How to Play Bisley Solitaire

All 52 cards are laid out face up at once. Build two foundation piles per suit—one ascending from Ace, one descending from King—while avoiding blocking moves in the tableau.

Setup

1. Four Aces are placed as the starting row of foundation bases
2. Four empty foundation spaces sit beside them for Kings
3. The remaining 48 cards are dealt into 13 tableau piles: nine piles with 4 cards and four piles with 3 cards
4. All cards are visible face up from the start

How to play

• Build tableau piles by moving cards up or down in the same suit (for example, place a 9♠ on 8♠ or 10♠)
• Only the top card of each tableau pile is available for play—buried cards become available only as piles shrink
• Move cards to other tableau piles using single-card moves only
• Empty tableau spaces remain empty; they cannot be refilled or reused
• Cards move to the foundations on their own once nothing else could be built on them; you can change this in Settings
• Continue until all cards reach the foundations or no more moves are possible

How to win

Objective: Move all 52 cards to the eight foundation piles, splitting each suit between an ascending foundation (Ace to King) and a descending foundation (King to Ace).

You win when all 52 cards rest on the eight foundations with each suit split between its ascending and descending piles. You're stuck when cards remain and no legal moves unlock them.

Tips

• Avoid blocking middle-value cards between higher and lower ranks of the same suit—a 9♠ trapped between 8♠ and 10♠ becomes immovable
• Preserve flexibility by not forcing cards to foundations too early; keep multiple building options open in the tableau
• The split foundation system is your advantage—before committing a card to an Ace foundation, check if it could work better descending from a King

Play Bisley free on Windows

CardTray is a free solitaire app for Windows that includes Bisley 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 Foundations family:

• Box Kite — A two-deck game with eight foundations divided into two groups—four climbing from Aces and four descending from Kings—offering multiple strategic paths to victory.
• Caprice — An unusual two-deck game where you build two sets of foundation piles simultaneously—four ascending (Ace to King) and four descending (King to Ace), all within their respective suits.
• Crescent — A two-deck game where one foundation row ascends (Ace to King) and the other descends from King and wraps around past Ace.
• Deuces and Queens — Build cards upward and downward simultaneously on two sets of foundations in this challenging two-deck game.
• Double Aces and Kings — A demanding four-deck game with eight ascending and eight descending foundation piles.