Aces Up Solitaire

Discard and refill

How to play Aces Up

Four cards are dealt, one to each pile. Look across the four exposed cards for any two of the same suit: the lower one can be discarded and the higher one stays. Repeat until nothing else can go, then deal four more cards on top and look again.

Aces are high, which is unusual and is the entire point of the game — nothing can ever remove an ace, so the four aces are the cards that survive. Everything else is trying to find a bigger card in its own suit before the deck runs out.

There are thirteen deals in a game and no redeal. You will get through them in a couple of minutes, and most of the time you will finish with rather more than four cards on the table.

Discard rules

Which cards you may discard

What actually wins

How to actually win Aces Up

Use every space before you deal. The deal fills empty piles automatically, so an unused space is simply gone. In 100,000 simulated games, dealing over every space won just 3 of them.

Fill each space with the move that sets off the most discards, and look a move or two ahead: lifting a card that uncovers a discard, which then empties another pile for the next move, is worth more than a move that frees nothing. Treat an ace like any other card here. Moving an ace into a space feels tidy, because it can never leave — but that is exactly the problem, since that pile can never empty again.

Re-check after every removal. Each discard exposes the card underneath, which may be removable itself or may be the higher card that clears another pile, so a single removal can set off several more. Look at all four piles again before you decide the round is finished.

Watch the suits you have not seen. With thirteen deals and four cards each, you see the whole deck. A buried low card can still go as long as a higher card of its suit — at worst, the ace — is showing when it surfaces, so count what is left of each suit before you write a pile off.

The Hint button plays by the same rule: when a space is open, it suggests the move that sets off the most discards over the next couple of moves.

Three avoidable losses

Where Aces Up deals are thrown away

Dealing while a pile is still empty

The deal fills every pile, including the empty one, so a space you have not used is a space you have thrown away. An empty pile is the only tool in the game for reaching a buried card — spend it before you touch the deck.

Putting an ace in the space because it is an ace

An ace can never leave, so the pile it lands on can never empty again, and that space is gone for the rest of the game. Move the card whose move sets off the most discards: sometimes that is an ace, usually it is not.

Dealing with a removal still on the table

The deal is allowed while a card can still be discarded, and it buries that card under a new one. From then on it needs a higher card of its suit showing at the same moment it is uncovered again, which may never happen.

Measured on this page's game

Is Aces Up Solitaire winnable?

Rarely, and exactly how rarely depends on how you play. We played 100,000 shuffled games through the same game code that runs at the top of this page, five different ways, and ran each one past a solver that could see every card still to come.

The famous "1 in 35" is the careful-play number, not the ceiling. Our careful strategy — fill every space with the move that sets off the most discards, looking two moves ahead — won 2.71% of games on this page's rules, about 1 in 37.

The gap to the last number is the part people underestimate. A player who somehow knew every card still to come could win 47.9% of the same deals, so most losses are not a hopeless deal. They are the price of not seeing the stock.

Most games end well short of the four aces, and that is normal. A careful game typically leaves 14 cards on the table, and half end with between 10 and 18. Finishing with ten or fewer puts you among the best 30% of careful games. After a loss, the game checks whether that deal could have been won by someone who knew every card — so you can tell a bad shuffle from a missed chance.

Other names

Idiot's Delight, Drivel, and Firing Squad

Aces Up has collected an unusual number of names for a game with such simple rules. The earliest in print is Drivel, from 1900; Firing Squad followed in 1940, and most later books settled on Aces Up.

Whatever the name, check two rules before comparing results with another site: whether any card may fill a space, and whether you may deal while a discard or a space is still open. Both are allowed here.

Other quick games

Aces Up against the other short games

If you have two minutes rather than twenty, these are the games worth knowing. What separates them is how much of the outcome you actually control.

Aces Up is the quickest of the four to lose, and careful play wins only about 1 in 37. If that appeals, it is genuinely one of the best two-minute card games there is. If it does not, TriPeaks gives you far more to decide in about the same amount of time.