Play Suit Elevens — Pair to Eleven, in Suit, on a Fifteen-Pile Board

Suit Elevens takes Elevens and makes the suit matter in both halves of the game. Fifteen cards are dealt face-up as fifteen piles of one in a three-by-five rectangle, with a talon of thirty-seven behind them. Two exposed cards leave together when their values add up to eleven and they share a suit. The jack, queen and king go to three slots as before — but every card in the slots must share a suit too, so a set is the jack, queen and king of one suit. The wider board is the compensation: a suited pair is four times rarer than an unsuited one, so the game needs more cards showing to stay alive. Free in your browser, no sign-up, and it works offline once the page has loaded.

How Do You Play Suit Elevens?

Goal: remove all 52 cards in suited pairs that total eleven and suited sets of jack, queen and king.

Setup

• Board: 15 cards face-up as 15 piles of one, laid out in a three-by-five rectangle.
• Talon: the remaining 37 cards, face-down beside the board.
• Reserve: three slots below the board, for a jack, a queen and a king of one suit.
• No foundations and no building. Cards only ever leave the game; nothing is stacked on anything.

Rules

• Card values are ace 1, pip cards their face value, jack 11, queen 12, king 13.
• Click two exposed cards whose values add up to eleven and share a suit to remove them both.
• The legal pairs are A+10, 2+9, 3+8, 4+7 and 5+6 — but only within one suit. A four of spades needs a seven of spades.
• A jack, a queen or a king cannot pair. One click sends it to a free slot.
• The first court card into an empty reserve may be any suit. After that, every slot must match its suit and hold a different rank.
• When all three slots hold the jack, queen and king of one suit, the set leaves the game and the slots open again.
• Any pile emptied by a move immediately turns up the next talon card. The board stays fifteen piles wide while the talon lasts.
• You win when the talon, the board and the slots are all empty. You lose when no suited pair and no slot move is left.

What's the Best Suit Elevens Strategy?

• Read the board by suit, not by number. Four sevens showing is worthless if the only four on the board is the wrong colour. Scan each suit as a separate small game and you will find pairs you would otherwise miss.
• The first court card chooses the suit of the set. That is a real decision. Park the jack whose queen or king you can already see, not simply the first one to appear.
• Do not start a set from a suit you have exhausted. If the hearts have largely gone to the discard, a heart jack in the slots may wait a very long time for its queen.
• The wide board is your friend — keep it working. Fifteen piles give roughly four times as many combinations as nine, which is exactly what the suit rule takes away. Clear the blockers so the board keeps turning over.
• Court cards clog faster here. Twelve of them, three slots, and a suit restriction on top: expect to leave one or two sitting on their piles for a long stretch. Plan the pairs around them.

A Short History

Suit Elevens is the strictest member of the Elevens line and, on the face of it, the hardest. Requiring a shared suit cuts the number of legal pairs by three quarters at a stroke, and the same restriction on the reserve means a set is no longer any jack with any queen and any king, but three specific cards. The open-source PySolFC collection, whose rules this version follows, writes the two conditions in separate classes — one for the board and one for the reserve — which is a good reminder that the suit is not a single tweak but two. What keeps the game playable is the board: fifteen piles rather than nine, chosen to give back roughly what the suit rule removes. The result plays quite differently from its parent. Elevens is a game of arithmetic with the suits ignored; Suit Elevens is a game of watching four separate suits at once, on a board wide enough that you cannot take it all in at a glance.

About This Version

This Suit Elevens runs in your browser — free, no download, no sign-up. Install it as an app on your phone or computer; once installed it works offline. Unlimited undo, statistics, and a daily challenge that gives every player the same deal that day.

Other Solitaire Games to Try

• Elevens — the same idea with the suits ignored
• Elevens Too — Elevens with the talon held back
• Tens — pairs to ten, and a reserve that wants four of a kind
• Neptune — take neighbouring ranks off an eight-pile board