Shuffling…

Golf Solitaire

Seven short columns and a single waste pile. Each card must sit one rank above or below the last, and the stock never comes back — quick rounds, and no way to stall.

ObjectiveClear all thirty-five cards from the seven columns onto a single waste pile.

Nine holes of card golf

Golf deals thirty-five cards face up into seven columns of five and turns one stock card over as the waste. Play any exposed column card that sits one rank above or below the waste card, and it becomes the new waste. When nothing fits, turn the stock — and there is no redeal, so the seventeen stock cards are your entire budget for the hole.

Clear all thirty-five column cards and the hole is finished. Like its namesake, the game is quick, the score follows you, and most of the skill is invisible until two players compare cards after the same round.

Golf solitaire deal with seven columns of five face-up cards above the stock and waste
Thirty-five cards to clear, seventeen stock turns to spend. Runs are everything.
  • Move the bottom card of any column onto the waste if it is one rank above or below it.
  • Turn the stock whenever you are stuck. There is no redeal.
  • Clear all 35 cards from the seven columns to finish the hole.

Keeping score over a round

Golf is the only game here designed to be played as a series rather than a single deal. The traditional round is nine holes, or eighteen, and your score is the total of the cards left standing at the end of each — so a hole where you clear thirty-one of thirty-five cards is a good hole, not a loss.

That framing changes how you play the endgame. Once a full clear is clearly out of reach, the goal shifts from finishing to minimising: take the cards you can reach rather than holding out for the chain that would have cleared the board. Four cards saved on a bad hole is worth as much as four cards saved on a good one.

Hole
One deal. A round is nine or eighteen of them, scored as a running total.
Stroke
A card still in the columns when the hole ends. Fewer is better, as on a course.
Wall
A King under the default rules: nothing continues past it, so the cards above it must go first.

Reading the course

  1. 01

    Count the Aces and Kings before moving

    In the default rules an Ace connects only upward to a Two and a King only downward to a Queen. Those cards are the hazards on the course, and a King buried under four cards marks a column you will be clearing last, if at all.

  2. 02

    Plan the chain to its end, then start it

    A greedy first card frequently strands a column that a slightly different order would have emptied. Two runs of six clear more than three runs of four from the same cards, and the difference is decided before the first move.

  3. 03

    Keep the columns level

    A tall column left for later is the one still standing when the stock runs out. Spreading your clearing evenly means the endgame has options in every column rather than a wall in one.

  4. 04

    Track spent ranks to spot dead columns

    A column headed by a Nine when every Eight and Ten is already played is finished, and knowing that early changes every chain you plan afterwards. Late discovery of a dead column is how a promising hole collapses.

Honest odds, and the wrap option

Golf deals at random here, and the page says so plainly: some deals will not clear no matter how well you read them. That is true to the game's pen-and-paper origins, where the score across nine or eighteen holes is the real measure rather than any single board.

If you would rather have the friendlier version, Settings can turn on wrapping, which lets a King meet an Ace and softens every corner of the deal. For a chain game with verified-clearable deals instead, TriPeaks is the closest relative on the site.

Questions about this game

Why is it called Golf?
Scoring. Each card left uncleared when a hole ends counts against you like a stroke, and traditional play runs nine or eighteen deals as a round — the aim being the lowest total, exactly as on a course.
Are Golf deals guaranteed winnable like the other games?
No, and this page says so rather than implying otherwise. Golf deals at random, and a fraction of random Golf deals cannot be fully cleared. Undo and hints are available, and the honest odds are part of what makes a cleared hole feel earned.
Do Kings and Aces wrap?
Not by default — a King stops play, which is the traditional rule. Wrapping can be switched on in Settings, and it makes the game considerably easier by removing every dead end at the top and bottom of the rank order.