Play Good Measure Solitaire — Baker's Dozen on Ten Deeper Piles

Good Measure is Baker's Dozen reshaped. The first two Aces the shuffle turns up go straight to the foundations before a card is dealt, and the other fifty cards are laid out in ten piles of five instead of thirteen of four. Then, exactly as in Baker's Dozen, every King sinks to the bottom of its pile. Everything else is the family rule: build down by rank regardless of suit, one card at a time, and an empty pile is gone for good. No stock, no waste, no redeal. Free in your browser, no sign-up.

How Do You Play Good Measure?

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

Setup

• Foundations: the first two Aces in the shuffled deck are placed on their foundations before the deal. The other two Aces are dealt into the tableau.
• Tableau: the remaining 50 cards are dealt face up into 10 piles of five. Every King is then moved to the bottom of its pile.
• No stock, no waste, no reserves. Every card is on the table from move one.

Rules

• Build tableau piles down by rank regardless of suit: any 4 goes on any 5.
• Move one card at a time. Only the top card of a pile can move; sequences never travel together.
• An empty pile cannot be refilled. Once a pile is cleared, that space is closed for the rest of the game.
• Foundations build up by suit. Two start with their Aces; the other two Aces must be dug out. Cards on a foundation stay there.
• There is no redeal. When no legal move remains, the game is over.

Good Measure Strategy

Deeper piles and closed spaces make every move a commitment. Four habits keep you out of trouble.

• Find the two buried Aces first. Two suits are already open; the other two cannot start until their Aces come out. Count how many cards cover each, and make those piles your first project, because until they open half the deck has nowhere to go.
• Do not clear a pile you do not have to. Emptying a pile in Baker's Dozen games gains you nothing: the space cannot be refilled, so you have simply lost a place to build. Keep piles alive as landing spots and clear one only when its last card is genuinely needed.
• Feed the open foundations steadily. The two founded suits can take their 2s, 3s and 4s early. Banking those low cards thins the piles above the cards you actually need, which is worth more than hoarding them as hosts.
• Use the Kings at the bottom as anchors. A bottomed King can host a Queen, then a Jack, and a long run can grow on it without ever needing to move. Build on the Kings whose piles you are not trying to dig through, and leave the ones over a needed Ace alone.

Good Measure in the Baker's Dozen Family

Good Measure is one of the named variants of Baker's Dozen, the open, no-stock game whose thirteen piles gave it its name. Where Baker's Dozen deals thirteen piles of four, Good Measure deals ten piles of five, and it hands the player two Aces as a head start, which is the "good measure" of the title. The Kings-to-the-bottom rule and the closed spaces are inherited unchanged. The game appears in Thomas Warfield's Pretty Good Solitaire collection under the German name Gute Massnahme, in the PySol Fan Club collection, and in Wikipedia's survey of the Baker's Dozen variants, which describes exactly this deal.

Sources agree on every rule except one presentational detail: a single play site turns the bottom card of each pile face down. The published rule sets, and the game as it ships here, deal every card face up, so the whole board is visible from the first move and a loss is always a planning mistake rather than a surprise. Compared with its parent, the deeper piles make digging slower and the head start makes the early foundation play faster, so the game tends to swing: either the buried Aces come out and it opens up, or they do not and it locks.

If you enjoy this shape, try Baker's Dozen for the original thirteen-pile deal, Portuguese Solitaire for the same board with the Kings left loose and a space that takes a King, or Cruel for a related game that founds all four Aces and lets you redeal.