How is Brisbane different from Yukon?

Two rules. Brisbane builds down by rank with suit ignored entirely, and it lets any card fill an empty column where Yukon demands a King. The deal shape differs slightly too, and the move-anything rule is unchanged.

Can I put any 7 on any 8?

Yes. The tableau checks only the rank, so the 7 of spades lands on the 8 of spades as readily as on the 8 of hearts. Suits and colours are irrelevant for building.

Do the foundations ignore suit as well?

No, and that is the tension of the game. Foundations build up in suit from the Ace, so a tidy mixed-suit column in the tableau has to be dismantled before any of it can be banked.

What can go into an empty column?

Any card, with whatever tail it is carrying. That makes an empty column a genuine staging area here rather than somewhere only a King can sit.

Why is the deal uneven?

Because the last three cards land on the first three columns. That gives 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9 and 10 — two columns of the same depth in the middle rather than a clean staircase.

What is the most common beginner mistake?

Building long mixed-suit columns because they are easy to build. Those cards cannot be banked in that order and must all be taken apart again, so a messy sorted board beats a tidy unsorted one.

Brisbane Solitaire - Play Online & 100% Free

Play Brisbane Solitaire — Yukon With the Suits Taken Out

Brisbane keeps the rule that makes Yukon what it is — any face-up card may be lifted and carried with everything piled on it, sequence or no sequence — and then removes almost every other restriction. The tableau builds down by rank with suit ignored completely, so any 7 goes on any 8. An empty column takes any card at all, not just a King. What it does not change is the goal: the foundations still want Ace to King in a single suit. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Brisbane?

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

Setup

Deck: one standard 52-card deck. No stock and no redeal.
Tableau: seven columns holding 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9 and 10 cards. Column one hides nothing; each column after it hides one more card than the last, up to six — 21 hidden cards in all.
Foundations: four, empty.

Rules

Any face-up card may be moved, carrying every card on top of it, packed or not.
Build tableau columns down by rank, ignoring suit: any 7 lands on any 8, including the 7 of the same suit.
An empty column takes any card, with its tail.
A hidden card turns up the moment play exposes it.
Foundations build up by suit from the Ace and are one-way.

Brisbane Strategy

This is one of the freest boards in the catalogue, and that is the difficulty rather than the relief. Everything moves; very little of it helps.

Remember what the foundations want. They take suits and the tableau does not. A tidy nine-card column running down through four suits is effortless to build and worth nothing — every card of it has to come off again in order.
Sort towards suits from the first move. When two cards both fit a spot, prefer the one that brings a card nearer the suit it will eventually need. That choice is free now and expensive later.
Spend the freedom on hidden cards. Twenty-one cards start face down and the deepest column hides six. Because you can pick up almost anything, you can nearly always clear a column top — so use that to expose cards, not to rearrange what you can already see.
Open columns are genuinely yours here. Any card fills a space, which makes an empty column a real staging area rather than a King's parking bay. It is the most valuable thing on the board and the easiest to waste.
Watch the uneven middle. The deal gives two columns seven cards, so the board is not a clean staircase. The awkward cards tend to collect in that middle band, and it is worth digging there before the columns grow.

Brisbane in the Yukon Family

Brisbane is registered in the PySol Fan Club collection as a Yukon variant, and it makes two changes to the parent game. Its tableau stack tests only the rank, so its own help text reads "Build down regardless of suit, can move any face-up cards regardless of sequence." And because that stack is used without a wrapper, it keeps the default that lets any card fill an empty column — where Yukon itself demands a King.

Its deal is worth stating because it is not the usual staircase. The first loop gives column j exactly j hidden cards; three full rows and one more give every column four face-up cards; and the last three cards land on the first three columns. That produces 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 — an uneven shape with two columns of the same depth in the middle.

Suit-blind building with the goal left alone is a recurring idea across this catalogue, and it always produces the same shape of problem. Black Widow does it in the Spider family; KingCell does it in FreeCell. In all three the lesson is that a rule making movement easy does not make finishing easier — it just moves the work from execution to planning.

For the strict original, play Yukon. For the same board with alternating-colour building both ways, play Roslin; for open spaces with the colour rule intact, Ukrainian Solitaire.

One honest note on difficulty. No published win rate for Brisbane that we can reach carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. It is generally reckoned among the gentler members of the family, and structurally that is fair — but the suit-blind build makes it very easy to build a position you then have to undo.