How to Play Big Forty Solitaire

Build foundations up in suit from Ace to King using a standard deck laid out across 10 tableau piles and a stock. The waste can be turned back over for unlimited redeals when you get stuck.

Setup

1. Start with 10 tableau piles, each holding 4 cards face up
2. Four empty foundation piles wait for aces
3. The remaining stock cards form the draw pile
4. The waste pile receives one card at a time from the stock

How to play

• Build tableau piles downward in the same suit, placing a lower rank on a higher rank
• Move cards or sequences between tableau piles following the same-suit rule
• Fill empty tableau spaces with any available card or sequence
• When tableau moves are exhausted, click the stock to deal cards one at a time to the waste
• Play the top card from the waste to foundations or tableau if legal
• Once the stock is empty, click it again to turn the waste back over as a new stock—you can redeal as many times as you need
• Cards move to the foundations on their own once nothing else could be built on them; you can change this in Settings

How to win

Objective: Move all 52 cards to the foundations, building each suit up from Ace to King.

You win when all cards are stacked on the four foundations. You're stuck when no legal moves remain and unplayed cards remain in the stock or tableau.

Tips

• Even with unlimited redeals, unproductive passes waste time—expose buried cards early by clearing tableau piles strategically
• Create empty tableau spaces to maximize flexibility for moving sequences
• Before drawing from the stock, exhaust all possible moves between the tableau and foundations

Play Big Forty free on Windows

CardTray is a free solitaire app for Windows that includes Big Forty alongside 300+ other games. It saves every move as you play, so you can close the window and pick the game up later, replay any deal, and take on a new Daily Challenge deal every day. Browse every game in the Game Gallery.

Related games

More games from the Forty Thieves family:

• Blockade — A two-deck game where the stock automatically deals to each tableau pile in turn, building on the table by suit before sending cards to the foundations.
• Lucas Leaps — A forgiving two-deck member of the Forty Thieves family: unlike most of its relatives, you can pick up whole same-suit runs and move them as a group instead of one card at a time.
• Malmaison — A large three-deck relative of Forty Thieves where you clear all 156 cards to twelve foundations, with same-suit runs that can be moved as a group.
• Ali Baba — Ali Baba uses a single deck with 10 tableau piles of 4 cards each.