How to Play Golf Solitaire

Golf solitaire is a fast-paced single-player card game where the objective mirrors the sport it is named after: achieve the lowest score possible. Cards remaining in the tableau at the end count as strokes, so fewer is better. Unlike most solitaire games where hidden cards create mystery, every tableau card in Golf is dealt face-up, giving you full information from the start. A standard 52-card deck is used, and a typical round takes just two to three minutes — making it ideal for quick sessions. Golf solitaire rewards observation, sequencing decisions, and knowing when to break a chain to preserve future options.

Setting Up the Tableau

Deal seven columns of five cards each (35 cards total), all face-up and slightly overlapping so every card is visible. Only the bottom card of each column (the one with no card covering it) is available for play at any given time.

The remaining 17 cards are placed face-down as the stock pile. Turn the top card of the stock face-up onto the waste pile to begin the game. This first waste card is your starting base, which leaves 16 cards to draw.

Gameplay: Removing Cards

On each turn, look at the top card of the waste pile. You may remove any uncovered bottom card from a tableau column that is exactly one rank higher or lower than the waste card. Suit is irrelevant. The removed card is placed on the waste pile and becomes the new base for the next removal.

For example, if the waste card is a 7, you may remove any exposed 6 or 8 from the tableau. If you remove an 8, the next removal must be a 7 or 9.

Kings are dead ends in standard Golf: no card can be played on top of a King. When a King lands on the waste pile, you must draw from the stock. Some variants allow Ace-King wrapping to soften this rule, but the classic version does not.

Using the Stock Pile

When no available tableau card is one rank away from the waste card, or when a King sits on top of the waste pile, draw the next card from the stock. The drawn card is placed face-up on the waste pile and becomes the new base. You draw one card at a time, and the stock is never recycled. Once the last of the 16 draws is spent and no moves remain, the hole ends.

Scoring: Counting Strokes

A hole scores one stroke for every card you leave behind, and clearing the tableau scores below zero. Golf solitaire borrows its scoring language from the sport, and our game runs the full nine holes:

• Tableau not cleared: each card still sitting in a column costs one stroke. Fifteen cards left is +15 for the hole.
• Tableau cleared: the hole scores minus one for every card left unused in the stock. Clear it with ten cards still to draw and the hole is minus 10.
• The course: nine holes are added together for the final total. Par is 45.

The negative half of that scale is what makes a cleared hole worth chasing. Two fast clears can carry three bad deals, so the fastest clear beats the safest one.

Winning and Losing

You win a round of Golf by finishing all nine holes with a total of zero or lower. That takes cleared holes: each one banks a negative score that pays for the holes you could not finish. Because not every deal is solvable, the practical goal on a bad hole is to shed as many cards as you can before the stock runs dry, and to clear the good holes as fast as possible so the unused stock counts in your favour.

Common Variations

Most Golf variations exist to soften the King dead end and make more deals winnable.

• Around the Corner (Putt Putt). The rank line wraps, so a King can be played on an Ace and an Ace on a King. This removes the King stopper, which makes far more deals winnable. No published solver figure exists for the variant, so we quote none.
• Relaxed Golf. Looser King rules, such as allowing a Queen on a King, sit between the strict game and full wrapping.
• Double Golf. Two decks dealt into a larger nine-column tableau for a longer game.
• Nine or eighteen holes. Our game runs the standard nine. Some players stretch a session to eighteen and add the strokes for a full course score, the way a real round of golf is scored.

Two close relatives use the same one-rank-up-or-down build with a different layout: Tri-Peaks, which deals three overlapping pyramids and wraps King to Ace by default, and Black Hole, a 1979 patience by David Parlett that sends every card to one central pile with no stock. Do not confuse Golf solitaire with the multiplayer Golf card game or the branded Fairway Solitaire, which only share the name.

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