Why is the deal uneven?

Bath deals a staircase — one card in the first column, two in the second, up to six — then three columns of eight on the right. That makes the left of the board nearly solved at the start and the right the whole problem.

How many cards can I move at once?

Usually three. The figure is (free cells + 1) times (empty columns + 1), and with two cells and no space that is three. Anything longer requires a genuinely empty column first.

What can go into an empty column?

Only a King, or a run headed by a King. That is why clearing the short left-hand columns is only half the job — you also need a King you can actually reach to put there.

How is Bath different from FreeCell?

Two cells instead of four, Kings-only spaces instead of open ones, and a staircase deal across ten columns instead of eight even ones. Every rule about building and banking is identical.

Are any cards hidden?

None. All 52 are dealt face up, so the whole problem is visible from the first second. What makes the game hard is not what you cannot see, it is how little of it you can move.

What is the most common way to lose?

Filling both cells with cards that have nowhere to go. That drops your carrying capacity to a single card, and on this board a single card is rarely enough to recover with.

Bath Solitaire - Play Online & 100% Free

Play Bath Solitaire — The Tightest Board in the FreeCell Family

Bath deals a staircase: one card in the first column, two in the second, and so on up to six, then three columns of eight on the right. Beside it sit just two free cells, and an empty column will take nothing but a King. In this family the number of cards you can carry in one move is your free cells multiplied by your empty columns — and Bath starves both terms at once. The left of the board is nearly solved before you start; the right is eight deep and you have almost no leverage to dig it. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Bath?

Goal: build all four foundations from Ace to King by suit.

Setup

Deck: one standard 52-card deck, all face up.
Tableau: ten columns holding 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8 and 8 cards.
Free cells: two, both empty at the start. Each holds one card.
Foundations: four, empty.
No stock, no waste, no redeal.

Rules

Build tableau columns down in alternating colours: a red 7 goes on a black 8.
A packed run travels as a unit, but only as far as your free cells and empty columns allow.
Only a King, or a King-headed run, may enter an empty column.
A free cell holds exactly one card and may return it to the tableau or send it to a foundation at any time.
Foundations build up by suit from the Ace and are one-way.
You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations.

Bath Strategy

Two cells and no usable spaces means you are almost always moving one, two or three cards. Plan on that footing from the first move.

Count in threes. Two empty cells and no empty column carries three cards. That is your working maximum for most of the game, and it is the number every plan has to fit inside. Anything longer needs a genuine empty column first.
The short columns are the opening. The first column holds one card and the second two. Clearing them is realistic and it is the only way to get a space at all — but a space is worth nothing until you have a King to put in it, so line the two up.
Put the right King in the space. With so little room, an empty column is a once-per-game asset. Choose the King that unlocks the most: one that has a long alternating tail available to build on, or one whose removal exposes something you need.
Guard both cells jealously. Losing one cell drops your carry from three cards to two; losing both drops it to one, and the game is essentially over. Never park a card you have no retrieval plan for.
Dig the right-hand columns before the board fills up. Three columns are eight deep. Whatever sits at their bottom is the hardest thing on the board, and every card you add to the left side makes it harder to reach.

Bath in the FreeCell Family

Bath is registered in the PySol Fan Club collection as an open FreeCell variant, and its class states three things: ten columns with two reserves, an alternating-colour tableau whose base rank is the King, and a staircase deal built by dealing progressively shorter rows. The collection also configures its solver with esf='kings' — "empty stacks filled by kings" — which is a second, independent statement of the same space rule.

The board is unusual for a fully open game. Most of this family deals columns of even depth, so every part of the board is about equally hard. Bath's staircase makes the left side almost trivial and the right side the whole problem, which changes what the opening moves are for: you are not manoeuvring, you are trying to convert a nearly-empty column into the one space the game will give you.

It is worth playing directly after FreeCell to feel what the two restrictions do. FreeCell gives you four cells and spaces open to any card; Bath halves the first and closes the second. The rules are otherwise identical, and the games could hardly play less alike.

Within this catalogue its nearest relatives are Seahaven Towers, which also restricts spaces to Kings but hands back four cells, and Stronghold, which has one cell and no run moves at all. For the same King rule with a suit-blind build, play KingCell.

One honest note on difficulty. PySolFC rates Bath SL_SKILL, its higher skill band, and no published win rate for it that we can reach carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. Structurally it is among the most demanding open boards in the catalogue: everything is visible, and very little of it can be moved.