Sir Tommy Solitaire is one of the oldest documented patience card games, dating to Victorian England. The rules are beautifully simple: deal the 52-card deck one card at a time, directing each card to one of four personal waste piles, then build four foundations from Ace to King regardless of suit. The catch is that once a card is placed on a waste pile it cannot move until the cards above it have all been played — so every placement carries real consequences. With a win rate around 30%, Sir Tommy rewards foresight and punishes careless pile management.
What is Sir Tommy Solitaire?
Sir Tommy Solitaire is a single-player card game played with a standard 52-card deck. The full deck sits face-down as a stock. You deal cards one at a time, and for each card you choose which of four waste piles to place it on. Separately, four foundation piles start empty and must be built up from Ace to King — with no suit restriction, so any Ace starts a foundation and any card of the right rank can extend any foundation pile.
The game belongs to the same family as Calculation Solitaire and Duchess, where the player controls pile routing but cannot rearrange cards once placed. This makes Sir Tommy a game of probability management: you're trying to avoid burying low-rank cards under high ones in all four piles simultaneously. Because foundations build without suit order, you have more freedom than in Klondike, but the single-pass dealing with no second chance adds pressure.
The name has murky origins — it appears in late-19th-century patience collections without a definitive attribution. Regardless of origin, the game earned a place in every Victorian patience compendium and remains one of the cleanest one-deck designs in the tradition.
How to play Sir Tommy Solitaire
Step 1 — Understand the four waste piles
You have four personal waste piles — holding bays for cards you can't yet play to foundations. Each card you deal from the stock goes onto one of these four piles, face-up. Only the top card of each pile is visible and accessible. Once placed, a card is locked until all cards above it have been played to foundations.
Step 2 — Build foundations Ace to King, any suit
Whenever the top card of a waste pile is the next rank needed on any foundation, play it immediately. An Ace starts a new foundation, a Two goes on any Ace, a Three on any Two, and so on up to King. Foundations don't care about suit — only rank order matters. Move cards there the moment they become available.
Step 3 — Keep at least one low-card pile
Designate one waste pile as a low-card reserve. Route any Two, Three, or Four there rather than stacking them on piles that already have low cards buried deep. Losing access to all low-rank cards because they're buried under high cards is the most common way Sir Tommy becomes unwinnable.
Step 4 — Spread high cards across multiple piles
Kings, Queens, and Jacks take a long time to reach foundations — they're needed only at the end of the game. Avoid stacking several high cards in sequence on the same pile. If multiple Kings land on one pile, that pile becomes unusable until very late. Spread them: one per pile if possible, so each pile remains useful throughout the deal.
Step 5 — Think two cards ahead
Before placing a card, consider the current top cards of all four piles and estimate what you'd do if the next card were one rank higher or lower. If a pile's top card is a 7, placing an 8 on it is efficient — the 8 can play to a foundation quickly once a 7 foundation appears. Force yourself to think one step ahead before committing each placement.
The Sir Tommy play area
The layout is minimal by design. The stock sits in one corner — a face-down pile of all 52 cards. Beside it, four foundation slots wait for Aces. Below those, four waste pile slots start empty and fill as you deal. That's everything: no tableau columns, no cells, no reserve.
Cards from the stock deal one at a time. You click each card onto whichever waste pile you choose. Cards play automatically from waste piles to foundations when they're the next needed rank — or you can click them manually. The simplicity of the layout puts all the cognitive weight on pile routing decisions, where the real game happens.
Available moves in Sir Tommy Solitaire
Deal from stock. Click the stock to turn the top card face-up and make it available for placement. You must assign it to one of the four waste piles before dealing the next card.
Place card on waste pile. Click a waste pile to send the current dealt card there. This is your core decision each turn — choose wisely, because the placement is permanent until cards above it are cleared.
Play to foundation. Whenever a waste pile's top card is the next rank any foundation needs, it can move to that foundation. Aces start foundations; after that any rank in sequence (regardless of suit) plays up.
No moves between waste piles. Cards cannot be transferred between the four waste piles, and waste piles cannot be searched — only the topmost card is visible and accessible.
Sir Tommy Solitaire strategy
Never bury an Ace
The golden rule. If an Ace appears, immediately start a foundation with it rather than routing it to a waste pile. An Ace buried in a waste pile blocks a foundation from ever starting, and without all four Aces on foundations the game cannot be won. Treat every Ace as a mandatory foundation play.
