Golf Solitaire: play free online
Golf Solitaire deals 35 cards into seven columns and leaves every one of them face up. Nothing on the table is hidden. Below the columns sits the waste pile, always showing a single card, and that card decides what you are allowed to take.
There is really only one rule to learn. You may take any exposed column card that sits one rank above or one rank below the waste card. The card you take becomes the new waste card, and the next move is measured against that one. Play it well and the cards come off in long chains — and chains are how this game is won.
Setting up Golf Solitaire
The deck splits into three areas:
- Tableau: seven columns of five cards, all face up, 35 cards in total.
- Stock: 16 face-down cards, turned one at a time.
- Waste: begins with one card already turned, and collects every card you clear from the columns.
How to win at Golf Solitaire
You win when all seven columns are empty. Whatever is left in the stock counts for nothing — clear the table and the game is yours.
Golf Solitaire rules
- One rank up or one rank down. With a 9 on the waste you may take an 8 or a 10. Hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs: suit never matters here.
- Only one card per column is in play. It is the card at the foot of the column, the only one you see in full. The moment it leaves, the card behind it is uncovered and takes its place.
- Ace to King, and no further. With a King on the waste only a Queen comes off; with an Ace, only a 2. The two ends do not join up, so every chain stops there.
- Tap a playable card and it goes to the waste. Tap the stock instead and a fresh card is turned. Nothing is dragged in this game, and tapping the middle of a column does nothing at all.
- A card that reaches the waste stays there. It never returns to its column, and you cannot dig it back out from under the cards that land on top of it.
- You get 16 draws, and no more. The stock is never reshuffled, so once it runs dry the game continues on whatever you can still link together.
- The stock empties in plain sight. Once the face-down pile is gone, tapping it does nothing — every remaining move has to come from a card already in a column.
Golf Solitaire tips and strategy
- Every card is visible, so use that. A chain here is calculated, not hoped for. Read the seven live cards, find the order that clears the most of them, and draw only once that order is spent. Each of the 16 draws is one-way; there is no reshuffle to get it back.
- When you can go up or down, look at what you free. Say the waste shows a 6 and both a 5 and a 7 are in play. Take the one that uncovers the more useful card, not the first one your eye lands on.
- Kings and Aces in a column are plugs. Only a Queen lifts a King, only a 2 lifts an Ace, and while they sit there nothing underneath them moves either. Pull them out the moment the chance appears.
- A missing rank ends the run. With no 7 within reach you cannot get from a 6 to an 8. Knowing which ranks you are short of tells you in advance where the chain will stall.
- Do not leave one column untouched. Five cards come off together only when five moves interlock, which is rare. Take a card or two out of every column instead, so you always have a wider spread of ranks to choose from.
- Count the ranks you have already spent. Four of each rank exist; once you have sent all four 9s to the waste, every 8 and every 10 still in a column is one step further from the others. Late in a deal the shape of what remains matters more than what is showing.
- Undo costs you nothing, so use it. In Golf the mistake is invisible at the moment you make it — you find out three moves later, when there is nothing left to hook. Back up and take the other branch. And if the table does jam with cards still in the columns, that is a real outcome here; often there was no line through the deal at all.
TriPeaks asks for the same kind of chain, but across three peaks, and 18 of its 28 board cards start face down, so part of that game is simply uncovering. In Pyramid Solitaire cards leave in pairs that add up to 13, and Kings leave on their own.