Aces Up

Last updated
Aces Up
A Patience game
Alternative namesFiring Squad, Drivel Patience, Idiot's Delight
Type Closed non-builder
FamilyDiscarding
DeckSingle 52-card
Playing time2–4 min
Odds of winning1 in 200 [1]

Aces Up is a quick and simple, one-pack, patience or solitaire card game. [2] [3]

Contents

One advantage of Aces Up is its minimal use of space: it requires only four piles of cards, and a place to discard cards to. Winning chances with good play are about 1 in 10 games. [4]

Names

Aces Up is also known as Aces High, [5] Idiot's Delight, [6] Firing-Squad [7] and Drivel [8] or Drivel Patience. [9] It shares the name Idiot's Delight with two other unrelated solitaire games, Perpetual Motion and King Albert. It shares the name Aces Up with Easthaven, which is a variation of Klondike and is also unrelated.

History

The rules are first recorded in England as Drivel Patience by Mary Whitmore Jones in 1900 who acknowledges that "this is not a complimentary name... but it is the one by which it is generally known, and to those accustomed to play games required care and consideration it seems appropriate enough to this one, which stands in need of neither." [9] In 1940, Wood & Goddard describe it under the name of Firing Squad, but most later authors call it Aces Up, while sometimes acknowledging its earlier names. Spadaccini (2005) is an exception, calling the game Idiot's Delight and giving alternative names as Aces Up and Aces High. [5]

Rules

Gameplay for Aces Up works as follows:

  1. Deal four cards in a row face up.
  2. If there are two or more cards of the same suit, discard all but the highest-ranked card of that suit. Aces rank high.
  3. Repeat step 2 until there are no more pairs of cards with the same suit.
  4. Whenever there are any empty spaces, you may choose the top card of another pile to be put into the empty space. After you do this, go to Step 2.
  5. When there are no more cards to move or remove, deal out the next four cards from the deck face-up onto each pile.
  6. Repeat Step 2, using only the visible, or top, cards on each of the four piles.
  7. When the last four cards have been dealt out and any moves made, the game is over. The fewer cards left in the tableau, the better. To win is to have only the four aces left.

When the game ends, the number of discarded cards is your score. The maximum score (and thus the score necessary to win) is 48, which means all cards have been discarded except for the four aces, thus the name of the game.

Variations

A much more challenging variation on Aces Up allows only the aces to be moved onto an empty pile. [10] This makes game play much more restrictive and consequently the game can only be completed roughly once in every 270 games.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of patience terms</span> List of terms used in the card games known as patiences or solitaires

Games of patience, or (card) solitaires as they are usually called in North America, have their own 'language' of specialised terms such as "building down", "packing", "foundations", "talon" and "tableau". Once learnt they are helpful in describing, succinctly and accurately, how the games are played. Patience games are usually for a single player, although a small number have been designed for two and, in rare cases, three or even four players. They are games of skill or chance or a combination of the two. There are three classes of patience grouped by object.

Spite and malice, also known as cat and mouse, is a relatively modern American card game for two or more players. It is a reworking of the late 19th-century Continental game crapette, also known as Russian bank, and is a form of competitive solitaire, with a number of variations that can be played with two or three regular decks of cards.

Perpetual Motion is a Patience game which has the objective of discarding playing cards from the tableau. The name relates to the time-consuming process of the game. It is also called Idiot's Delight or Narcotic.

Accordion is a patience or card solitaire using a single deck of playing cards. It is so named because it looks like accordion pleats, which have to be ironed out. The object is to compress the entire deck into one pile like an accordion.

Canfield (US) or Demon (UK) is a patience or solitaire card game with a very low probability of winning. It is an English game first called Demon Patience and described as "the best game for one pack that has yet been invented". It was popularised in the United States in the early 20th century as a result of a story that casino owner Richard A. Canfield had turned it into a gambling game, although it may actually have been Klondike and not Demon that was played at his casino. As a result it became known as Canfield in the United States, while continuing to be called Demon Patience in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It is closely related to Klondike, and is one of the most popular games of its type.

British Square is a patience or solitaire card game which uses two decks of 52 playing cards each. It is a fan-type game in the style of La Belle Lucie. It has an unusual feature of switchback building whereby each foundation is first built up and then built down.

