Rules for Scorpion

Family: Yukon
Categories:
Variants: Wasp, Yukon, Double Scorpion, Russian Solitaire, Grandma Sawyer's Game
Also Known As:

Scorpion is a variant of Russian Solitaire. Morehead and Mott-Smith give the chance of winning Scorpion as 1 in 10, in their excellent and comprehensive “The Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience Games.”

Layout

There are seven tableau piles, fanned down, each with seven cards. In the leftmost four tableaus the bottom three cards are face-down; the rest are all face-up. The remaining three cards are kept in the deck until you decide to deal.

Play

All face-up cards are available for moving among the tableaus, which build down following 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.

Dealing

When you are stuck, deal the remaining three cards face-up onto the bottoms of the leftmost three tableau piles.

Goal

The goal is to collect all the cards into four piles, each pile consisting of thirteen cards in suit and in order from King down to Ace.

Tips

Reveal the face-down cards as soon as possible.

Empty spaces are more useful in the three right-hand columns, where they won’t be filled by the deal. (After the deal, this doesn’t matter any more.)

Exposing Aces (that are already face-up) is less useful than exposing other cards, because nothing can be played onto an Ace. (However, such a move may be useful anyway, because splitting the column may open up other plays.