Sir Tommy

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Card order
3. The parts of the layout
4. Setup
5. Playing
6. Winning
7. Tips for beginners
8. Variants

Overview

Sir Tommy, also called Old Patience, is a simple patience (a card game for one player, also called solitaire). You turn the cards over one by one and try to build four piles from Ace up to King. Suits don't matter. Every card that doesn't fit yet goes on one of four waste piles – and choosing the right pile is the whole skill of the game.

• Players: 1
• You need: one standard 52-card deck, no jokers.
• Time: about 5 minutes per game.

Card order

The Ace is low. From lowest to highest:

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

The parts of the layout

• Foundations: up to four piles in a row, each started with an Ace and built up to the King, in any suit. They are empty at the start.
• Waste piles: four piles below the foundations, empty at the start, where you put cards you can't use yet. Spread each pile downwards so you can see all its cards, but only the top (last placed) card of each can be played.
• Stock: the whole shuffled deck, which you hold face down in your hand.

Setup

Shuffle the deck and hold it face down. Leave room for a row of four foundations and, below it, four waste piles.

Playing

Turn over the top card of the stock. You must place it straight away:

• An Ace starts a new foundation.
• Any other card may go on a foundation whose top card is one lower, in any suit – a 2 on any Ace, a 3 on any 2, and so on.
• If it doesn't fit, or you'd rather keep it, put it on any one of the four waste piles. Any card may go on any waste pile, in any order.

At any time you may also move the top card of a waste pile to a foundation, if it fits there. That uncovers the card below, which may then fit too.

Cards can never move from one waste pile to another, or back from a foundation.

Example: The foundations show 4, 2 and A. You turn a 3: it goes on the 2. Next comes a J: no foundation wants it, so it goes on an empty waste pile. Then a 5: it goes on the 4. Then a 2: put it on the A – and the top card of a waste pile is a 3, so that goes on the new 2 as well.

Winning

There is only one pass through the stock – no redeal. When the stock is used up, keep moving waste-pile cards to the foundations for as long as you can. You win when all 52 cards lie on the four foundations. If cards are left on the waste piles and none of them fits, the game is lost. Morehead and Mott-Smith estimated a chance of about 1 in 5; David Parlett thought it could be as low as 1 in 16.

Tips for beginners

• Keep one waste pile for Kings and other high cards, so they don't bury the low cards you need soon.
• If you can, put a card on a higher card rather than a lower one: then the piles come off in the right order.
• Try not to put two cards of the same rank on one pile, and above all don't bury all four cards of one rank under higher cards – that blocks every foundation.

Variants

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

• Aces out first: take out the four Aces as foundations before you start. A little easier.
• Four at a time: turn four cards at once and place all four before you move anything from the waste piles to the foundations. Harder.
• Old strict rule: square up the waste piles so that you can only see the top card, and remember what lies below. Ednah Cheney (1869) mentions this as the old rule.
• In suit: build the foundations in suit (only the 2♥ on the A♥). Cheney (1869) allowed two redeals for this much harder version: pick up the waste piles, shuffle them and play them through again.