Forty Thieves Solitaire Tips: Same-Suit Building, Eight Foundations and Reading a Hard Deal (2026)

Q: What is the deal number under the title?

It identifies the shuffle. Add ?deal=12345 to the page URL to play that exact deal again, and share the number to compare the same board. Without it every load deals a fresh random board.

Last updated: October 8, 2026 · Tested on Playnesta's Forty Thieves build (self-hosted muzsor/solitaire-collection engine @ 13ce580c, MIT, plus a Playnesta-original rules module) · Deck: two decks, 104 cards · Columns: 10 x 4 face-up · Foundations: 8 (two per suit) · Stock: 64 cards, one at a time, no redeal

Method: every number below comes from this site's playable build and was measured, not quoted. The headless run passed 55/55 checks: a clean start with zero console errors, zero external requests and zero 4xx responses; the deal (104 cards from two decks, ten columns of four face-up, a 64-card stock, eight empty foundations two per suit); same-suit descending placement accepted while a different suit, a wrong rank and a duplicate rank are rejected; only the top card of a column pickable and a card below the top rejected (no sequence moves); an empty foundation taking only its own suit's ace; the stock turning exactly one card and never redealing; the win firing when the eighth foundation completes; real mouse play, undo, hint, restart and the No-moves bar; and both production stages (348x261 and 894x670) with no overflow, every pile and action button inside the stage, and a real touch tap turning a card and moving a card. Difficulty was then measured by playing 3,000 deals with a deliberately weak greedy baseline (numbers in section 6).

1. The deal you actually get

Two full decks are shuffled together — 104 cards. Ten columns are dealt four cards each, all face up, so 40 cards are visible before you move. The other 64 cards become the stock, face down. Nothing is hidden in the columns: unlike Klondike there is no face-down card waiting to be uncovered, so everything you need to judge the deal is on the table from move one.

That is the first difference from every other patience on this site. There is no reveal, no flipping, no luck left to run. The deal is fully known; the only unknown is the order of the 64 stock cards, and you will see each one exactly once.

2. One card at a time — the rule that decides everything

In Klondike and Spider you can lift a whole descending run and move it as a block. Here you cannot. Exactly one card moves per move, and only the top card of a column is ever playable. A run of five spades sitting in one column is still five separate moves if you want it somewhere else — and the order you move them in matters, because the first card you move has to land somewhere legal on its own.

Practically: count the moves, not the cards. A tidy-looking column of four spades looks close to finished, but getting those four cards onto the foundations is four moves plus whatever shuffling is needed to expose them in the right order. This is why Forty Thieves punishes tidiness and rewards a plan.

It also means empty columns are precious and dangerous at the same time. Any single card may be placed on an empty column, so an empty column is a universal slot — but moving a card there is one move spent and, if the card was alone in its column, exactly nothing gained. Use empty columns to park the card that is blocking a foundation, not to shuffle for the sake of it.

3. Same suit only: colour means nothing here

Columns build down by rank in the same suit only. A spade 7 goes on a spade 8. It will not go on a heart 8, it will not go on a club 8, and a diamond 7 will not go on a spade 8. Colour is irrelevant — red on black is a Klondike habit and it is wrong here.

With two decks you hold two of every card, so there are two spade 7s and two spade 8s. Both copies build the same way, and this is where the game gets its texture: you are constantly deciding which of the two copies goes where, because one of them is going to end up on a foundation and the other one is going to end up as scaffolding for something else.

The habit worth building: before you move a card down, ask whether it is the copy you want to bury. A card placed under another card is a card you will have to move again to free.

4. Eight foundations, two per suit: how the aces work

There are eight foundations, two per suit, and each one is bound to a single suit and builds up from Ace to King. Because you have two of every card, both aces of a suit get played — one starts each of that suit's two foundations.

This is the rule that trips up players coming from Klondike, where there is one foundation per suit and a second ace is dead weight. Here a spare ace is a whole second pile: an empty foundation takes only its own suit's ace, so a heart ace cannot start a spade foundation even though the spade foundation is empty. The board enforces this and the foundation shows its suit symbol so you can see at a glance which pile wants which ace.

