No one loves Solitaire more than you do. You could play that game for hours or even days. In fact, you have actually holed yourself up in your house to play this game for nearly a week in the past. You forgot to eat or sleep because you were having so much fun. But there is one thing you don’t like about this game, and that is the fact that it doesn’t involve interaction with other people. You like other people to be able to witness the awesomeness that is you, especially when you are playing your favorite game in the whole wide world. Well…solution, thy name is Double Solitaire!
How to Play Double Solitaire – History and Background
The origin of Solitaire is not 100% clear. However, it is thought that it started around the end of the 18th century in the Baltic area of Europe. It is thought to be linked to the growing popularity of tarot card readings in fortune-telling – you probably never would have expected that your go-to card game was connected to psychic readings, right? Another very similar game, known as Patience, started close to that same time in the United Kingdom; today, the two games are seen as basically interchangeable. The game was essentially invented in two different places and rose to popularity at a time when rich people had more and more leisure time and were looking for something to do other than twiddle their thumbs. Of course, there were different versions of the game, but they eventually became consolidated into the form of the game that we all know and love today.
Fun fact: Solitaire is also known as Klondike. And no, it wasn’t named after your favorite ice cream bar but after the Canadian region that was the location of a gold rush. Although if you want to make the game more fun, you can certainly eat Klondike bars while playing and use your need to honor the name of the game as an excuse for loading up on calories.
How to Play Double Solitaire – The Basics of Solitaire
Whether you are used to playing Solitaire with actual cards or with collections of pixels on your computer that look like cards, the way it is set up is basically the same. Let’s start by explaining how to set up a single game of Solitaire, because the Double Solitaire is just…you guessed it…DOUBLE that!
When you are setting up a game of Solitaire, you start by shuffling your cards. You can shuffle them in the way you have seen professionals do on TV, or you can just throw them all up in the air and stack them as you are cleaning them up off the floor – it’s totally up to you.
Then, you will set up the cards. There will be seven piles of cards arranged in a row from left to right. Drawing from your shuffled deck without looking at the cards first, you will start by putting the first card on the left face up, and then putting the six others face down. Then, you will put a card face up on top of the second card and put cards face down on top of the five other piles to the right. You will continue this pattern with the rest of the piles, with the piles growing larger towards the right hand side and a face up card on top of each pile.
The objective of the game is to get all of the cards to the foundation stacks, which are placed separately. There will be four foundation stacks, one for each suit. You will start each one with an ace in that suit, then put a two on top of the ace, then a three, and so on up until you get to the King. However, you are only able to draw from the cards that are currently facing up and that do not have cards on top of them. The way to expose more cards is to take the face up cards and put them on top of one another – however, you can’t just go willy-nilly with this. The only way you can put a card on top of another card is if it is the other color and one number below. For example, you can put a seven of diamonds on top of an eight of spades. Once you can do no more with the seven piles, you will take sets of three (one on top of the other) from the stack of remaining cards – and then those will be in play as the ‘discard pile.’ Once you can do no more with any of the cards that are on the tops of their piles, draw another set of three cards.
It is very possible for a game of Solitaire to be impossible to win – you can end up unable to make any more moves with the foundation stacks left unfilled. If this happens, there is no need to write a letter of protest to the company that made the card deck. You should just understand that it happens sometimes.
How to Play Double Solitaire – Differences Between Single and Double Solitaire
The differences between the Solitaire you have grown to love and Double Solitaire lie in just about every aspect of the game. They’re so similar, yet so different at the same time. In Double Solitaire, there are double the cards, double the players, double the fun – and best of all, double the arguments that will end up in that annoying friend leaving you alone for the next two years because he can’t stand the sight of you!
With Double Solitaire, you will need two decks of cards, one for each player. The backs of the decks should look noticeably different, so that you will be able to tell cards from each deck apart at the end of the game. Essentially, you and your opponent will be playing your own individual games of Solitaire. There are a couple of different approaches you can take to this game. If you want to keep things simple, you can just individually play your own games of Solitaire – whoever wins their own game first is the winner among the two of you. This version of the game is advised for people who do not enjoy interacting with each other. Perhaps, if you are being forced to spend time with an estranged friend who stole your banana shaped watch, this will be the way to go.
But if you want more of a challenge, and you want this to be more of a social activity rather than just two people playing a solitary card game in the same room, you can go with the way this game is typically competitively played. This involves a communal foundation area between your individual Solitaire layouts. In this area, you will have the eight foundation stacks (remember, two decks of cards mean two of each suit!) on which you will both be building.
When both players have no moves left that they can make, the game will be over. Then, what you will do is sort out the cards in the foundation stacks and count the number of cards from each deck. Whoever has the highest number of cards in these stacks is the winner.
How to Play Double Solitaire – Taking Turns
There are a couple of ways that you can go about taking turns when you are playing Double Solitaire.
If you choose to take turns, traditionally, the player who has the lower card on their pile of one will be the one to start. If it’s a tie, it’ll be whoever has the lower card face up on their pile of two (and so on).
Just as is the case in regular Solitaire, you use your turn to make a series of moves. Basically, your turn is over when you either can’t or decide not to make any further moves without drawing more from the discard pile.
You can also choose not to take turns and play the game just as described above, but only using one hand (you will be holding the deck in one hand and playing the game with the other). Basically, you play as quickly as possible. When you can’t do anything with the cards that are face up, you will put the top three cards of your stack onto the discard pile and keep playing. You can actually do this with as many players as you want. The name “Solitaire” won’t really make much sense anymore, but where’s the fun in making sense anyway?
In both cases, the game is over when one of the players has gotten all of their cards to the foundation stacks or when there are no more moves to be made by anyone in the game.
If you want to create an extra incentive to be at the top of your game here, you can arrange for the winner to get a prize. The nature of that prize is entirely up to you and your opponent. Perhaps the loser will have to pay the winners’ taxes from now until the end of time, or endure a savage beating from the winner with a wiffle ball bat. Whatever you crazy kids agree on will be what goes!