Track rank counts mentally
Keep track of how many of each rank you've seen. If you've already played three Threes to foundations and the fourth Three is visible on a waste pile, the remaining Three pressure is gone — you can route other cards more aggressively. Knowing which ranks are still outstanding shapes every pile placement decision.
Keep pile heights balanced
When you have a free choice and one pile is already taller than the others, prefer placing the current card on a shorter pile. Even pile heights give you more flexibility later in the deal when specific ranks become urgent. A pile with nine buried cards is nearly useless; four piles of moderate depth all contribute.
Write off a bad pile rather than compound it
If one waste pile is already deeply buried with unplayable high-rank cards, stop adding to it rather than hoping it clears. Three functional piles can often finish a game that four mediocre piles cannot. Redirecting all future cards away from a broken pile is a legitimate defensive strategy.
Count the remaining stock in the final third
Once fewer than 18 cards remain in the stock, recalculate after every deal. The positions are now fixed and finite — there's often a clear winning or losing path visible. Count what's left on each waste pile top and verify that foundations can absorb them in rank order. If the math works, you've won; if not, you know exactly where the blockage is.
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Odds of winning Sir Tommy Solitaire
Sir Tommy's win rate sits around 28–33% with good play. This makes it moderately challenging — harder than TriPeaks or Golf Solitaire, easier than Pyramid or Canfield. The variance is substantial because the initial ordering of the deck heavily influences whether a route to completion exists.
Some deals are essentially unwinnable regardless of pile routing: the rank distribution forces low cards under high ones in every possible configuration. Others practically play themselves — the deck presents ranks in a near-ideal sequence that almost any routing handles. Distinguishing between these deal types early is a mark of experienced Sir Tommy players.
Compared to Calculation Solitaire (which has additional strategic levers) and pure luck games, Sir Tommy sits at a satisfying midpoint: skill clearly matters, good players win meaningfully more often than poor ones, but the single pass through an unseen deck ensures no amount of skill will win every hand.
History of Sir Tommy Solitaire
Sir Tommy appears in Victorian patience collections from the 1870s and 1880s under various names, including 'Try Again' and simply 'Tommy.' The game is one of the earliest examples of what card historians call routing patience — games where the player's primary decision is directing cards to designated holding areas rather than building tableau sequences.
The Victorian patience tradition was enormous and largely undocumented by author. Most games in collections like 'Patience Games' by Cavendish (1890) lack attributions, appearing simply as 'traditional.' Sir Tommy's unusual name suggests a possible dedication to a specific person, but the original honoree, if there was one, has been lost to history.
The game's simplicity made it a natural candidate for early digital solitaire collections. It appears in various forms in Windows and DOS patience compilations from the 1990s, sometimes renamed 'Pyramid' (confusingly, given the separate and very different Pyramid Solitaire) or 'Four Columns.' The version here follows the standard Victorian rules with no modifications.
Frequently asked questions
Can I look at the cards under the top waste pile card?
- No. Only the top card of each waste pile is visible and playable. Cards buried underneath are inaccessible until all cards above them have been moved to foundations. This is the core constraint that makes pile management so important — you can't recover a buried card until everything above it is gone.
Is there a redeal in Sir Tommy?
- No. You deal through the 52-card stock exactly once, placing each card on a waste pile or directly to a foundation. There is no second pass through the deck. This single-deal rule is what makes early decisions so consequential.
Do the foundations have to be built in the same suit?
- No — suit doesn't matter at all in Sir Tommy. Each foundation just needs cards in rank order from Ace to King. Any Ace can start any foundation, and any card of the next needed rank can extend it regardless of suit. This is more generous than Klondike and partially compensates for the single-pass dealing.
What happens if I get stuck?
- If the stock is empty and no waste-pile top card can advance any foundation, the game is lost. There's no mechanism to shuffle or redeal, and waste pile cards cannot be rearranged. The game ends and you can start a fresh deal.
What is the win rate for Sir Tommy?
- Approximately 28–33% with good play. The variance is high because the initial ordering of the deck heavily influences whether a route to completion exists. Some deals are essentially unwinnable regardless of strategy; others are forgiving enough that almost any routing wins.
How is Sir Tommy different from Calculation Solitaire?
- Both games route dealt cards to personal piles, but Calculation uses four foundations with different build sequences (Ace-2-3…, Ace-3-5…, Ace-4-7…, Ace-5-9…) and its waste piles can be strategically searched. Sir Tommy uses a single sequential Ace-to-King build on all foundations with completely locked waste piles — simpler rules, but fewer compensating mechanics.
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