Foundations take only the next rank of their own suit — no skipping, no filling a gap later. That means a 5 of spades with the 4 already home is a permanent candidate, while a 5 with no 4 on any foundation is worth nothing yet. Reading the foundations tells you which tableau cards are actually valuable right now.

5. No redeal: read the deal before you commit

The stock turns over one card at a time onto the waste, and — this is the rule that defines the game — there is no redeal. When the stock is empty it stays empty. The waste pile only ever grows.

Contrast that with Klondike (turn the waste back over, as often as you like) and Spider (five fresh rounds of ten cards). Forty Thieves gives you 64 stock cards and 64 chances. Every card you turn over that you cannot place is a card you will only see once, and a card you could have placed had you arranged the columns first.

So the opening is not "start turning". It is: play every free foundation card you can, make the tableau moves that open the most future placements, and then start turning. When you do turn, keep an eye on the count — the stock badge shows how many cards are left, and when it hits zero the deal is frozen. Undo (up to 500 steps in a session) is the only way back.

6. How hard is it, really?

Forty Thieves has a reputation, and the measurement backs it up. Playing 3,000 random deals with a deliberately weak greedy baseline — send anything that fits a foundation, pull the waste top onto a column, otherwise turn the stock, and only shuffle the tableau once the stock is empty — the baseline collected 20.3 cards out of 104 on average (median 19; the middle 80% of deals landed between 10 and 32) and won none of the 3,000. It turned the entire 64-card stock in 100% of deals, and 26.0% of deals ended with no legal move left at all.

Opening mobility is the other useful number: across those 3,000 deals the opening position offered 3.2 legal moves on average, and 6.6% of deals had no legal opening move whatsoever — you turn a stock card straight away and hope. That is not a bug and it is not rare; it is roughly one deal in fifteen.

Read those numbers the right way. They describe a baseline, not the game's ceiling: a human who plans the tableau before turning the stock will collect far more than 20 cards, and there are published Forty Thieves deals that are genuinely winnable. But the shape of the game is honest — most deals will not be won, the stock is a one-way resource, and the skill is in losing slowly and spotting the deals that are actually live. Treat a 30-card deal as a good one.

FAQ

How do you play Forty Thieves Solitaire?

Ten columns of four face-up cards are dealt from two decks, and 64 cards become the stock. Build columns down in the same suit, move one card at a time, put any single card on an empty column, and fill eight foundations from Ace to King (two per suit). Turn the stock one card at a time. Win by filling all eight foundations.

Can I move more than one card at a time?

No. Only the top card of a column is playable, and each move is one card. There are no sequence moves, so a descending run cannot be lifted as a block — that single rule is the biggest difference from Klondike and Spider.

Why is there no redeal?

It is part of the game, not a missing feature. Forty Thieves turns one card at a time from a 64-card stock and never turns the waste back over. When the stock is empty the deal is frozen; undo or a new deal are the only ways out.

Why does my heart ace not go on the empty foundation?

Each foundation is bound to one suit, and there are two per suit. An empty foundation takes only its own suit's ace, so a heart ace starts a heart foundation and a spade ace starts a spade foundation. The foundation shows its suit symbol.

What is the deal number under the title?

It identifies the shuffle. Add ?deal=12345 to the page URL to play that exact deal again, and share the number to compare the same board. Without it every load deals a fresh random board.

Is a deal ever unwinnable?

Yes, often. In 3,000 measured deals a weak baseline never won one, and 26% ended with no legal move at all. Six percent of deals have no legal opening move, so you turn a stock card immediately. Plan before you turn, and treat finishing the foundations as the exception.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The board is fitted to the measured stage so all ten columns and the foundations sit inside the phone frame with no scrolling, and a real tap runs the same code path as a mouse click. The action bar keeps a measured gap from the stock so a tap on the stock cannot be stolen by the Undo button.

Where can I play it?

Right on this site's forty thieves solitaire page. The engine, renderer, card model, RNG, sound and stylesheet are the MIT-licensed solitaire-collection by muzsor (commit 13ce580c) shipped byte-identical; that pin has no Forty Thieves, so the rules module is Playnesta-original and follows the same contract as the upstream klondike module. Cards are DOM elements and sounds are WebAudio synthesis, so no bitmap, audio or font asset ships and nothing is fetched at runtime.