San Juan Hill is Forty Thieves with one kindness: all eight Aces are placed on the foundations before the deal. Everything else is the classic game. Two decks, ten columns of four dealt face up, columns built down by suit one card at a time, an empty column open to any card, a stock turned one card at a time in a single pass with no redeal. With the Aces up, the opening changes from hunting for Aces to hunting for 2s, and the stock is eight cards shorter, which together take much of the sting out of the hardest classic in the family. Thomas Warfield designed it for Pretty Good Solitaire, where it is also known as Kettle Hill. Free in your browser, no sign-up.
Goal: build all eight foundations from Ace to King by suit, using both decks.
The Aces are up, so every 2 is playable the moment it is free. Build your opening around that.
San Juan Hill is a Thomas Warfield design from Pretty Good Solitaire, whose own description is the whole rule: a variation of Forty Thieves where the Aces are dealt out to the foundations at the start of the game. The PySol collection carries it with the alternative name Kettle Hill, after the neighbouring rise in the same 1898 battle. It occupies the same place in the family that Lucas does one step further along: Lucas founds the Aces and also spreads the deal to thirteen shallow columns, while San Juan Hill founds the Aces and leaves the classic ten-by-four board alone.
That makes it the cleanest way to measure what the Aces are worth. Forty Thieves is a hard game; founding the eight Aces removes the opening's cruellest phase and shortens the stock, and the game becomes a fair fight without changing a single building rule.
For the unassisted original, play Forty Thieves; for the Aces up on a wider, shallower board, play Lucas.
One thing: the eight Aces are placed on the foundations before the deal instead of being shuffled into the pack. The deal, the suit building, the single-card moves and the one pass through the stock are all unchanged. The stock is 56 cards rather than 64 because the Aces are already out.
Both found the eight Aces first. Lucas then deals thirteen columns of three, leaving a 57-card stock; San Juan Hill keeps the classic ten columns of four and a 56-card stock. Lucas is the wider, shallower board; San Juan Hill is the traditional one.
Both names come from the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898, where Kettle Hill was the neighbouring rise. Pretty Good Solitaire uses San Juan Hill; the PySol collection lists Kettle Hill as an alternative name for the same game.
No. Only the top card of a column moves, one card per move, even when the cards beneath it are in perfect same-suit order.
No. The stock is turned one card at a time and only once. Cards left in the waste at the end stay there.
More often than Forty Thieves. With the Aces up and the stock shorter, PySol rates San Juan Hill a balanced game. It detects a genuine dead end and tells you when no legal move remains.