Gaps (Montana)

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Card order
3. Setup
4. Playing
5. Redeals
6. Winning
7. Tips for beginners
8. Variants

Overview

Gaps, also called Montana, is a patience (a card game for one player, also called solitaire) in which every card lies face up in a big grid. You remove the four Aces, and the four gaps they leave are all you have to shuffle the other cards around. Your goal is to sort the cards so that each of the four rows holds one suit, in order from 2 on the left to King on the right.

• Players: 1
• You need: one standard 52-card deck, no jokers, and a table with room for four rows of thirteen cards.
• Time: about 10 minutes per game.

Card order

The Aces are removed, so each row runs from the 2 (lowest) to the King (highest):

2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – J – Q – K

Setup

1. Shuffle and deal all 52 cards face up in four rows of thirteen, side by side and not overlapping. This grid is the tableau.
2. Take the four Aces out and put them aside – they take no further part in the game. This leaves four gaps (empty places) in the tableau.

Playing

The only move is to fill a gap. You may move a card into a gap if it is the card one rank higher and of the same suit as the card directly to the left of the gap.

• Gap at the left end of a row: fill it with any 2.
• Gap to the right of a King: it is blocked – no card is higher than a King, so nothing may go there.
• Gap right of another gap: nothing may go there until the gap on its left has been filled.
• Every time you move a card, it leaves a new gap where it came from, which you can fill in turn.

Example: Somewhere in the tableau there is a gap right after the 7♣. You move the 8♣ into that gap. The place where the 8♣ lay is now a gap; the card to its left is the 5♦, so the 6♦ can go there next – and so on.

Which suit ends up in which row is up to you: the suit of the 2 you put at the left end of a row decides it.

Redeals

Sooner or later all four gaps lie to the right of Kings and you are stuck. Then you may redeal:

1. In each row, leave in place the cards that already run in order from a 2 at the left end in one suit (for example 2♠ 3♠ 4♠ 5♠). A row that doesn't start with a 2 keeps nothing.
2. Gather up all other cards, shuffle them and deal them face up to fill the rows again – but leave one gap in each row directly to the right of the cards you kept (at the left end if the row kept nothing).
3. Carry on playing as before.

You may redeal twice, so you have three rounds in all.

Winning

You win when each row holds one suit in order from 2 to King, with the gap at the right end. If you are stuck after the second redeal, the game is lost. Morehead and Mott-Smith estimated a chance of about one game in twenty.

Tips for beginners

• Before each move, look ahead: every move opens a new gap, and the card to the left of it decides what can follow. Look for moves that start a long chain.
• A gap behind a King is lost for the rest of the round. Try to fill the gaps that would otherwise end up there first.
• Choose the suit for each row by where its 2 and 3 already lie – a row that already contains a good run is worth building on.
• Kings at the far right end of a row are exactly where they belong; Kings in the middle of a row are a problem.

Variants

All of these are optional – choose one before you start.

• Aces in the redeal (as often played in Montana and Addiction): at a redeal, shuffle the Aces back in with the gathered cards, deal them all out to fill the rows, then take the Aces out again. The gaps now land at random places instead of right behind the finished runs.
• No shuffling: at a redeal, gather the cards and deal them out again in the order you picked them up. Easier – according to Wikipedia you can expect to win about one game in seven.
• Unlimited redeals: redeal as often as you like. With shuffling, winning is then only a matter of time.