Guide
How to Play Forty Thieves Solitaire
Forty Thieves deals two full decks into ten face-up columns of four — the forty thieves that give the game its name — and asks you to bank all 104 cards onto eight foundations, one Ace-to-King climb per suit, twice over. The head of the Napoleon at St. Helena family, it is famous for two unforgiving rules: tableau columns build down by the SAME suit moving one card at a time, and the stock allows a single pass with no redeals.
Tradition holds that Napoleon played this patience in exile on St. Helena, which is why the family carries his name. The OPKA table deals every game from a seeded shuffle, so a finished win can be replayed and verified on the server before it ranks on the leaderboard.
How Forty Thieves is set up
Forty Thieves uses two standard 52-card decks shuffled together. Ten tableau columns each receive four cards, all dealt face up, so the whole starting position is visible from the first move.
The remaining 64 cards form the stock. Cards drawn from the stock turn up one at a time onto the waste, and only the top waste card is playable. Eight foundation spaces — two per suit — wait for the Aces.
- Tableau: ten columns of four face-up cards where the sorting happens.
- Stock: 64 face-down cards, drawn one at a time, one pass only.
- Waste: the face-up draw pile; only its top card is playable.
- Foundations: eight piles, each building one suit up from Ace to King.
Legal moves
Tableau columns build downward by the same suit: the 7 of spades stacks only on the 8 of spades. Only one card ever moves at a time — even a perfectly ordered same-suit run must be dismantled and rebuilt card by card, which is the constraint that defines the whole family.
Any single card may move to an empty column; there is no King restriction. Foundations start with an Ace and climb by suit with no wraparound, and because the double deck holds two Aces of every suit, each suit fills two piles. A card may continue either matching-suit pile.
Draw from the stock when nothing else helps. The draw is one card at a time and the stock allows exactly one pass — once it runs out, the waste is never recycled.
Why the odds are so tough
Forty Thieves is one of the hardest widely played solitaires: typical win rates sit in the low single digits to perhaps one game in ten for careful play. Single-card moves make burying a card expensive, and the one-pass stock means every waste card you skip may be gone for good.
The open deal is the counterweight. All forty tableau cards are visible from the start, so losses tend to trace back to plans, not luck alone — which is exactly what keeps dedicated players coming back.
The Napoleon at St. Helena family
Forty Thieves is the parent of a large family of two-deck patiences, most named for Napoleon's exile: Napoleon at St. Helena is the same game, while cousins like Josephine relax the single-card rule and others vary the column count or passes.
When a variant advertises easier rules — run moves, extra passes, fewer columns — it is measuring itself against this game. Learning the strict original makes every relative feel generous.
A practical strategy checklist
Empty columns are the engine of the game. With single-card moves, a free column is the only workspace you have for dismantling stacks, so open one early and think hard before filling it.
Watch the stock as much as the tableau. Each draw buries the previous waste card, and with one pass there is no second look — sometimes the right move is to place a playable waste card somewhere imperfect rather than draw past it.
- Dig for Aces first; a locked Ace freezes its whole suit twice over.
- Keep at least one column empty as a staging lane for single-card shuffles.
- Do not stack a card onto the only copy of the card beneath it in reach — same-suit builds bury exactly the cards that free them.
- Count the stock: late in the single pass, banking to foundations beats tidying the tableau.