Kings in the corner rules

A solitaire-shaped game played against other people. You build descending, alternating piles outward from a central stock, and only a king may open a corner.

Players

Two to four, each for themselves.

The deck

A 52-card deck. Seven cards each. The rest goes face down in the middle as the stock, and four cards are turned face up around it — above, below, left and right — as the four foundation piles.

The layout

Those four piles are the crosses. The four diagonal spaces between them are the corners, and they start empty.

If a king is turned up in the layout, it goes straight to a corner and another card is turned to replace it.

Your turn

Draw one card from the stock, then play as many cards as you can:

Onto a pile, a card one rank lower and of the opposite colour. A red nine goes on a black ten. Into an empty cross space, any card. Into an empty corner, a king and nothing else.

You may also move an entire pile onto another pile, if the bottom card of the one you are moving fits the top card of the target. That frees a space, and it is the move that wins games.

When you cannot or do not want to play any more, your turn ends.

Some tables draw at the end of the turn instead of the start. It is the same game; agree which before you deal.

An example

The crosses show a black ten, a red four, a black six and a red jack. You hold a red nine, a black three and a king. The nine goes on the ten, the three on the red four, and the king opens a corner — three cards gone in one turn, and the corner is now somewhere to build.

Winning

The first player to get rid of every card in their hand wins the round.

If the stock runs out and nobody can play, the round ends where it stands and everyone counts.

Scoring

Everyone else counts what they are left holding: kings 10, all other cards 1. Play to an agreed total — 25 is a good length — and the lowest score wins.

Playing well

Play the king early. A king in your hand is ten points and a king in a corner is a pile you can build on, and the corner you open is a corner everybody else can use too.