Streets takes the classic Forty Thieves board — two decks, ten face-up columns of four, eight foundations, a sixty-four card stock dealt once — and changes exactly one rule: the tableau builds down in alternating colours instead of by suit. That single word turns a game where most cards have one legal host into one where most have two, and the character changes completely: Forty Thieves grinds, Streets flows.
Generosity is the trap. Because almost everything is placeable, it is easy to build long, satisfying red-black staircases that bank nothing. The foundations are still suit-only, so a beautiful mixed chain can bury exactly the club you needed. Ask of every build: does this get a card closer to a foundation, or does it just tidy the table?
Keep chains short and purposeful. A three-card chain you can dismantle beats a seven-card chain you cannot. In a one-card-at-a-time game, every card you stack is a card you must later move individually.
Open a column before the stock is half gone. Empty columns are the only free space in the game, and they get harder to make as the board fills.
Remember there is no second pass. A card passed over in the waste is gone. Before each click, exhaust what the board already offers.
Forty Thieves sets every dial in the family to hard: forty cards face up, suit-only building, single-card moves, and one pass through the stock. Each variant softens one of them. Streets softens the build rule and nothing else, which makes it the cleanest experiment in the whole group — the same board, the same stock, the same restrictions, with one word changed. Maria then deals the identical rules one column narrower; Number Ten keeps the colour rule and adds movable runs; Emperor keeps it and hides three rows. If you want to know what alternating-colour building is actually worth in a two-deck game, Streets is where you find out.
Streets runs in your browser — free, no download, no sign-up. Install it as an app on your phone or computer and it works offline. You get unlimited undo, a hint button that names a legal move, statistics that track your wins and times, and seeded deals: every game has a seed you can replay, so a board you enjoyed (or lost) can be played again exactly.
One rule: the tableau builds down in alternating colours instead of down by suit. The ten-by-four deal, the eight foundations, the single-card moves and the no-redeal stock are all identical.
Easier, not easy. The foundations still build by suit, so mixed-colour chains can bury the exact cards you need. Streets rewards restraint as much as Forty Thieves rewards patience.
No. Like classic Forty Thieves, the stock is dealt once, one card at a time. The friendlier build rule is the variant's entire concession.
No. One card per move, always — which is why long chains are a liability rather than an asset.
It appears under that name in the standard patience anthologies as one of the Forty Thieves group. Some collections also print it as Streets and Alleys, though that name more often belongs to a different, single-deck game.
Streets. The alternating-colour build gives most cards two possible hosts instead of one, so you get to practise the family's sequencing without the constant dead ends of the parent game.