Baker's Dozen

Baker's Dozen deals thirteen short columns of four, face up, and then does something unusual before play starts: it sinks every King to the bottom of its column. Without that step the game would be close to unplayable, since a King accepts nothing and would seal off everything beneath it.

What is left is a wide, shallow, entirely open puzzle with one severe rule — a column you empty is gone for good. That inverts the usual advice about making space, and makes the game about keeping thirteen columns simultaneously alive rather than consolidating them. At roughly even odds it is among the most winnable games in the catalogue, and one of the more interesting to think about.

Thirteen columns of four cards, all face up. Before play begins, every King sitting in the top or middle of a column is sunk to the bottom of that same column — which is what makes the game possible, since a King buried mid-column would block everything under it permanently. Columns build down with suit ignored, one card at a time, and the four foundations build up by suit once you dig the Aces out. A column you clear stays clear forever. No stock, no redeal.

Empty columns can never be refilled, so clearing one is a permanent loss of working space and almost never worth pursuing deliberately — the opposite instinct to most games. Instead, keep every column alive and use the suit-agnostic building to shuffle cards into position. The Kings sitting at the bottom of columns are dead weight: whatever is above them has to come off before that column is useful, so prefer working on columns whose Kings are already at the bottom of a short pile. Wikipedia puts the odds at around 1 in 2, so a careful player wins about half the time.