Classic British Patience Rules and S

Quick Answer: Sir Tommy is one of the oldest known patience card games, played with a single 52-card deck. Cards are dealt one at a time to four discard columns or the four foundation piles. Foundations build from Ace to King regardless of suit. The challenge is managing which cards go to which discard column to preserve future plays. Win rate is roughly 40–50% with good strategy.

Sir Tommy holds a special place in the history of patience card games. Widely regarded as one of the oldest documented patience games, it appears in English patience literature dating back to at least the 1870s. Its rules are elegantly simple, yet the decisions it demands are surprisingly rich — making it a fascinating window into how card games developed before modern variations like Klondike or FreeCell came to dominate.

What Is Sir Tommy?

Sir Tommy is a single-deck patience game with a deceptively simple structure. Cards are dealt one at a time from a shuffled deck, and with each card you face a binary decision: play it to a foundation or place it on one of four discard columns. Once placed on a discard column, a card can only be played to a foundation — it cannot be moved to another discard column. This irreversible placement makes Sir Tommy a game of prediction and resource management.

Definition: In Sir Tommy (and related patience games), "discard columns" are holding areas where cards wait until they become playable to a foundation. Unlike tableau columns in games like Klondike, discard columns in Sir Tommy only release their top card when that card is the next needed card for a foundation.

The game is documented extensively in classic patience references and on [Sir Tommy Solitaire Rules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience_(game). Players in London and across Britain have enjoyed Sir Tommy for over a century and a half — it represents the patience tradition at its most distilled: pure decision-making with no tableau building, no shuffling, and no second chances.

Sir Tommy Setup

Cards needed: One standard 52-card deck, shuffled.

Layout:

• Four foundation piles in a row at the top (initially empty)
• Four discard column spaces below the foundations (initially empty)
• The full 52-card deck held face-down as a stock

No cards are pre-dealt to columns. The entire game plays out through dealing one card at a time.

How to Play Sir Tommy

Objective: Build all four foundation piles from Ace up through King. Unlike most patience games, Sir Tommy's foundations are built regardless of suit — any Ace starts a foundation, and any card of the next rank continues it. This means all four foundations race from Ace to King using cards from all four suits.

Dealing:

1. Flip the top card of the stock
2. Choose one of two actions:
   • Play to a foundation: If the card is an Ace (first card needed) or the next sequential rank on any foundation, place it there
   • Place on a discard column: Place the card face-up on any of the four discard columns

Discard column rules:

• Cards in discard columns stack in any order (you choose)
• Only the top card of each discard column is available to play to a foundation
• Once placed, a card cannot move to another discard column — it can only go to a foundation when it becomes the right card

Playing from discard columns: After placing a card from the stock, check whether the top card of any discard column is now playable to a foundation. If so, move it. Repeat until no discard column tops are playable. Then deal the next stock card.

No redeals: Sir Tommy is played once through the deck. If you exhaust the stock and cannot play all cards to foundations, the game is lost.

Sir Tommy Strategy

The apparent simplicity of Sir Tommy conceals genuine strategic depth. Your only choices are which discard column to place each card on, yet these decisions entirely determine whether you win or lose.

Think of discard columns as sorted waiting areas. The fundamental principle: you want each foundation rank to be reachable when needed. If multiple cards of the same rank are buried in the same discard column, you cannot play both when needed.

Avoid concentrating same-rank cards in one column. If the 7 of Hearts is on a column and you draw the 7 of Spades, put the 7 of Spades on a different column. The foundations need all four 7s (or at least multiple 7s across all four foundations), so spreading same-rank cards across columns keeps options open.

Track foundation progress by rank. Sir Tommy's foundations are rank-based, not suit-based. If all four foundations have reached rank 8, you need four 9s next. If three 9s are on discard columns but buried under other cards, you have a problem. Keep mental count of where each needed rank sits.

Reserve one discard column for emergency storage. Some experienced players keep one column sparse, using it only for cards that have no good home elsewhere. This "emergency column" can absorb awkward high cards that would clog other columns.

