Play Gate Solitaire — Two Open Reserves, Eight Columns, One Pass

Gate takes the reserve idea from Canfield, splits it in two, and turns both halves face up. Five cards lie spread at each side of the board — the gateposts — with eight single cards between them. Every card in both reserves is visible from the first move, but only the top of each is playable, and when you empty a column the game fills it for you from whichever reserve is currently deeper. There is one pass through the stock and no redeal, so fifty-two cards get exactly one look each. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Gate?

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

Setup

• Deck: one standard 52-card deck.
• Reserves: two piles of five, dealt one card to each in turn, all face up and spread. Only the top card of each is playable.
• Foundations: four, and all four start empty. They wait for the Aces.
• Tableau: eight columns of a single card each.
• Stock: the remaining 34 cards, turned one at a time to a waste, with no redeal.

Rules

• Foundations build up in suit from the Ace. Nothing wraps: a King is the end of a foundation.
• Tableau columns build down in alternating colours, and a packed run moves as a unit.
• An emptied column is filled at once from the deeper reserve. If the two reserves hold the same number of cards, the left one gives.
• Once both reserves are empty, an emptied column takes the top card of the waste instead — and never a card straight off the stock.
• When the reserves and the waste are both bare, a space is finally yours and any card may enter it.
• Nothing is ever played back onto a reserve, and the foundations are one-way.

Gate Strategy

Two reserves that drain in step is the rule that shapes everything. You do not get to dig into one particular pile; the game keeps them level for you, whether you want that or not.

• Open spaces on purpose, and know which pile pays. Emptying a column is your only way to drain a reserve, and the deeper pile always gives. If you can see a card you want at the bottom of the left pile, you have to work the right pile down to the same depth first. Plan the order of your spaces around that.
• Read both reserves before you start. All ten cards are face up. Aces and low cards near the bottom of a reserve are the ones that decide the game, because they are the ones you may never reach.
• Eight columns is a lot of room — use it early. With one card per column you have eight independent build targets on the first move, more than any Canfield-family game. Spread your builds across ranks and colours rather than stacking one long run, because a long run is one target and eight short columns are eight.
• Beware the waste fill. Once the reserves are gone, an empty column will swallow the top of the waste automatically. That is often bad: a card you were saving to play onto a foundation disappears into a column instead. Late in the game, think twice before emptying a column while a useful card sits on the waste.
• One pass means one chance. There is no redeal, so a card you skip on the waste is a card you may never see again as the top of the waste. Play it onto a column even speculatively rather than burying it under the next turn.
• Aces are urgent. The foundations start empty, so nothing at all can be banked until an Ace appears. An Ace buried in the reserve, under four cards you cannot yet remove, is the single most common way a Gate deal dies.

Gate, Little Gate and the Gateposts

The name is a picture of the board: two spread reserves standing like posts with the row of columns hung between them as the gate. The traditional smaller version, Little Gate, is the same game with four columns instead of eight — the same rules, the same two reserves of five, less room. On this site the eight-column board is the one we ship, because the difference between them is a count rather than a rule, and eight columns is where the game's real decision — which reserve to drain, and in which order — actually has space to breathe.

Gate sits between Canfield and FreeCell in feel. It keeps Canfield's reserve and its forced fill, but it drops the turned base rank and the wrap, so the foundations are the plain Ace-to-King run that most players expect. If Canfield's arithmetic puts you off, Gate is the way into the family.