How to play Aces Up Solitaire

What you need and how to set up

All you need is a standard 52-card deck with the jokers removed and enough table space for a row of four cards. Cards rank the usual way with the Ace on top: A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. Suits matter only for matching; no suit outranks another.

Shuffle and hold the deck face down. This is the stock. Deal four cards face up in a row, left to right. Each of those cards starts a pile. Leave room above or below the row for a discard pile, which is where every card you remove ends up. Cards in a pile overlap so you can see all of them, but only the card on top of each pile can be played.

Discarding: the one rule that matters

Look at the four top cards. If two or more of them share a suit, every one of those cards except the highest may be discarded. A 4 of spades showing next to a 9 of spades can go; the 9 stays because nothing higher in spades is showing.

• Only top cards count. A higher card buried halfway down a pile cannot be used to discard anything.
• Discards chain. Removing a card uncovers the one beneath it, which may now match a different top card. Keep checking after every discard.
• Different suits never interact. A King of hearts cannot remove a 2 of clubs.
• Aces can never be discarded, because no card outranks them. That is why the game ends with the four Aces.

The Ace of a suit is the most useful card you can have showing: while it is on top of a pile, every other card of that suit that surfaces can be discarded.

Empty piles

When a pile runs out of cards, its space is empty. You may move the top card of any other pile into it, one card at a time. The card you move becomes the bottom of that pile, and later deals stack on top of it.

Empty piles are how you reach buried cards. The most common move is to take an Ace that is sitting on top of other cards and give it a space of its own, which frees the cards underneath and parks the Ace where it belongs. Once the stock has run out, empty piles are the only way left to dig anything out, so use them carefully.

Dealing the next four

When you have made every move you want, deal four more cards from the stock, one onto each pile from left to right, including any empty piles. A 52-card deck gives you thirteen deals of four. Every deal covers all four top cards, so make your discards before you deal; a card you could have removed may end up buried.

Winning, losing and scoring

You win when the stock is empty and each pile holds exactly one card, an Ace. That means you discarded 48 cards. You lose when the stock is empty, no pile is empty and no top cards share a suit; nothing else can happen at that point.

Most games are lost. Only about one deal in nine can be won even by a player who knows the order of the deck, and a strong player who can't see ahead wins somewhere around one game in 35 to 50. Our odds study explains why. In the app, your score is the number of cards you discarded, so 48 is a perfect game and a close loss still shows how near you came.

A worked example

The first deal shows 7♥ K♠ 3♥ 9♣. The 3♥ and 7♥ share a suit, so the 3♥ goes. The third pile is now empty, but moving the 9♣ or the K♠ into it would only swap one lone card for another, so deal again.

The second deal lands Q♥ on the 7♥, 2♠ on the K♠, A♣ in the empty third pile and 5♣ on the 9♣. The tops now read Q♥ 2♠ A♣ 5♣.

1. The A♣ outranks the 5♣: discard the 5♣, which uncovers the 9♣.
2. The A♣ outranks the 9♣ too: discard it. The fourth pile is now empty.
3. Move the Q♥ into the empty fourth pile. That uncovers the 7♥ in the first pile.
4. The Q♥ outranks the 7♥: discard it. The first pile is empty.
5. Move the 2♠ into the empty first pile. That uncovers the K♠, which outranks it: discard the 2♠, and the first pile is empty again.

Two deals in, five cards are gone, the Ace of clubs has a pile of its own, the King of spades is showing to clear any spade that turns up, and there is an empty pile waiting for the next deal. That is what a good start looks like.

Rule variations you may run into

Aces Up is old enough to have picked up several names and house rules. The most common changes are allowing only Aces into empty piles, which makes the game much harder, or adding a single free cell, which makes it much easier. The names and variants guide covers Idiot's Delight, Firing Squad and the rest. Aces Up Solitaire plays the standard rules above.

Playing Aces Up Solitaire in the app

Tap the deck to deal four. Drag a top card onto the discard pile to remove it; the app only lets the move through when a higher card of the same suit is showing. Drag a top card onto an empty pile to move it there. A short table guide appears on first launch, and the score at the top counts your discards.

Two extras change the rules slightly in your favor. A Joker power-up clears every card except the Aces from one pile, and Aces Up Pro adds undo and double-tap to discard. Both are optional; the standard game is always there.