Guide
How to Play Golf Solitaire
Golf Solitaire deals seven face-up columns of five cards and challenges you to clear them all onto a single waste pile. Any exposed column card that is one rank above or below the top of the waste can be played, regardless of suit.
The OPKA table plays classic Golf: Aces and Kings do not wrap around to each other, the stock is a single pass, and every deal comes from a seeded shuffle so finished games can be verified for the leaderboard.
How Golf is set up
Golf uses one standard 52-card deck. Thirty-five cards are dealt face up into seven columns of five, one card starts the waste, and the remaining sixteen cards form the stock.
Only the bottom card of each column is exposed. Clearing it exposes the card above, so every column is a small ladder you work through top to bottom.
- Tableau: seven columns of five face-up cards.
- Waste: the growing discard pile you chain onto.
- Stock: sixteen face-down cards, flipped one at a time.
Legal moves
Play any exposed column card whose rank is exactly one above or one below the current waste card. Suits never matter in Golf.
When no column card chains, flip the next stock card onto the waste. The game ends in a win when all thirty-five tableau cards are cleared, and it is over when the stock is empty and nothing chains.
Chain planning
Long chains win games. Before playing an obvious card, scan every column for the longest run you can string together, counting up and down through ranks as you go.
The order you clear columns matters: two cards of the same rank in different columns can extend one chain if you alternate direction between them.
Stock discipline
Each stock flip buries the waste card you were chaining on, so a flip is only free when nothing chains. With sixteen stock cards and thirty-five to clear, you need to average more than two tableau plays per waste card to finish.