How to Play King Albert Solitaire

A challenging solitaire where you build down in alternating colors on a triangular tableau, drawing from a reserve pile instead of a stock. Only the top reserve card is playable at a time.

Setup

1. Deal the tableau in a triangle: first pile gets 1 card, second gets 2, up to the ninth pile with 9 cards.
2. The remaining 7 cards form a single reserve pile—only its top card is playable at a time.
3. Place four empty foundation piles to the side.
4. Only the top card of each tableau column is available to play.

How to play

• Play the top card of the reserve pile; once it's gone, the card beneath it becomes available.
• Move the top reserve card to the tableau, building downward in alternating colors (red on black, black on red).
• Move only one card at a time in the tableau—sequences cannot be moved together.
• Cards automatically move to the foundations when they no longer have playable cards to build on them (you can change this in Settings to manual or always-automatic).
• Empty tableau columns can be filled with any available card.
• The game is won when all cards reach the foundations, but this is quite difficult.

How to win

Objective: Move all 52 cards to the four foundations by suit, starting with Aces.

You win when all four foundation piles are complete (Ace through King in each suit). Many deals can't be won even with perfect play, since once the reserve is used up there's no way to get more cards.

Tips

• Preserve access to reserve cards by exposing high-value tableau cards early when possible.
• Try to build on the tableau in ways that keep lower reserve cards accessible.
• Remember you cannot redeal or get new cards from a stock—careful reserve management is critical.

Play King Albert free on Windows

CardTray is a free solitaire app for Windows that includes King Albert 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 Raglan family:

• Queen Victoria — Queen Victoria takes King Albert and adds one big convenience: whole sequences of cards can move together instead of one at a time, which makes the tableau far easier to untangle.
• Big Bertha — A two-deck game with a unique separate Kings foundation.
• Muse — A King Albert variant that replaces the reserve with flexible free cells, letting you temporarily hold cards and maneuver complex tableau sequences across a stair-step pyramid layout.