Rules for Mount Olympus

Family: Mount Olympus
Categories: Two-Deck, Large, Long, Pretty, Easy to Win
Variants:
Also Known As:

Mount Olympus is a large, double-deck game that is not too demanding and offers frequent wins.

Layout

Remove the eight Aces from a pair of decks, and place them face up in a row to form eight foundations. Also remove the eight 2’s and lay them out underneath the Aces; these are the other eight foundations.

Shuffle the remaining cards, then deal nine of them face up under the foundations; these are the tableaus.

Play

Build the foundations up by twos, following suit. The Aces build up by twos to the King: that is, they build Ace, 3, 5, 7, 9, J, K. The 2’s build up by twos to the Queen: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, Q.

The top card of each tableau pile is available for play on a foundation. or on another tableau. Tableaus build down by twos, in suit. Full builds in the tableaus may also be picked up and moved to other tableaus.

Empty tableaus must be filled immediately from the deck. (Solitaire Till Dawn X will do this for you automatically.)

Dealing

Whenever you wish, deal one card from the deck onto each tableau pile regardless of rank or suit. Usually you’ll deal when you’ve run out of other moves. There are no redeals.

Goal

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

Tips

Try to avoid leaving higher-ranked cards on top of lower-ranked cards in the foundations. You can’t help putting such cards down when you deal, but when it happens, try to move away or play up the higher cards as soon as possible.

If you can empty a tableau pile, do so. The more cards you can deal onto an empty space, the fewer will be dealt onto lower-ranked cards.

Don’t deal until you have nothing else to do.