Hope Deferred

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Setup
3. Playing a round
4. Winning
5. Tips for beginners
6. Variants

Overview

Hope Deferred is a tiny patience (a card game for one player, also called solitaire) played with a short deck of 32 cards. You pick one suit – in these rules the hearts – and try to get all eight of its cards out of the deck. You deal the cards three at a time and take out every heart that shows. You have three rounds to find them all. There is nothing to decide, so it is pure luck, over in three minutes and easy enough for young children. In German books the same game is called Herz zu Herz ("heart to heart").

• Players: 1
• You need: a standard 52-card deck with the 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s taken out – 32 cards, 7 to Ace in each suit.
• Time: about 3 minutes per game.

Setup

1. Take all 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s out of the deck and put them away. You play with the remaining 32 cards.
2. Choose the target suit – the suit you hunt. Old English books use clubs, German books hearts; it makes no difference. The rules and examples here use hearts.
3. Shuffle and hold the deck face down. This is the stock.

Playing a round

1. First deal: turn over three cards and lay them face up side by side. They start three piles. Put any heart aside, out of play; its place stays empty until the next deal.
2. Next deals: turn over three more cards and lay one face up on each pile (or in its empty place). Put any heart aside – the card below it shows again.
3. Deal five times in all: five deals of three cards, 15 cards per round.
4. End of the round: gather the three piles, put them with the rest of the stock (never the hearts you have put aside) and shuffle well.

Play three rounds. You don't have to finish a round once all eight hearts are out.

Example: The first deal shows 9♣, A♥ and K♠. The A♥ goes aside, and its place stays empty. Second deal: Q♥ on the 9♣, 7♦ into the empty place, J♥ on the K♠. Both hearts go aside, so the 9♣ and K♠ show again. Third deal: 8♠, 10♥ and 7♣ – the 10♥ goes aside. After three of the five deals, four hearts are out.

Winning

You win if all eight hearts are out by the end of the third round. If even one heart is still in the stock or the piles, the game is lost. According to Mark Masten's computer runs, about 39% of games come out.

Tips for beginners

• There is nothing to plan – enjoy the suspense, and count the hearts that are out.
• Shuffle well between rounds, or the cards you have just seen come back in the same order.
• The piles are only there to deal onto: a heart counts the moment it shows, whichever pile it lands on.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• Knockout (filling the gaps): when a heart turns up in the first deal, fill its place at once from the stock (again, if that card is a heart), so a round can have more than 15 cards. This is how most English books since 1898 play it. A little easier: Morehead and Mott-Smith gave one game in three, Mark Masten's computer runs about 44%.
• Abandon Hope: play with the full 52-card deck and hunt all 13 cards of the suit, dealing eight times three cards (24 cards) per round. Only about one game in five comes out.