Rules for Fortune's Favor

Family: Forty Thieves
Categories: Simple, Short, Easy to Win
Variants: Busy Aces
Also Known As:

Fortune’s Favor is easy to learn and play, and wins are very common. We’ve provided some strategy tips, but in fact this game is usually more difficult to lose than to win!

Layout

Place the four Aces in a row at the top; these start the foundations. Shuffle the rest of the deck, and lay out twelve cards face up in two rows of six; these start the tableaus. Keep the rest of the deck face down in your hand. You’ll be dealing from the deck into a discard pile which starts out empty.

Play

The foundations build up in suit to the King. Tableaus build down in suit. Top cards of the tableaus and the discard pile are available for play onto the tableaus or the foundations. An empty tableau may be filled from the discard pile.

Dealing

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

Goal

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

Tips

Always play onto the foundations as soon as possible; there’s no reason to delay any foundation move. (You can use Solitaire Till Dawn’s “Autoplay Lock” toolbar button to do this for you automatically, if you like.)

Try to keep at least one or two empty tableau piles. If you can make more without ignoring the rest of these tips, do it.

Leave high-ranking cards (9 or 10 and up) in the discard pile until you can play them to the foundations, or until you can move them to the tableau without using up an empty space.

Move low-ranking cards (that can’t be played to the foundations yet) into the tableau, using up empty spaces when necessary. This is both important and fairly safe, since you can hope to play them to the foundations sooner rather than later.

Late in the game, start pulling the high-ranking cards out of the discard pile and into empty tableaus.