Golf Solitaire Rules

Golf Solitaire borrows its scoring language from the sport: one deal is a hole, every card you fail to clear is a stroke, and nine holes make a round. On the table it is much simpler than that sounds. You move cards to a waste pile one at a time, and each card must be one rank above or one rank below the card on top.

All 35 tableau cards are dealt face up, so nothing is hidden from you. The luck sits in the deal itself. After that, planning decides more than it does in most other solitaires.

A single hole takes about five minutes. A full nine-hole round runs to half an hour or more.

One standard 52-card pack, jokers removed.

Pen and paper if you play a full round, since nine scores are more than most people care to keep in their head. A single hole needs nothing.

Space-wise the game is modest: seven short columns in a row, with the stock and the waste pile below them.

Deal seven columns of five cards, every card face up. Overlap the cards within each column so all five can be read, but only the top card of a column, the one with nothing covering it, is in play.

That is the tableau: 35 cards. Turn one more card face up to start the waste pile.

The last 16 cards go face down next to the waste pile as the stock.

A top card may be moved to the waste pile when it is one rank higher or one rank lower than the card showing there. Suit never matters. With ♥️6 on the waste pile, any 5 or any 7 can go.

Every card you play resets the target. Put ♠️7 on that ♥️6 and the next card must be a 6 or an 8, and so a chain grows. You may change direction as often as you like, so 6, 7, 8, 7, 6, 5 is a perfectly good run.

Cards never move between columns, only to the waste pile, and once played they are gone: only the top of the waste pile counts.

An emptied column simply stays empty. That costs you nothing, since emptying all seven is exactly the goal.

Nothing may be played on a king. The moment a king lands on the waste pile, the chain dies, and your only way forward is the stock. Getting a king off the table works one way only: playing it while a queen shows on the waste pile.

Aces are nearly as awkward. The ace is low and the sequence does not wrap around, so no king goes on an ace and no ace on a king. The one card that follows an ace is a 2.

That makes eight cards, four kings and four aces, that can strand you. Find them in the columns before you make your first move.

When the tableau offers nothing more, turn the top card of the stock onto the waste pile and carry on from there.

There is no digging back through the waste pile and no second pass through the stock. Once all 16 stock cards have been turned and no move remains, the hole is over.

Clear the whole tableau before the stock runs out and you have won the hole, and whatever the stock still holds works in your favour on the scorecard.

Count the cards left in the tableau when the hole ends. Those are your strokes: seven cards left means seven strokes. If you cleared the tableau, score one minus stroke instead for each card still in the stock.

A round is nine holes, with a full shuffle between them and a running scorecard. Par is four strokes a hole, 36 for the round, and finishing below that is good play.

Nothing stops you from playing single holes with no scorecard at all. A cleared board is its own reward.

These rules describe strict Golf Solitaire: seven columns of five face-up cards, one starter on the waste pile and a 16-card stock. Cards play one rank up or down regardless of suit, nothing goes on a king, and the sequence does not wrap between king and ace. A round is nine holes with a par of four strokes each. The wrap-around versions are covered under variants and house rules.