Low cards are more valuable than high cards. An Ace or 2 can go directly to a foundation or sit on a discard column and be played very soon. A King can only go to a foundation as the last card in a 13-rank sequence. This means Kings are the most dangerous discard column inhabitants — once placed, they sit there potentially blocking lower cards for a long time.

Play to foundations immediately when possible. Unlike games where holding cards in the tableau has strategic value, Sir Tommy has no benefit to keeping playable cards in discard columns. Always move foundation-ready cards to foundations as soon as they appear.

For more on managing card priorities, see our best first moves in solitaire strategy guide.

Sir Tommy Variants

Lady Betty: An identical game under a different name, occasionally listed separately in patience compendia.

Auld Lang Syne: A related game where all four Aces are pre-placed on foundations at the start, and foundations are built by rank (same rules as Sir Tommy's foundations). The reduced starting challenge makes it slightly easier.

Strategy (the patience game): A more complex variant where foundations are built by suit, not rank-independent. This dramatically increases difficulty since each foundation can only accept cards of a specific suit.

Colonel: Combines Sir Tommy's dealing mechanic with a tableau element, providing more flexibility but also more complexity.

Sir Tommy's direct descendants and related games reveal how patience evolved — each variant tweaks one element to create a new balance of skill and luck. Explore more of this evolution in our complete guide to different types of solitaire games.

Win Rate and Historical Significance

Sir Tommy's win rate is estimated at 40–55% with good play. Because foundations accept any suit at each rank, the game is more forgiving than suit-specific games. The primary challenge is purely the management of discard columns — a pure test of foresight with no luck involved once cards are placed.

Historically, Sir Tommy is fascinating as a prototype. Many historians believe that the core mechanic of "deal one, decide where" games like Sir Tommy prefigures the design principles that led to modern patience variants. The game is mentioned in Lady Adelaide Cadogan's 1874 book Illustrated Games of Patience, one of the earliest English patience books, where it appears under various names.

For American players encountering Sir Tommy for the first time — perhaps after years of playing digital Klondike on phones or Windows computers — the absence of a tableau may feel strange. But Sir Tommy's pure decision structure makes it a valuable mental exercise and a connection to solitaire's roots. Players in older card game communities from Boston to Charleston have kept Sir Tommy alive as a parlor game tradition.

Check out our beginner's guide to solitaire if you want context on how Sir Tommy fits into the broader solitaire landscape.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the rules for Sir Tommy solitaire?

In Sir Tommy, you deal one card at a time from a 52-card deck. Each card must be placed either on a foundation pile (building any suit from Ace to King by rank) or on one of four discard columns. Discard column cards can only move to foundations, not to other columns. The game is won if all 52 cards reach the foundations before the deck runs out.

How old is Sir Tommy solitaire?

Sir Tommy is one of the oldest documented patience card games, appearing in English patience literature as far back as the 1870s. Lady Adelaide Cadogan's 1874 book Illustrated Games of Patience includes it among the earliest systematically described patience games. It may be even older in oral tradition.

What makes Sir Tommy different from other solitaire games?

Sir Tommy has no tableau building. There are only foundations and discard holding columns. Cards cannot be moved between columns. The entire game consists of deciding which discard column to place each card on, making it a pure test of forward planning and probability judgment rather than tableau management.

Do Sir Tommy foundations need to follow suit?

No. Sir Tommy's foundations are rank-based regardless of suit. Any Ace starts a foundation, and any card of the next rank continues any foundation — suit does not matter. This is different from most solitaire games where foundations must follow a single suit from Ace to King.

What is the best strategy for Sir Tommy solitaire?

The key strategy is spreading same-rank cards across different discard columns so that when a rank is needed for foundations, multiple options exist. Avoid placing high-rank cards (Kings, Queens) on top of low-rank cards that are needed soon. Reserve one column as a flexible emergency storage area for difficult cards.

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💡 Variant Strategy Note (2026)

Each solitaire variation demands unique table space management. In column-heavy formats like Spider or Yukon, prioritize unlocking hidden columns early to act as temporary staging areas.