Rules
The tableau is made up of four piles/columns. Four cards are dealt (the rest are left aside as the stock), one in each pile. If there are cards of equal rank (such as three kings), the duplicates are moved to the leftmost pile with an equal card.
Example: The three kings mentioned are found at piles 2, 3, and 4. The kings in piles 3 and 4 are moved to pile 2.
After that, four cards are again dealt from the stock (even if one pile is empty) and plays already mentioned are made. Only the top card of each pile is in play. In case the four cards dealt from the stock are all of the same rank, they are immediately discarded.
This continues until the stock runs out. After this first round, the piles are picked up, starting from the rightmost pile, and put over one another either faced down or face up without disturbing the order of the cards in each pile. Four cards are again dealt and the steps mentioned earlier are again done.
The game is won when all cards are discarded (in fours). This is not always possible, however, since in about 45% of cases a cycle occurs: that is, the cards return to exactly the same sequence as one that has been seen previously. When the game can be won, it still takes an average of 128 rounds before completion, hence the name.
Read more about this topic: Perpetual Motion (solitaire)
Famous quotes containing the word rules:
“Most of the rules and precepts of the world take this course of pushing us out of ourselves and driving us into the market place, for the benefit of public society.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)