Trefoil + Draw

Trefoil + Draw is a classic “Fan” style game, challenging and winnable a lot of the time.

  Trefoil + Draw is my favourite of all the Fan style games, and one of my top choices when I feel like a few quick games of solitaire, without having to worry about complex strategies using Cells, etc…   This game is a slight variant on ‘Trefoil’, adding an opportunity to free up a blocked card one single time – I find this small concession very satisfying when you’ve played a good game and just been a little unlucky in the lay of the cards in the last deal.

  The rules are very simple – build the Foundations up in suit, and you can build the Tableau piles down in suit.  Only one card at a time may be moved, and you can’t re-use spaces.  The result of this, is that in for any deal you often get one or more cards that are immediately blocked.  For example, any cards under a King, which can only be moved directly to Foundations.   It also means that a card can only be moved once during a deal, as it only has one possible target it can be played on.
This game gives you several options to escape when the game is completely blocked…

Redeal:

You’re allowed 2 re-deals during the game, where any cards not on a Foundation pile are gathered, shuffled and re-dealt to the Tableau.

Draw:

As a last result, you have a single chance to pull any card out and put it on top of its pile – this can be extremely useful when the board is well set up, but one card is blocked.   The best strategy tends to be to use the re-deals first, and save your Draw for the very last deal, when you’re totally stuck, and have no other options.

During each deal, after clearing cards that may be played immediately to Foundations, the next thing you should consider is what plays are  “low hanging fruit”.  Check the location of all the Kings, since there’s nothing you can do to move them, and immediately build on any that are at the top of their piles, since we know they can’t be moved by themselves except to Foundations, and the cards built on them are not going to prevent that.   Next, check to see if there are any piles that contain only a single card – and build on them as much as you can next, since they won’t be blocking any other cards.

Once you’ve built all you can ‘for free’, you’ll need to examine the board and see which cards have a chance to be freed, and which ones will never be freed (i.e. under Kings or other blocked cards), build so that you can free up cards that might have a chance to go to Foundations, and ignore anything that will be stuck for this deal.   You’ll often find that one move will block another move, so there’ll be tradeoffs to be made about which cards will be freed, and which can be blocked until the next deal.

When you are finally stuck, and ready to execute the “Draw”, it’s worth considering lateral moves.  Often the instinct is to free a card that can move straight to the Foundations, and this is often the right move, but occasionally there are other ways to use this.  Take this example below for example.  If we want free up all the cards we can in the Clubs suit, it’s tempting to pull the 5Clubs to the top of the pile, and play from there.  This will enable us to play the 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of clubs.  However, if instead of Drawing the 5Clubs, we Draw the 10Clubs, that will enable us to move the 9Clubs onto it, and free the 5Clubs that way, and we’ll be able to play the 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 , and 10 of Clubs, giving an advantage.

 It’s often useful to use the 4-colour deck, as you can very quickly see the distribution of your suits across the Tableau

Using the Four Colour deck with Trefoil + Draw

“Trefoil + Draw” is available now on Allgood Solitaire for OS X , and also in Allgood Solitaire for iPad.

Gaps

Gaps is one of those classic games, that is very simple to learn and understand, and offers a large opportunity for skilful play.  It offers an interesting change from the usual formula of building up foundation piles, but instead all cards are always visible, and you try to rearrange them in order.

The layout is arranged in 4 rows, with 13 spaces in each row. The object of the game is to arrange all cards in order from left to right, counting up from 2 to King, with all cards in the same row in the same suit.  (Aces are not used in this game, they are simply discarded and never show up)

 

There are simple rules for re-arranging cards.  You may only move a single card to gaps (never onto other cards).  Any gap can only be filled with a specific card matching suit to the card on the left of the gap, and one value higher.   So you can place the Jack of Diamonds in a gap to the right of the 10 of Diamonds, like this.

 

 

Here’s a game in progress, you can see how the cards are arranged from left to right.

