Golf

Golf is the fastest game in the catalogue and the one with the least to learn: seven columns face up, one foundation, and a single rule — play a card one rank above or below the current one. A round takes a few minutes and the whole thing is over when the stock runs dry.

The wrinkle that gives it teeth is that the sequence does not turn the corner. A King on the foundation stops everything, so the run you were building dies and you have to spend a stock card to restart. That is what turns an apparently mechanical game into one with real choices, and it is why Golf is scored over nine deals like its namesake rather than counted as a simple win or loss.

Seven columns of five cards are dealt face up, and one card starts the foundation. Play the exposed card at the bottom of any column onto the foundation whenever it is one rank above or below the current foundation card — suit is irrelevant. When nothing will go, turn a card from the 16-card stock onto the foundation and carry on from there. Under strict rules the sequence does not wrap around, so a King is a dead end: nothing can be played on it. The game ends when the stock runs out, and you score a point for every card still stranded in the tableau, with a lower score being better.

Because sequences do not wrap, Kings are traps and Aces nearly so — plan around them rather than into them. The main decision is which of two playable cards to take when both fit, and the tiebreaker is usually depth: take the one that exposes a card you can use next, and prefer digging into the longest run of stuck cards. Look one card ahead in the tableau rather than one card ahead in the stock, since the stock is unknown and the tableau is not. Golf is scored across nine deals rather than won or lost outright, so the aim is to keep the leftover count low rather than to clear every board.