Canfield Solitaire is one of the more classic versions of the game, but the joy of playing it comes from knowing it’s history. Canfield was popularized by Richard Canfield in his casino. Players could spend $50 to buy one round of the game. For every card successfully played into the foundation piles, they’d win $5. Win the game outright and you’d win the jackpot of $2500! But this is no ordinary game of solitaire and playing enough cards to earn your $50 back was difficult alone, winning the game entirely was even harder!
Today when you play, you can enjoy the game free of any $50 buy-in, but what makes it fun is the challenge of not just winning, but seeing if you’re able to play enough cards into the foundations to at “walk away” with a little something extra, too.
What You’ll Need
- 1 Standard Deck Jokers Removed
- 1 Player
Set Up
Shuffle the cards thoroughly
Deal a stack of 13 cards face down to form the reserve. You can choose to either flip over the top card of the reserve, or flip over the entire stack of 13 cards to be face up as only one card will ever be shown. It’s up to you.
Next, begin the foundation piles by dealing one card above the reserve deck. Whatever card this is, this is the starting card for all four foundation piles.
Then deal four cards face up to the right of the reserve to form your tableau.
The remaining cards form the stock.
How to Play
You will try to play as many cards into the foundation piles as you can by playing cards from the reserve, the tableau, and the stock.
The foundation piles will build up in rank following suit. The rank order turns then corner, so you may play an Ace on a King and continue building up until the pile has all 13 cards in it’s respective suit. When the other cards of the same rank as your first foundation pile are revealed, move them up into the foundation row to begin a new foundation pile for their suit.
The top card of the reserve is always available to be played into either the foundation piles or the tableau.
The Tableau builds down by rank and alternates colors. Example: a black 6 may be played on a red 7. The top card of each tableau pile may be played into the foundation piles but may never be moved into a different tableau pile. You cannot shift the cards around and may only play the top card onto the foundation piles.
If an opening occurs in the tableau, you must immediately fill that space with the top card from the reserve. Only when the reserve is empty may you choose to fill an empty tableau space with a card from the stock or leave it empty.
From the stock you’ll flip out cards in batches of three onto a waste pile. Only the top card of the batch is able to be played. Any cards underneath are only playable once revealed. When you flip through the entire stock deck, you may redeal it as many times as you’d like, being careful to not shuffle the order of the deck. Just pick up the entire waste pile, turn it over, and flip out three cards again.
Winning
You win the game if you play all of the cards into the four foundation piles.
When you are stuck and have no more moves left, you lose the game.
But remember! Count the cards in the foundation piles, earning 5 points for each card in the spirit of the classic casino game!
