| A Patience game | |
 The layout at the start of the game of "La Belle Lucie." The game of "Shamrocks" starts the same way. | |
| Family | Fan |
|---|---|
| Deck | Single 52-card |
| See also Glossary of solitaire | |
Shamrocks is a solitaire game akin to La Belle Lucie. The object is the same as the latter: move the cards into the foundations. [1] [2]
The game is layout out as in La Belle Lucie: seventeen piles of three cards are placed on the table with one card counting as an eighteenth. [3] Any card that can be moved to the foundations should be moved and built up by suit (starting from the ace). The top card of each pile can be used for play and once a pile is empty, it cannot be refilled.
But its similarity to La Belle Lucie ends there. Before the game begins, each King which is on top or middle of its respective pile is placed underneath. Morehead and Mott-Smith's rules to the game specifically states that a King that is on top of a lower-ranked card of the same suit should be placed under that lower-ranked card, no matter what else in its pile. Some rules suggest that kings not be moved to the bottom of the piles during the initial layout (as pictured on the right), which significantly decreases the chances of successful play.
To play on the tableau, a card can be placed on a card that is one rank higher or lower, regardless of suit (a 6♠ can be placed on a 7♣ or a 5♦). However, each pile can hold no more than three cards at a time; thus no card can be placed on a pile with three cards.
The game is won when all of the cards have been moved to the foundations.
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.
Klondike, also known as Canfield, is a card game for one player and the best known and most popular version of the patience or solitaire family, something which "defies explanation" as it has one of the lowest rates of success of any such game. Partly because of that, it has spawned numerous variants including Batsford, Easthaven, King Albert, Thumb and Pouch, Somerset or Usk and Whitehead, as well as the American variants of the games, Agnes and Westcliff. The distinguishing feature of all variants is a triangular layout of the tableau, building in ascending sequence and packing in descending order.
Gargantua is a patience or solitaire card game that is a version of Klondike using two decks. It is also known as Double Klondike and as Jumbo.
Black Hole is a patience or solitaire card game. It is of the open builder type; its play is similar to Golf and Tri Peaks, but with a tableau of fans like that of La Belle Lucie. Invented by David Parlett, this game's objective is to compile the entire deck into one foundation.
House in the Woods is a patience game which uses two decks of 52 playing cards. The game is basically a two-deck version of La Belle Lucie, but it borrows two things from its cousin Shamrocks, namely the building of cards up or down and the fact that there are no redeals.
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.
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.
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.
St. Helena is a patience or card solitaire game using two decks of playing cards shuffled together. Despite its name, it has no connection to the island with the same name, nor should it be confused with the better known Napoleon at St Helena, also called Forty Thieves in the US.
Intelligence is a Patience game which uses two decks of playing cards mixed together. It is basically a two-deck version of another solitaire game, La Belle Lucie, and its game play is somewhat closer to the parent game than its cousins House in the Wood and House on the Hill. As the name suggests, with intelligent play good players should be able to win about half of their games.
Capricieuse is a solitaire card game which is played using two decks of playing cards.
Leoni's Own is a 19th century American card solitaire played with two decks of playing cards shuffled together. This game may have come from Austria, takes approximately 20 minutes and is described as medium regarding difficulty and also uses an ingenious method called weaving.
The Plot is a Patience game which is played with two decks of playing cards.
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.
Four Corners, also known as Les Quatre Coins, Cornerstones, or Corner Patience, is a solitaire card game which is played with two decks of playing cards. It is so called because of the pile of four cards at the corners of the tableau.
Jubilee is the name given to two solitaire card games, both played with two decks of playing cards. Both games are so-called because they were created during the time of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. One of the games has an ornate layout, while the other is simpler and it belongs to the family of games which include Sir Tommy, Strategy, and Calculation.
La Belle Lucie is a patience or card solitaire where the object is to build the cards into the foundations. It is considered to be representative of the "fan" family of solitaire card games, and has a pleasing layout.
Aces and Kings is a challenging and original solitaire game using two decks of playing cards, and was created by Thomas Warfield. The object of the game is to build 8 foundations down from King to Ace or up from Ace to King without regard to suit.
Three Shuffles and a Draw is a solitaire game using one deck of playing cards. This game is similar to La Belle Lucie besides being able to draw one card after the second shuffle. The object of the game is to move all of the cards to the Foundations.
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