Play Chinaman Solitaire — A Looser Build, Tighter Spaces

Chinaman takes the most generous building rule in the Klondike family and pairs it with one of the tightest space rules. The tableau builds down in any suit but the card's own — so a black 6 accepts either red 5 and the other black 5, three suits out of four — but an empty column will take nothing except a King. Three cards turn from the stock at a time and you get exactly one redeal. It is a game of easy small moves and hard big ones. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Chinaman?

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

Setup

• Deck: one standard 52-card deck.
• Tableau: seven columns of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 cards — 28 in all — with only the last card of each column face up.
• Foundations: four, empty.
• Stock: the remaining 24 cards, turned three at a time to a waste, with one redeal.

Rules

• Build tableau columns down in any suit but the same one: on the 6 of clubs you may place the 5 of hearts, the 5 of diamonds or the 5 of spades — but never the 5 of clubs.
• A packed run travels as a unit.
• Only a King, or a King-headed run, may enter an empty column.
• A hidden card turns up the moment play exposes it.
• Foundations build up by suit from the Ace and are one-way.
• Three cards a turn, and exactly one redeal — two passes through the stock in total.

Chinaman Strategy

The build rule is so permissive that the tableau almost plays itself. What it will not do is give you a space, and that is where the game is decided.

• Do not confuse busy with productive. Because three suits out of four fit on any card, you can always find something to move. Most of those moves change nothing. Before each one, ask whether it turns a hidden card, empties a column, or frees an Ace — and if it does none of the three, look again.
• Hunt the short columns first. The staircase's left-hand columns hide the fewest cards, and with a build rule this loose you can usually strip one down quickly. An empty column is the scarcest thing in the game, so a column that can realistically be cleared is worth planning around from the first move.
• Know where the Kings are. A space you cannot fill is a space you have wasted. Keep track of the four Kings, and prefer to clear the column whose King you can actually reach.
• Count your two passes. Three cards a turn and one redeal is not much stock. On the first pass, take cards you can place; on the second, you are choosing which of the remaining cards to save the game with, so slow down.
• Do not over-bank the low cards. A 4 left in the tableau can host three different 3s here, which is unusually valuable. The foundations are one-way, so send a card up when its suit needs it rather than the instant it becomes legal.

Chinaman and Thumb and Pouch

Chinaman is registered in the PySol Fan Club collection as a descendant of Thumb and Pouch, and the pair make a neat study. Thumb and Pouch introduced the "any suit but the same" build — a rule loose enough that it turns Klondike into a gentle game — and paired it with spaces open to any card and no redeal at all. Chinaman keeps the loose build, closes the spaces to Kings only, and pays for that restriction with a deeper look at the stock: three cards a turn instead of one, and a redeal.

The build rule itself is worth stating plainly, because it is easy to misread as alternating colour. It is not. In PySolFC's implementation the only pair rejected is one where both cards share a suit — the rank must descend by one, and the suits must differ. That admits three of the four suits, where alternating colour admits two, which is why both games in this pair feel so much freer than Klondike in the small moves.

Its other neighbours in this catalogue push the same board in the opposite direction. Trigon tightens the build all the way to a single suit and keeps everything else; Saratoga leaves the rules alone and reveals every card; Whitehead builds in the same colour on a fully open board. For the original, play Klondike.

One honest note on difficulty. PySolFC rates Chinaman balanced, and no published win rate for it that we can reach carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. The structural picture is a game whose small moves are easy and whose large ones are not: you will rarely be stuck for something to do, and often be stuck for something worth doing.