How To Play Double Klondike
Posted: Tuesday, May 08, 2007
by Dan Fletcher
Dan Fletcher
Most people have played regular Klondike- the standard solitaire game that comes with Microsoft Windows, but not so many people have played Double Klondike.
This is a shame- because it's quite a fun solitaire game, and is a lot more easy to win than regular Klondike. It's quite similar, but uses two decks, instead of one, which makes the game much less based on chance.
You start the game by dealing to 9 different card stacks, adding one more to each stack as you go. So the first stack has 1 card, the next stack has 2, the next has 3, until the last one, which has 9 cards.
The top card of each stack is face-up, and the rest of the cards are all face down.
This means there are 45 cards dealt out initially, which leaves 59 cards in the stock. The cards from the stock can be dealt out at any time, with 3 being dealt out in one go.
Other than the different layout, the rules are exactly the same as regular klondike solitaire.
Ie:
- Empty columns must be filled with a King.
- Complete sequences of cards can me moved in one move.
- You can move a card if it is a different color, and a descending rank, to where you want to move to. Eg: A 9 of Clubs can be moved onto the 10 of Diamonds.
You might think that double klondike would be harder than regular klondike solitaire, because of the extra cards- but this is actually incorrect.
Double Klondike is actually easier to win, because you are less likely to get trapped. There are more moved available, and if you follow the correct strategy, it's usually not too hard to win...
** Double Klondike Strategy **
Always move Aces and Two as soon as they can be played.
The rest of the time, try to only move a card if the four cards of lower rank, and opposite color, have already been played to the foundations.
For example: Try not to move the 5 of hearts until the two 4 of clubs, and the two 4 of spades, have already been played.
It's okay to move cards to the foundation when these conditions haven't been met, but it may trap you later...
Dan Fletcher is a developer at dogMelon. They make Classic Solitaire, a fun pack of solitaire card games for Palm, Mac, and PC. Classic Solitaire has a great collection of fun solitaire games, including spider solitaire and spider solitaire.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Sounds like fun. Thanks for showing me something else to become addicted to at my computer. :)
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