How to play
Aces Up is the quickest solitaire on the site to learn. There are only four columns, one stock and one discard pile, and the whole game is about one comparison: which top card is higher within its suit.
The game opens with one card face up in each of the four columns. The other 48 cards wait in the stock at the top left.
The discard rule
Look at the four cards on top of the columns. If two of them share a suit, the lower one can be thrown away. Aces count high here, above the king, so an ace can never be discarded. A 9 of hearts goes when the jack of hearts shows on another column; the jack goes when the queen, king or ace of hearts turns up. Cards of different suits never affect each other.
Only top cards matter. A heart buried in the middle of a column does nothing for you until everything above it has been cleared away.
Empty columns
When a column runs out of cards, you can move any single top card from another column into the gap. This is the only way to rearrange the table, and it is what turns Aces Up from pure luck into a game with decisions.
Dealing
Tap the stock to deal four new cards, one on top of each column. You can deal whenever you want, even when moves are still open, and there is no second pass through the stock. Twelve deals use up the 48 cards.
You win when every card except the four aces is in the discard pile, which in practice means each ace sits alone in its own column.
Controls
Tap a card to send it where it can go: onto the discard pile if it is beaten, or into an empty column. You can also drag cards. Hint highlights a useful move, Undo steps back through your moves and deals, and New game shuffles a fresh deck. The top bar counts your moves and the time. When nothing is left to do, the game tells you there are no moves left.
Strategy
Aces Up deals are often lost before you make a single choice, but on the deals where choices exist, these habits help.
- Clear everything before dealing. Once four new cards land on top, the cards underneath are stuck until the column is dug out. Make every discard first.
- An empty column is worth more than one discard. Use it to lift a card that blocks a pile. The best use is usually to move an ace out of the way, because an ace on top of a column can never leave by itself.
- Bury aces at the bottom. An ace sitting at the base of a column costs nothing, since that is where it needs to end. An ace on top of five other cards locks all of them.
- Think about which card to move into a gap. Moving a high card (a king or queen) into the empty column keeps it available as a “beater” for lower cards of its suit that turn up later.
- Sometimes wait to discard. If a column you want to empty has a beatable card on top, discarding it now may be right. If that card is the only thing protecting a useful card below it from the next deal, think twice.
- Use Undo to test lines. Because the stock order is hidden, Undo won’t tell you what comes next before you deal, but it lets you compare different orders of discards and moves on the cards you can see.
How it compares
Where Klondike asks you to build long sequences, Aces Up never builds anything; it only removes. That makes a full game last a couple of minutes. If you like the quick tempo but want a bit more planning, Golf Solitaire uses a single waste pile and a running score of cards left.
If you enjoy Aces Up Solitaire, try Altmışaltı or Baker’s Dozen Solitaire next.
