Rules for Thirty-Six

Family: Forty Thieves
Categories: Rewarding
Variants:
Also Known As:

The rules of Thirty-Six are much like those of Forty Thieves, but allow easier building and moving of cards within the tableau. Thoughtful play will be rewarded with reasonably frequent wins.

Layout

Shuffle the deck and lay out 36 cards in six tableau piles, six cards to each pile, face up and fanned down. Keep the remaining cards in your hand. There are also four foundation piles and a discard pile, which start out empty.

Play

Tableaus build down by rank, ignoring suit and color. Partial builds in sequence and the top card of the discard pile are available. Any available card or build may be played to an empty tableau.

The foundations build up in suit from the Ace to the King. Whenever you wish, deal a new card from the hand onto the discard pile.

Goal

The goal is to move all the cards onto the foundations.

Tips

As in all games of this type, empty piles are of great importance. You can move blocking cards to empty piles in order to reach the cards they were covering.

In general, try to play low-ranked dealt cards at first, and let higher cards sit in the discard pile.