Vegas Solitaire — Play Online Free

How to play Vegas Solitaire

Vegas Solitaire is ordinary Klondike — the game most people simply call Solitaire — scored as if it were a casino bet. The cards are dealt and played exactly as usual. What changes is how you keep score, and how many times you can go through the stock.

The cards

• Seven columns are dealt from one 52-card deck, one to seven cards each, with only the last card of each column face up. The 24 cards left over form the stock.
• On the columns, build down in alternating colors — a red 8 on a black 9. Only a King, or a stack that starts with one, can fill an empty column.
• Build the four foundations up by suit, from Ace to King. Tap the stock to turn cards onto the waste, and play the top waste card wherever it fits.

The Vegas rules

• You buy the deck. Every game starts at −$52.
• Every card home pays $5. Each card you move to a foundation earns $5. Bring one back down to the columns and you give that $5 back.
• The stock is limited. In Draw 3 you get three passes through the stock; in Draw 1, just one. After the last pass, the stock can't be turned over again.

These are the common Windows-style Vegas rules. This page starts you on Draw 3 with three passes; switch to Draw 1 in Settings if you prefer to see every card, but only once.

How Vegas scoring works

The math is simple. Ten cards on the foundations pays $50, which still leaves you $2 short. Eleven cards pays $55 and puts you $3 ahead. A full win sends all 52 cards home for $260 — a profit of $208 on the game.

The running total

Like the cumulative Vegas score in the old Windows Solitaire, your running total carries over from game to game. Above the table, Game shows the deal in front of you and Total adds it to everything before. Every deal costs $52 the moment it's dealt — even if you start over without a move, or undo back to the deal — and what each game pays back stays in the total, win or lose.

Rather take each game on its own? Turn Running total off in Settings, and the total goes back to $0 with your next game.

It's all pretend: the dollars only keep score. There are no bets, purchases or prizes on BieGames.

Draw 3 or Draw 1?

Draw 3, three passes

Each tap turns over three cards, and only the top one can be played. On a pass where you play nothing from the waste, you only ever reach every third card. Playing a waste card shifts the rest along, which changes which cards come up next time — and with three passes, there's room to plan for that.

Draw 1, one pass

Each tap turns over a single card, so every card in the stock comes up — but only once. A card you pass by gets buried under the ones that follow, and you can only dig it out by playing those first. Before you turn the next card, ask whether the one on the waste can go somewhere now.

Vegas Solitaire strategy

1. Play for cards, not just for the win. A full win is the jackpot, but the money comes one card at a time. Eleven cards home puts you in profit, so a game that won't come out can still pay.
2. Don't be shy with the foundations. A card that goes up and comes back down costs nothing overall — you just give back the $5 — so send cards home whenever it helps.
3. Work the columns before the stock. With passes limited, every trip through the stock is precious. Make every useful move on the table first, so that when a card comes off the stock it has somewhere to go.
4. Dig out the long columns. The right-hand columns hide up to six face-down cards each. Aces and low cards trapped under them are money you can't collect yet.
5. Watch the pass counter. The badge on the stock shows which pass you're on. On the last pass, play everything you can as it comes — once the stock is empty, only the top of the waste is left to work with.
6. Know when to cash in. When the stock is spent and nothing helps, start a new game. What you made stays in your total.
7. Use Undo as you like. Undo puts the score back along with the cards, so it never earns or costs money on its own.

How hard is Vegas Solitaire?

Harder than everyday Solitaire, mostly because of the limited passes. With unlimited passes you can keep cycling the stock until the card you need turns up; in Vegas you can't, so more games end with cards still on the table.

Expect your total to go up and down. Some games will finish below $0. A good session is one where the total climbs, not one where every game is won.

By default the game uses Winnable deals only: before you see a deal, a solver tries to find a way to win it under the same draw and pass limit. You still have to find that way yourself — the solver can see the face-down cards and you can't. For the full casino feel, set Deals to Any deal and take every shuffle as it comes.