Forty Thieves
Also known as Napoleon at St Helena, Big Forty, Roosevelt at San Juan, Le Cadran
- Players
- 1 player
- Deck
- 2 standard decks (104 cards)
- Time
- 20-45 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Category
- Solitaire (1 player)
Setup
Shuffle two full 52-card decks together into a single 104-card pack. Deal 40 cards face up into ten columns of four, going across the row so each column takes one card per pass, and overlap them so every rank stays readable. Nothing is concealed: all forty are in plain sight before you touch anything.
The rest of the pack goes face down as the stock, with a space beside it for the waste. Above the tableau, leave room for eight foundations — each suit is built twice, once from each deck.
Clear a broad table first. Two decks in ten columns need considerably more space than any one-deck game, and by mid-play a single column can run past a dozen cards.
Play
The eight foundations climb in suit from the ace — two spade piles, two heart piles, two of each of the others, every one running ace to king. A card sent to a foundation is finished with. It cannot be brought back down, which turns each promotion into a decision rather than a reflex.
The ten columns build downward in suit and in suit only. The 9 of spades goes on the 10 of spades and nowhere else at all. Ranks do not wrap round: an ace at the end of a column is the bottom of its run and takes nothing, and a king moves only to an empty column or onto its own foundation. Anyone arriving from Klondike will lay a red card on a black one out of pure habit; there is no colour rule here to reward that.
Then the restriction the game is famous for. Exactly one card moves at a time, always. Your candidates are the exposed card at the end of a column and the card on top of the waste, and either may go to a foundation, onto another column, or into an empty column. Suppose a column ends in the 10, 9, 8 and 7 of spades in perfect order: you still have to relocate them one by one, which means finding homes for three of them before the run can travel anywhere. Nothing anywhere in the rules picks up a group.
An empty column, by contrast, takes any card whatever. Empty columns are the only manoeuvring room the game hands you, and most of Forty Thieves strategy follows from that single fact. A spare column is how you dig out a buried ace, how you reverse a column into a usable order, and how you unload the waste. Getting home typically depends on clearing one or more columns, and emptying one early is the first thing to play for; filling a column back in without a plan is the move that undoes the work.
Turning the stock is your own affair: one card at a time, whenever you choose, with nothing obliging you to wring the tableau dry first. A turned card may go straight onto a column or a foundation if it fits; otherwise it lands on the waste, where only the top card is live and cards come off singly. The stock runs once — 64 cards, 64 turns — and in the strict game it ends there, the stock gone for good. Accounts differ over whether the waste may then be turned and dealt again as a second pass, so settle that before you start. Whatever you strand under an unplayable waste card stays stranded until that card finds a home.
Nothing is compulsory, and holding a card back is often correct. The 5 of diamonds sitting at the end of a column is somewhere to park the 4 of diamonds; on the foundation it is somewhere you no longer have. Aces go up as they appear, and a low card dug out from under a king is worth promoting at once; past that, since a promoted card never comes back, each promotion is worth weighing against the parking space it costs you.
The deal is over when all eight foundations are complete, or when the stock is spent and nothing legal remains. You will usually recognise a loss well before that formal ending: once both copies of a card you need are buried under lower cards in every column, with no empty column in prospect, the position is dead even though moves are still available.
Goal & scoring
You win by completing all eight foundations — every suit built twice, ace through king, all 104 cards off the table. There is nothing in between; the deal is won or it is not.
Traditional play keeps no score. Some computer versions add a Klondike-style arrangement of points per card promoted plus a time bonus.
The figure quoted about this game is its win rate, and it is punishing: the chances of winning have been estimated at about one deal in ten, with getting home turning on whether you can clear a column or two. That is an estimate rather than a measured ceiling, and how many deals would fall to perfect play with every card known is a different question again.
Whether skill or luck decides a deal is genuinely disputed. Some accounts put the outcome down to the order the cards happen to fall and treat the game as very largely luck; others describe it as a test of planning that rewards thinking several moves ahead. Losing is the normal outcome on either account, and the sensible way to keep score is across a session rather than a deal.
Variants
Josephine — The Forty Thieves layout and rules with the one-card restriction dropped: a descending same-suit run at the end of a column may be lifted and moved as a block. The run has to be in order and in suit to travel, and an empty column will accept a whole run as readily as a single card. That one change removes most of the drudgery of shuffling cards through empty columns, and moving built sequences together is one of the commonest variations applied to this game.
Streets — Everything as in Forty Thieves — ten columns of four, eight foundations, one pass through a 64-card stock, one card moved at a time — except that the tableau builds down in alternating colours instead of in suit. Doubling the number of cards that will accept any given card makes a real difference, and it is the natural first step down in difficulty for anyone finding the parent game airless.
Maria — Nine columns of four rather than ten, so 36 cards are dealt and 68 go to the stock, and the tableau builds down in alternating colours. The narrower tableau costs you a column of working space while the colour rule gives back flexibility, and the winning chances have been put at about one deal in eight against roughly one in ten for the parent game. Also recorded as Thirty-six Card Tableau.
Limited — Twelve columns of three, again 36 cards on the table, with the same same-suit building and the same one-card-at-a-time rule as Forty Thieves. Shallow columns mean far less is buried at the outset and two extra columns mean more places to put things, so the opening is much freer even though nothing about the movement rules has been relaxed. Its winning chances have been put at about one deal in five.
Rank and File — Ten columns of four again, but only the last card of each column is dealt face up; the three under it lie face down and turn over as they are uncovered. Ten cards visible at the start where Forty Thieves shows forty, which hands the game the hidden information the parent has none of. The tableau builds down in alternating colours, and a descending run may travel as a block, whole or in part, which the parent game never allows. Hidden cards make the opening harder to read, but the colour rule and the group move together more than pay for them: the winning chances have been put at about one deal in two. Also seen as Dress Parade.
Background
The Napoleon in the name is a story rather than a record. Legend puts this particular game in the exiled emperor's hands on St Helena, and the attribution is at least as old as 1870, when it was first written down under his name — but a legend is all it is, and by some accounts an unlikely one.
The French name Le Cadran, 'the dial', appears in 1874 and points at a possible French origin. Forty Thieves and Big Forty are American names recorded from the 1920s, and Roosevelt at San Juan first turns up in 1939. Collections have gone on printing the game under the Napoleon name more often than any of the others, which is worth knowing if you go looking for it.
Under whichever name, it is the parent of a large two-deck family — Streets, Maria, Limited, Rank and File and a dozen besides — and most of them exist to make the original easier to win.
Rules checked against Wikipedia, Solitaire Central Rulebook, Semicolon Solitaire Rules, BVS Solitaire, Solitaire Association, Denexa Games, SuitedGames, Solitaired.