Sir Tommy, also called Old Patience, is a patience or solitaire card game using a single pack of 52 playing cards. It is said to be the ancestor of all patiences, hence its alternative title. It is a half-open, planner type of patience game in the same family of card-building games as Calculation and Strategy. It is also known as Try Again and Numerica. Ednah Cheney (1869) calls it Solitaire and says "it is the simplest form of patience".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bristol (card game)</span>

Bristol is a Patience game using a deck of 52 playing cards. It is a fan-type game in the style of La Belle Lucie. It has an unusual feature of building regardless of suit on both the foundations and on the tableau; it is also one of the easiest to win. It was invented by Morehead & Mott-Smith around 1950.

Crescent is a solitaire card game played with two decks of playing cards mixed together. The game is so called because when the cards are dealt properly, the resulting piles should form a large arc or a crescent. An alternative and less common name for the game is La Demi-Lune.

Tournament is a patience or solitaire card game which uses two decks of playing cards shuffled together. It is a variant of the much older game of Napoleon's Flank or Nivernaise and was first known as Maréchal Saxe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baroness (card game)</span> Solitaire card game

Baroness is a patience or card solitaire that is played with a single deck of 52 playing cards. It is similar to other members of the Simple Addition family and is also distantly related to Aces Up.

Heads and Tails is a solitaire card game which uses two decks of playing cards. It is mostly based on luck.

Westcliff is the name of two closely related patience or card solitaire games of the simple packer type, both of which are played using a deck of 52 playing cards. One version is particularly easy to win, with odds of 9 in 10; the other is harder with odds closer to 1 in 4. The game has a variant, Easthaven.

Gay Gordons is a patience game played with a single deck of playing cards. Gay Gordons is also known under its alternative name Exit, and was invented by David Parlett.

Duchess of Luynes is a patience or card solitaire game played with two packs of playing cards. It is a member of the Sir Tommy family. A unique feature of this game is the building of the reserve, which is not used until the entire stock runs out.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Four Seasons (card game)</span> Solitaire game

Four Seasons is a patience or card solitaire which is played with a single deck of playing cards. It is also known as Corner Card and Vanishing Cross, due to the arrangement of the foundations and the tableau respectively. Another alternate name is Cross Currents.

Archway is a patience or solitaire card game of the open builder type that uses two packs of 52 playing cards. Its goal is to bring all 104 cards into the foundation. It was invented by David Parlett, and is based on an old French solitaire game called La Chatelaine.

Algerian or Algerian Patience is a unique and difficult patience or card solitaire using two decks of playing cards. The object of the game is to build 8 foundations down from King to Ace or up from Ace to King in suit.

Corona is a relatively long and difficult patience or card solitaire using two decks. The object of the game is to move all of the cards to the foundations. Successfully winning the game is considered difficult.

Travellers is a card game of the patience or card solitaire genre which uses a single card pack of either 52 or 32 playing cards. It is an interesting game based on "an entirely new principle" which Parlett describes as a "rhythmical feature that might be called 'shuttling'", as in the game of Weavers. It should not be confused with the twin-pack patience game, also called Travellers.

References

  1. ↑ Reddit simulation
  2. ↑ "Aces Up" (p.8) in Card & Dice Games by N.A.C. Bathe, Robert Frederick Ltd, 2004. ISBN   1-889752-06-1
  3. ↑ Aces Up and its Variations by Michael Keller, July 26, 2011
  4. ↑ "Aces Up" (p.198) in Hoyle's Rules of Games (3rd edition) by Philip D. Morehead (ed.), 2001. ISBN   0-451-20484-0
  5. 1 2 Spadaccini (2005), pp. 344–345.
  6. ↑ "Idiot's Delight" (p.45) in The Little Book of Solitaire, Running Press, 2002. ISBN   0-7624-1381-6
  7. ↑ Wood & Goddard (1940), p. 255.
  8. ↑ Parlett (1979), p. 181.
  9. 1 2 Whitmore Jones (1900), pp. 77–78.
  10. ↑ "Four Ace Patience" in 50 Card Games: 50 Popular Card Games for Hours of Fun. Igloo Books. 2018. p. 8. ISBN   9781784409852.

Literature

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