King Albert

King Albert deals nine columns in a neat descending staircase and then hands you seven loose cards — the Belgian Reserve — every one of which stays available for the whole game. That reserve is what makes it work: it is a small hand of permanent options in a game that otherwise moves one card at a time.

At around two wins in five it sits among the friendlier games in the catalogue without being trivial, and the fifteen minutes it takes feel well spent. The trap is treating the reserve as cards to get rid of rather than a resource to spend, which is how most losing games here go wrong.

Nine columns are dealt in descending length — nine cards, then eight, down to one — using 45 cards, and the seven that remain form the Belgian Reserve. Every card in that reserve is available at any time, which is unusually generous. The tableau builds down in alternating colours, one card at a time, and any available card may fill an emptied column. Foundations build up by suit from Ace as soon as you can free one. There is no stock and no redeal.

The seven fully-available reserve cards are the whole engine of the game — treat them as a hand rather than a pile, and hold the ones that fit awkwardly until a column opens for them. Because empty columns accept any card, clearing the one-card and two-card columns early is cheap and immediately useful. One-card moves mean long runs are effectively immovable, so avoid building a nine-deep sequence you will never be able to relocate. At 2 in 5 this is one of the more winnable games here, and the losses usually come from spending the reserve too early.