Strategy guide · Forty Thieves family
Forty Thieves
Two decks, forty face-up cards, one pass through the stock, and no help from anyone. The patriarch of its family, and still one of the purest tests in solitaire.
The deal
Shuffle two decks together and deal ten tableau columns of four cards each, all face up — the forty thieves. The remaining 64 cards form the stock. Eight foundations sit empty above.
Ten columns of four — the forty thieves
The rules
- Goal: build all eight foundations up in suit, Ace through King.
- Tableau building: down in suit — the 7♠ only goes on the 8♠ — and strictly one card at a time. No moving runs.
- Empty columns may be filled by any single card.
- The stock: turn one card at a time to the waste; the top waste card is in play. There is no redeal — one pass is all you get.
Seven ways to win more often
- An empty column is the whole game. With single-card moves only, a free column is your one lever for rearranging anything. Fight to open one early, and think twice before every card you park in it — an occupied column is just another pile.
- Dig where the digging is cheap. Before touching a column, count what's actually reachable: a buried Ace under three off-suit cards you can place elsewhere is a target; a buried Ace under a same-suit descending trap is not. Spend moves where they liberate cards, not where they merely tidy.
- Beware the same-suit sandwich. The deadliest formation is a lower card trapped under a higher card of its own suit inside one column — the 4♦ under the 9♦ can only escape through a free column. Spot these at the deal and plan around them from move one.
- Play the waste like a second layout. Cards go to the waste in an order you chose. Where possible, draw so that useful cards stack in playable sequence — a King under a Queen in the waste is fine; the reverse is a burial. Before each draw, ask what the current waste card still needs to do.
- Remember there are two of everything. If one 6♣ is hopeless, its twin may not be. Track duplicates before committing to a deep excavation — and conversely, don't relax when one copy reaches the foundation: the second suit still needs its own full ladder.
- Don't race a foundation past its usefulness. Mid-rank cards on foundations can't serve as tableau landing spots anymore. Keep the eight foundations loosely level so the tableau keeps places to build.
- Slow down at the stock. Every draw is irreversible progress toward the end of the game. Exhaust the tableau, then draw; never draw to "see what happens." Forty Thieves punishes curiosity like no other solitaire.
Why play it in Full Deck Solitaire
Forty Thieves anchors a whole wing of the Full Deck Solitaire library — once it has trained your instincts, Thieves of Egypt, Demons and Thieves, and Texas Fury each remix the formula in their own way. Per-game statistics keep an honest record of a game where a 15–20% win rate is genuinely good, and the three-level hint system will tell you whether that last position was truly dead or whether you missed the one move that mattered.