Rules for Rouge et Noir

Family: Rouge et Noir
Categories: Rewarding, Two-Deck, Large
Variants:
Also Known As: Red and Black

“Rouge et Noir” is French for “Red and Black,” and the game is named for its tableaus which alternate red and black cards. Many other solitaires do the same, but Rouge et Noir is interesting for its large double-deck layout and for its easy but not automatic wins.

Layout

Remove the Aces from two decks of cards, then shuffle the remaining cards. Place the Aces face up in a row to form the eight foundations. Deal eight cards from the deck face up in a row under the foundations to form the eight tableaus. Hold the remainder of the deck in your hand, face down; this is the stock. A discard pile starts the game empty.

Play

Turn up one card at a time from the stock; this is the “card in hand.” The card in hand and the top cards of the tableaus and the discard pile are available for building onto the tableaus and the foundations. The foundations build up in suit; the tableaus build down in alternating colors. If the card in hand can’t be placed anywhere else, put it on the discard pile and turn up the next card from the stock.

Empty tableaus may be filled from the stock or the discard pile. (A variant of the game requires that empty tableaus be filled immediately from the discard pile, or from the stock if the discard pile is empty. Solitaire Till Dawn does not enforce this rule.)

Dealing

When the stock is empty, you may redeal once by picking up the discard pile and turning it face-down to refill the stock.

Goal

The goal is to move all the cards onto the foundations.

Tips

Okay, this isn’t one of the games we feel we’re expert at, so take this advice with a grain of salt. We think it’s wise to keep a couple of empty tableau piles; that way, if you have a black six alone in a pile and you turn up a red seven, you can play the seven to an empty pile and then the six onto the seven, preserving the number of empty piles you have.

Don’t be too eager to make builds that start with low-rank cards. If you wait, you might find an opportunity to start the build with a higher-ranked card. You should prefer builds that start with higher-ranked cards; they’ll hold more cards in nice order, ready to go to the foundations.

Remember that you get two passes through the stock, and that the game uses two decks. You can leave some low and high cards in the discard pile the first time through the stock, and you’ll get another chance to play them the second time.