St. Helena (solitaire)

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St. Helena (also known as Napoleon's Favorite or Washington's Favorite) is a solitaire card game using two decks of playing cards mixed together. Despite its name, it has no connection the island with the same name. Furthermore, because of its game play, it should not be confused with Napoleon at St. Helena a.k.a. Forty Thieves. Explained here is the prevalent version.

First, one king and one ace of each suit are removed to become the bases for the foundations. The kings form the upper foundations, while the aces form the lower foundations. Then, the rest of the cards are dealt clockwise into twelve piles that run from above the left king to its left. The tableau and foundations should look like this:

	1	2	3	4
12	K	K	K	K	5
11	A	A	A	A	6
	10	9	8	7

The object is to build the upper foundations down by suit to aces while the lower foundations up by suit.

The top card of each pile surrounding the foundations is available for play onto another pile or to the foundations. Building on the piles is either up or down by suit. However a king cannot be placed over an ace and an ace cannot be placed over a king. Only one card can be moved at a time.

There is no mention in The Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience Games of what to do on the spaces. This gives rise to at least two rule sets: one that allows any card to be placed in a space; and another that does not allow a space to be filled.

For the first deal, there are restrictions as to which card goes to which foundation. Cards on piles 1 to 4 are available only to the upper foundations, cards on piles 7 to 10 are available only to the lower foundations, and cards on piles 5, 6, 11, and 12 are available to either the upper or lower foundations.

After all possible moves have been made, the piles are collected in reverse order. That is, Pile 12 is placed over the Pile 11, then the new pile is placed over Pile 10, and so on until all piles are placed over Pile 1. Then, without reshuffling, they are redealt again, one by one, into twelve piles. This can be done twice. But after the cards are dealt anew, the restrictions no longer apply, i.e. a card can be placed in any foundation. This goes for after the second redeal.

The game is won when all cards are built into the foundations.

[edit] Louis

Louis is a solitaire variant of St. Helena. It is played exactly as St. Helena except for the follow modifications:

• First, 12 cards are dealt, one on each pile. From these twelve, the player builds playable cards onto the foundations, filling a gap every time a card is played. Once the game goes on standstill at this point, the rest of the deck is dealt onto the twelve piles.
• All top cards of piles are available to be built in any foundation (no restrictions).
• Building in the piles can be up or down, but always by suit.