Australian Patience Game

Australian Patience is a one-deck solitaire that borrows its opening layout from Klondike and its looser tableau rules from Yukon, which is why it plays tougher than either parent game. Every card starts face up, so there's no early guesswork about what's buried, but the payoff for that visibility is a stock pile you only get to walk through once.

A round starts with the full 52-card deck dealt into seven columns and worked from there — freeing aces, opening up columns for kings, and shifting whole runs of cards around to expose what's underneath. Because nothing is hidden and there's no redeal, most of the game is spent thinking two or three moves ahead rather than reacting card by card.

How to Play

The deal splits the deck into seven tableau columns of four cards each, all face up, with the remaining 24 cards set aside as the stock. There are four open foundation slots, one per suit, and no separate reserve or waste row to start.

• Tableau piles build downward by suit — a 9 of Clubs sits on a 10 of Clubs, not on a red 10.
• Any card, or any stack of cards regardless of whether they're in order, can be picked up and moved together onto another pile.
• Only a King can fill an empty column.
• Foundations build up by suit from Ace to King, and once a card lands there it stays.
• When the tableau runs dry, turn stock cards over one at a time onto a waste pile — there's no redeal, so every draw is final.

Controls

Click and drag a card, or a stack of cards, to move it onto a new pile. On a touchscreen, the same works with a tap and drag.

Tips

• Free up Aces and low cards early, before they get buried under a long run.
• Keep at least one column empty when you can — it's the only place a stray King has to go.
• Move full runs together rather than breaking them apart, so you don't undo the order you just built.
• Slow down before drawing from the stock — with no redeal, a careless draw can't be taken back.

It's a good fit for players who already know Klondike or Yukon and want a single-player card game that punishes rushing rather than rewards it.