Rules for Australian Patience

Family: Yukon
Categories:
Variants: Canberra,Tasmanian Solitaire
Also Known As:

Australian Patience is a blend of Yukon and Klondike. It’s a fairly quick game, ruled more by luck than strategy. You can expect to win two or three games in ten.

Layout

There are four foundations, which are initially empty. There are seven tableau piles, fanned down, which starts with four face-up cards each. The remaining cards form the deck. A discard pile starts empty.

Play

Top cards of tableaus are available for building onto the foundations, which build up following suit. Only an Ace may be played to an empty foundation.

All face-up cards in the tableaus are available for moving among the tableaus, which build down and follow suit. The moved card and the rest of its fan all move together, even if they are not all in sequence. Only Kings or fans whose bottom card is a King may be played to an empty tableau pile.

Goal

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

Dealing

You may deal at any time by taking a card from the hand and turning it face up onto the discard pile. There are no redeals: when the deck is empty, you can no longer deal.

Tips

Beware of burying a card in the discards that you will need to expose cards in the tableau. For example, if you bury the King of Clubs you will never be able to reach anything in the tableau that is under the Queen of Clubs. (Sometimes you can uncover a “buried” card in the discards by playing away all the cards that buried it, but that’s not always possible.)

For this reason, it’s usually good to create a couple of empty tableau piles immediately if you can, and save them for Kings that come up in the deal.