stock is a generous combination by the standards of this family.

What loses deals is the waste rather than the palace: only its top card is available, and cards you skip are buried by the ones you draw next. We do not publish a win rate — the figure moves with the redeal count, and this version allows two.

Eight-foundation games

Two-deck games with eight foundations

Several games here set out eight foundations and feed them from a reserve. Each one does something structurally odd, and the last column is where they differ most.

Sultan and Royal Parade are the two that remove cards from play before you begin — one card here, all eight aces there. Both do it for the same reason: the sequences would not otherwise come out evenly.