PatienceMax

PatienceMax is a card game. It is a variant of solitaire. It is played by a single player. This game is played with 2 full decks of playing cards.

Each card has one of 13 ranks, from high to low : king, queen, jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, ace. Also, each card has one of 4 suits, two of which are black: clubs (♣) and spades (♠) and two of which are red: diamonds (♦) and hearts (♥).

Each game, the cards are shuffled and laid out face up in 10 columns, each consisting of 10 cards. the 4 remaining cards are in your hand.

Rules

Goal

The goal is to get all kings at the top of a column.

Moving cards

to reach the goal of the game, you may move cards from one column to another.

1. You may only place a card in another column on the lowest card
2. The card you move must be 1 rank lower than the card on which it lands. e.g. you may only move a jack onto a queen.
3. The card you move must be of a different color from the card on which it lands. e.g. you may only move a black card onto a red card.
4. Cards, that lie on top of each other and apply to both rule 2 and 3, are called a string of cards. you may also move a string of cards, in which case the top card of the string must apply to both rule 2 and 3.
5. In case a column is empty (because you moved all its cards elsewhere), you may only move a king to that empty column, or a string of cards, of which the top card is a king

Building the piles

there are also 8 piles located beside the columns of cards. you may move the lowest card from a column to such a pile. the rules for this are more or less the opposite from above:

1. The first card which you may move to a pile must be an ace.
2. Besides the aces, the card you move must be 1 rank higher than the card on which it lands. e.g. you may only move a queen onto a jack.
3. The card you move must be of the same suit as the card on which it lands. e.g. you may only move a card of clubs onto a card of clubs.

The hand

Last but not least, you start with 4 cards in your hand and may have a maximum of 4 cards in your hand. You may move a card from your hand to a column or to a pile, as long as you keep to the rules of the game.