Alternations Solitaire is one of the hardest solitaire games to win. However, this shouldn’t discourage you from playing this addictive game. It’s a two-pack solitaire version that’s a combination of Klondike and FreeCell. Half of the cards are dealt face up while the remaining half is dealt as face-down cards. Read on to learn how to play this game.
Card Layout
To play Alternations Solitaire, you’ll need two card decks without the jokers. Players shuffle two card packs together. Then deal seven cards in the first row as face up. After, you then form another row of seven face-down cards, overlapping the first row. You’ll then deal the remaining five rows with seven cards, alternating between a face-up and face-down pattern. In the end, your tableau should have seven columns with seven cards facing up in rows one, three, five, and seven and cards facing down in rows two, four, and six. The remaining cards will form the stockpile and are placed face down.
Alternations Software Rules
Once you have set up the game, you now should understand the rules. Note that rules featured in a solitaire game can make it easy or hard to win. Some online versions might allow you to change the rules of your game.
Your goal in Alternation Solitaire is to build cards into the foundation piles in suit from Ace to King. Since you are using two card decks, you’ll be required to build eight foundation piles. The standard rules for this game are;
- You build sequences on the tableau from King to Ace, in any color
- Players can go through the stock only once
- One can fill empty columns with a single card or a well-arranged card sequence
- You can move a packed sequence of cards either wholly or partially, however, the sequence must contain cards arranged in descending order.
- When a face-down card is freed, you can use it for play in the tableau
- If you can no longer build on the tableau or foundations, stock cards are turned each at a time to the waste pile.
- You can always play with the waste pile’s top card at any time.
- One can’t re-deal in this game. Therefore, if your stock is exhausted, you can’t make further moves.
But you can twist your game and make things more exciting by changing some rules. However, this depends on the version you are playing. Here’s what you can do;
You can build regardless of suit. Following this rule is the most crucial thing you can do to increase your winning chances. It allows you to build down cards with any suit. For instance, normally a red six of diamonds should only be placed onto a black 7. However, with this rule, you can place the 6 of diamonds onto 7 of hearts, spades, clubs, or diamonds.
You can also allow more than one redeal from the stockpile. One redeal might not be enough to expose all the cards you need. But many redeals create more winning chances.
Similar games to alternations software include;
- Interchange- where players deal with alternate cards as faced down
- Unlimited- one can redeal as many times as they want to
- Breakwater- you build in any suit
- Forty-Nine- cards are built following any suit one at a time
