Note: This simple little solitaire program has since evolved into politaire.com, a site with over 500 solitaire games. This version has some bugs, so if you really want to play a lot of Forty and Eight, I recommend using the politaire version instead. This is mostly just here because I think politaire was cute as a baby.

Forty and Eight

The Game

Forty and Eight is a solitaire game played with two decks of standard playing cards. Its rules are very simple and most games are winnable, but it is difficult enough to be pleasantly challenging.

Cards can only be moved one at a time.

You begin with eight empty foundation spaces across the top of the screen. Your object is to transfer all 104 cards into these eight foundation piles. You may move an ace into any empty foundation pile. Cards can be added to a foundation pile if they are of the same suit and of the next highest rank. So the only card that can be played into a foundation pile with a five of spades showing is a six of spaces.

You start with forty cards dealt into the tableau, in eight stacks of five, all face up. Only the top card from each pile may be moved. That card can be moved to the foundation or another tableau stack. A card may be moved to a tableau stack only if it is of the same suit and of the next lowest rank. So the only card that can be played into a tableau stack with a five of spaces on top is a four of spaces.

Any card may be played into an empty play pile.

At the bottom of your screen is the face down deck of cards and the talon. You may deal cards one at a time from the deck to the talon. The top card of the talon may be moved to either the foundation or a play stack.

When the deck is empty, the talon may be gathered up to form a new deck, but this may only be done once, so you only get two passes through the deck.

The Interface

Deal cards from the deck by clicking on it.

Drag cards to move them.

A card partially under another card can be revealed by clicking on it.

The program will automatically move cards to the foundation for you, unless there are two cards that could be moved to the same spot, in which case the choice is up to you.

These automatic moves are not always a good idea. Sometimes it is unwise to move cards to the foundation too soon. In such cases, you should use the "Undo" button to move the card back.

The seed number of the current game is displayed in the browser's title bar. If you want to replay the same game later, add that seed number to the URL after a question mark, like this:

	    http://unixpapa.com/fortyandeight?12345

Variations

The "Option" button will allow you to change the game rules, and set some interface preferences. Options you set will persist in future games unless you reset them.

There are many variations of Forty and Eight, using different starting tableaus and different numbers of decks of cards, and allowing different numbers of passes through the deck. You can set these options options from the option deck. Changes in the arrangement of the starting tableau or number of decks will not take effect until the next game you play.

The following rules variations are common:

Standard rules for "Forty and Eight" allow only one pass through the deck, with no redeals. This is much harder than our default version.
The standard "Forty Thieves" solitaire game is played with a 10x4 tableau, two decks, and one pass.
A three deck variation of "Forty Thieves" is usually played with a 12x4 tableau, three decks, and one pass.
A four deck variation of "Forty Thieves" is usually played with a 14x6 tableau, four decks, and one pass.
The "Forty-Nine" solitaire game is played on a 7x7 tableau, with two decks, one pass, but suits don't have to match when playing onto the tableau.

You may need a computer with a larger than average screen to play some of the games with larger tableaus.

The Program

This program was written in Javascript by Jan Wolter. It runs entirely in your browser, with no server-side processing.

I am grateful to David Bau, who wrote the open source seedable random number generator used here, and to the creators of open source card images used here, which was a PySol card set derived from gnome-games 1.0.2 (gdk-card-image) copyrighted by Heiko Eissfeldt, Michael Bischoff, Felix Bellaby, Ryu Changwoo, and Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer.