Play Double Golf — Two Packs, Nine Columns, One Long Chain

Double Golf is Golf at double scale. Sixty-three cards go into nine columns of seven, and the remaining forty-one form the stock, with one card turned to open the waste. The rule is unchanged and could not be simpler: play the exposed card of any column onto the waste when it is one rank above or below, suit ignored. There are no foundations, nothing is ever built in the tableau, and the game is won when all nine columns are empty. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Double Golf?

Goal: empty all nine columns.

Setup

• Decks: two standard decks, 104 cards.
• Tableau: nine columns of seven cards, all face up (63 cards).
• Stock: the remaining cards, turned one at a time. One is dealt to the waste before play begins.
• Waste: one pile, and the only place any card can go.
• No foundations and no redeal.

Rules

• Play the exposed card of any column onto the waste when it is exactly one rank above or below the waste's top card. Suit is ignored.
• The ranks do not wrap — a King does not follow an Ace.
• A King is an ordinary card here: a Queen plays onto it as usual.
• A card on the waste never comes back. There is no building in the tableau.
• Turn the stock one card at a time. There is no redeal.
• You win when every column is empty.

Double Golf Strategy

Two of every card changes what being stuck means. The rank you need almost certainly exists; the question is whether you can reach it.

• Play the deepest column whenever you have a choice. Nine columns of seven must all reach zero, and the arithmetic is unforgiving: a column you never touch is a lost game however well the rest goes.
• Look two cards ahead, not one. With duplicates in play, the card under an exposed card is often playable too — so a single move can frequently be extended into a run of three or four. Spotting those chains before you start one is most of the skill.
• Do not fish with the stock. Forty-one cards feels generous and is not: every turn you spend hoping for a match is a card you cannot spend later to restart a stalled run.
• Mind the Aces and Kings. The ranks do not wrap, so both ends of the order are dead ends in one direction. A run that arrives at an Ace can only continue with a 2, and one that arrives at a King only with a Queen.
• Everything is visible, so plan properly. No card is hidden and none is random after the deal. A deal that can be won can be won by careful play alone.

Double Golf in the Golf Family

Double Golf is registered in the PySol Fan Club collection as a Golf variant played with two packs. Its class is two short methods — build the game with nine columns, deal seven rows instead of five — and everything else is inherited from Golf unchanged: the waste that accepts a card one rank either side of its top, the single card turned to open it, and the absence of both foundations and redeals.

The extra pack changes the character of the game more than the size suggests. In one-deck Golf, a rank stranded at the bottom of a column can end the game outright, because there is only one of it. Here there are two, so the game is far less often decided by a single unlucky card and far more often by whether you emptied the deep columns while you had the chance.

One rule is worth noting because this catalogue is inconsistent about it on purpose. Double Golf does not wrap: a King and an Ace are not neighbours. This catalogue's own Golf does wrap, which is the commoner digital house rule; Dead King Golf is the strict single-deck reading and closes the King as well.

For the same one-pile chain played from fans with no stock at all, try Black Hole.

One honest note on difficulty. PySolFC rates Double Golf balanced, and no published win rate for it that we can reach carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. Expect a longer game than one-deck Golf, and a fairer one — the duplicates take most of the sting out of a badly placed rank.