Play Forty Thieves — Free

What is Forty Thieves?

Forty Thieves is a two-deck patience game with a fearsome reputation — often called the hardest of the classic solitaires, and known by the grander name Napoleon at St Helena from the legend that the exiled emperor played it to pass his days. The name comes from its opening layout: forty cards are dealt face up into ten columns of four, the "forty thieves" laid out in a neat grid. Behind them waits the rest of the two decks — a stock of sixty-four cards you may turn over just once. Your job is to build eight foundation piles up by suit, each running from the Ace all the way to the King, until every one of the 104 cards has been carried safely home.

What makes Forty Thieves so uncompromising is how little it lets you do. You may move only a single card at a time — never a packed sequence — and the tableau builds down strictly in the same suit rather than in easy alternating colours. On top of that, you get a single pass through the stock with no redeal, so every card you flip and cannot immediately use lands on the waste and may be gone for good. The result is a slow, thoughtful game of careful ordering where a win feels genuinely earned. This vygam version deals instantly in your browser with tap-to-move controls, double-tap-to-foundation, unlimited undo, and a saved win count — no download, no sign-up, and a fresh deal always one tap away.

How to Play Forty Thieves

The two-deck layout gives you plenty to arrange, but Forty Thieves is strict about what counts as a legal move. A move simply won't happen when:

• you drop a card on a tableau card that is a different suit, or not exactly one rank higher — columns build down in suit, not in alternating colours;
• you try to move more than one card at once — only the single exposed top card of a column or the waste can ever be lifted;
• you send a card to a foundation out of order — a foundation starts on an Ace and then takes only the next rank up in the same suit;
• you look for a redeal — the stock turns over just once, so a card passed to the waste and buried may never return.

Forty Thieves Tips & Strategy

Forty Thieves rewards patience and punishes haste. Because you can only move one card at a time and must build down in suit, a careless early play can wall off a whole column for the rest of the game. These four habits will lift your win rate on a game where even experts lose more often than they take.

1. Empty a column early

   An empty tableau column is the single most valuable asset in Forty Thieves, because it accepts any card and becomes a free parking space for reordering the board. Columns start with only four cards, so clearing one is realistic if you target it from the first move. Pick the column whose cards can most easily be played onto foundations or matched onto other columns, and funnel your early plays toward emptying it rather than spreading effort everywhere at once.

2. Don't bury your foundation cards

   Every low card you cover in the tableau is a card the foundations may soon be crying out for. Before you stack a card onto a column, glance at what it will trap underneath — burying an Ace, a two, or a three you will shortly need is how most games are quietly lost. Keep the ranks the foundations want next as exposed as you can, and prefer moves that free low cards over moves that pile more weight on top of them.

3. Hold the waste and think before you deal

   You get one pass through the stock, so treat each flip as precious. Before you turn a new card, play out every safe move already available on the board, because once a stock card lands on the waste you may not be able to place it. Read the waste top carefully: if it can start or extend a build, take it, but never flip again just to "see" the next card — a wasted deal is a card you can never get back.

4. Build evenly and keep suits balanced

   Because the foundations climb in suit, it pays to feed all eight of them at a similar pace rather than racing one suit far ahead. Advancing every foundation together keeps the widest range of cards playable and gives your tableau builds somewhere to unload. Watch for the moment a column can be melted straight onto a foundation in order, and set up those clean runs deliberately — a well-planned cascade of same-suit cards can finish a foundation in a single satisfying sweep.

Forty Thieves vs Klondike and Other Solitaires

If you have played Klondike Solitaire or FreeCell, Forty Thieves will feel familiar in shape but far stricter in the hand. Klondike uses a single deck, four foundations, and lets you shuffle ordered runs of alternating colours down the tableau while drawing repeatedly from the stock. Forty Thieves doubles everything — two decks, eight foundations, 104 cards — yet tightens the rules at every turn: you build down in the same suit, you move only one card at a time, and you get just one pass through the stock with no recycling. FreeCell, by contrast, deals every card face up and gives you free cells to help, which makes almost every hand solvable; Spider and Yukon each loosen movement in their own way. Forty Thieves offers none of those comforts, which is exactly why it is prized by players who want a genuine, cerebral challenge from a deck of cards.

Winning Forty Thieves

A game of Forty Thieves is won the instant all 104 cards reach the foundations — eight complete suits running Ace to King. Be warned that this is a low-win-rate game: with single-card moves, same-suit builds, and only one pass through the stock, even careful play sends most deals to a dead end, and that is completely normal. On vygam the header shows a live "Home" counter so you always know how many cards have made it up, and every full clear is quietly saved as a win in your browser to build a running record. There is no clock and no penalty for thinking, so use the unlimited Undo button freely to test a risky line, rewind a play that buried the wrong card, and hunt patiently for the rare, richly satisfying full board.

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