Expert difficulty
Tam O'Shanter
Auld Lang Syne without the courtesy of starting you off with the Aces — you have to deal your way into them.
| Decks | One deck |
|---|---|
| Suits | 4 |
| Typical length | 7 min |
| Difficulty | Expert |
| How much skill matters | Low |
| How much the shuffle matters | High |
| Family | Standalone |
There is no playable version of Tam O'Shanter on this site yet — this page covers its rules and strategy. The game suits a touchscreen well, so it is a good candidate once a build exists.
About Tam O'Shanter
Tam O'Shanter is Auld Lang Syne with the one kindness taken away. In Auld Lang Syne the four Aces are lifted out before play and set up as foundations. Here they are not: they come out in the deal like every other card, and if one arrives when you have nowhere to put it, that suit is finished before it started.
The result is a game Wikipedia describes as nearly impossible to win, and the name — from the Burns poem rather than the hat — has an appropriate air of doomed pursuit about it. It earns a place in the catalogue as a documented historical variant and as the extreme end of the Sir Tommy family, not as something to play twice.
How to play
The same shape as Auld Lang Syne — four foundations, four waste piles, no tableau building, and a card that lands on a waste pile can never move except onto a foundation — with one rule removed. The Aces are not extracted first. They arrive in the deal like everything else, and a foundation only exists once its Ace turns up at a moment you can place it. Deal the stock out, build the foundations up from Ace to King ignoring suit, and try to avoid burying anything you will need.
Strategy
The Aces are everything and you cannot plan for them. Until an Ace appears there is no foundation for its suit, so early cards have nowhere to go but the waste piles, and an Ace that surfaces when all four piles are topped by cards you cannot shift is simply lost. Keep at least one pile as shallow as you can manage for exactly that moment. Beyond that there is very little to do — the article's assessment that it is nearly impossible to win is fair, and this is a curiosity rather than a game to sit down with seriously.
What works
- A genuine historical variant, documented in the Sir Tommy family
- Very fast — a round is over in minutes
- Nothing to learn if you know Auld Lang Syne
What to know
- Described as nearly impossible to win
- No tableau building and almost no meaningful decisions
- An Ace buried early ends that suit outright
Frequently asked questions
- How many decks does Tam O'Shanter use?
- Tam O'Shanter is played with a single standard deck.
- Is Tam O'Shanter good for beginners?
- Tam O'Shanter is generally better suited to players who already know the basics of solitaire, as it involves more planning than a typical beginner game.
- Is Tam O'Shanter based more on luck or strategy?
- Tam O'Shanter is largely determined by how the cards fall — there's limited room for strategy to change the outcome.