Play San Juan Hill Solitaire — Forty Thieves With the Aces Already Up

San Juan Hill is Forty Thieves with one kindness: all eight Aces are placed on the foundations before the deal. Everything else is the classic game. Two decks, ten columns of four dealt face up, columns built down by suit one card at a time, an empty column open to any card, a stock turned one card at a time in a single pass with no redeal. With the Aces up, the opening changes from hunting for Aces to hunting for 2s, and the stock is eight cards shorter, which together take much of the sting out of the hardest classic in the family. Thomas Warfield designed it for Pretty Good Solitaire, where it is also known as Kettle Hill. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play San Juan Hill?

Goal: build all eight foundations from Ace to King by suit, using both decks.

Setup

• Foundations: the eight Aces are dealt to the eight foundations before play begins, one per pile.
• Tableau: ten columns of four cards (40 cards), all face up.
• Stock: the remaining 56 cards, face down. Waste: empty.

Rules

• Build tableau columns down by suit: the 7 of hearts goes on the 8 of hearts only.
• Move one card at a time. Packed runs never travel together.
• An empty column accepts any card.
• Click the stock to turn one card to the waste. The waste's top card may be played to the tableau or a foundation.
• One pass only. When the stock is empty there is no redeal.
• Foundations build up by suit from the Aces already in place. Cards on a foundation stay there.

San Juan Hill Strategy

The Aces are up, so every 2 is playable the moment it is free. Build your opening around that.

• Free the 2s first, then the 3s. With eight foundations open, low cards bank immediately. Dig for the 2s that are shallowest in the deal, and remember there are two of each suit: banking one leaves a foundation waiting for the other.
• Empty a column, and use it as a staging post. Forty Thieves' single-card rule makes a space the only way to reorder cards. Clear a short column early and use it to lift blockers off the cards you need.
• Do not bank a card its column still needs as a host. Foundation cards never return. In a suit-building game a banked 5 can no longer host a 4, so check what is still buried before you send a low card up.
• Make the tableau quiet before each stock click. With no redeal, a stock card that cannot be placed is lost under the next one. Play every useful tableau move first so each arriving card has the most possible homes.

San Juan Hill in the Forty Thieves Family

San Juan Hill is a Thomas Warfield design from Pretty Good Solitaire, whose own description is the whole rule: a variation of Forty Thieves where the Aces are dealt out to the foundations at the start of the game. The PySol collection carries it with the alternative name Kettle Hill, after the neighbouring rise in the same 1898 battle. It occupies the same place in the family that Lucas does one step further along: Lucas founds the Aces and also spreads the deal to thirteen shallow columns, while San Juan Hill founds the Aces and leaves the classic ten-by-four board alone.

That makes it the cleanest way to measure what the Aces are worth. Forty Thieves is won perhaps one game in ten; founding the eight Aces removes the opening's cruellest phase and shortens the stock, and the game becomes a fair fight without changing a single building rule.

For the unassisted original, play Forty Thieves; for the Aces up on a wider, shallower board, play Lucas.