For the spaces on the far left, you may place any 2, and no cards may be placed to the right of a King.  Once all the gaps end up next to Kings, the game is blocked, and there are 2 redeals available.  When redealing, all the cards currently in order are left in place, and the remainder are shuffled and laid back out, leaving gaps to the right of each correct line.

When moving cards, try to see which cards will be freed by any new move, and favour moves that free up other cards – you’ll find that runs develop within the layout.  I find the “Jumbo – Four Colors” deck to be very useful with this game:

See related games: Free Parking, Double Gaps

Available in all versions of Allgood Solitaire

Eight Off

Eight off is very similar to the popular game Free Cell, characterised by the special “Cell” piles which can hold any single arbitrary card from any pile.  Just like the classic foundation building games, the game is won by moving all cards to the foundations, which are built up in suit, from Ace to King.  You’ll need to free up cards in the Tableau to play to the Foundation piles, by moving them to other Tableau piles, when allowed by the building rules, or moving them in and out of the Cells, which can be used to hold any single card.

 

Unlike In Free Cell, you can build Tableau piles down by alternating colour (red on black), in Eight Off, the building is more restricted, and can only be done in the same suit.  This means there’s less options to build within the Tableau, but this is balanced by having more Cells available to hold cards.   Like in Free Cell, you may move sequences of cards between Tableau piles, but only if there are enough cells empty so that each card in the sequence may have been moved individually.  So when you start filling up your cells, you can only move smaller sequences between piles.  When Tableau piles are empty, you may move any King, or King-headed sequence to it.

I’ve found it very tempting to try to free all the Aces right away, by moving cards on top of them to the Cells, but it usually hurts me, as it blocks a lot of Cells right away, and blocks opportunities to build and move large sequences of cards within the Tableau.  What I find works better is to only free Aces that are buried by a single card if possible, and then look at which piles will cause trouble later, because they have a higher card of a suit, above a lower card of the same suit in a pile.  The larger the sequence built on that higher card, the harder it is to free the lower card later, and it’s impossible to move them to the foundation while that lower card is blocked.  I try to free those lower cards as much as possible, and guarantee that I won’t get blocked later in the game.   After that, I concentrate more on building sequences in the Tableau, than moving cards to foundations – as the sequences are revealed, you’ll generally find that cards go to the Aces by themselves.

I always use the 4 colour deck with this game – it’s set up a per-game deck preference so it’s automatically switched in when the game is chosen.  The 4 colour deck makes it very easy to see where my suit sequences are, and I can easily find cards I need to build that are buried in other piles.

Related Games: Free Cell, Seahaven Towers

Available now in all versions of Allgood Solitaire

Corners

Corners always has a special place in my heart, as it’s one of the first Solitaire games I ever learned, with a lovely symmetric layout, mixing foundations and tableau piles in the same grid.

Foundation piles sit in the corners of the grid, and build up in suit until all cards of that suit are in the pile.  At the start of the game, a random card is dealt to the first foundation, which becomes the starting value for all the other foundation piles.  After a king is played on a pile, you may play an Ace on it, to wrap around.

The Tableau piles in the center, may be built down, ignoring suit, and only one card may be moved at a time. When spaces form, you may play any card to them, which can be really useful as a staging area for combing two smaller piles into a larger one, when you are able.  The more gaps you’re able to create and keep, the more chances there are to restructure piles in the Tableau.

During play, the top card of the stock is always available, it may be played into the grid of Tableau and Foundation, or simply moved to the discard pile – the top card of the discard pile is always available for play.

There are no redeals in this game, so once a card is placed to the discard and covered with other cards, you can’t get at it, without playing the cards on top of it. As a result, you often don’t want to fill gaps in the Tableau quickly, it’s useful to have them available in case cards come up in the stock that you will need soon on a Foundation pile, and will probably block that foundation if they’re buried in the Discard pile.

Related Games: Czarina, Windmilll

Available now in all versions of Allgood Solitaire