Black Hole
Black Hole is a solitaire game that was invented by the British game expert David Parlett and first appeared in his 1979 book, The Penguin Book of Patience. It has a fairly simple premise, namely, moving cards of consecutive rank to the center of the layout. It is considerably easier to win than the similar Golf; a player can expect to win 86% of the time.
Object of Black Hole
The object of Black Hole is to move the entire deck to the foundation pile in the center of the layout.
Setup
Black Hole is played with one standard 52-card deck, like a deck of Denexa 100% Plastic Playing Cards. Remove the A♠ from the deck and place it in the center of the table, forming the foundation pile. Then shuffle and deal seventeen piles of three in a circle around the foundation. (Refer to the image for a sample layout). All of these piles, other than the foundation pile, are referred to as the tableau. Keep the tableau piles spread out slightly so that the indices of all three cards are visible.
Game play
There is only one valid move in the game, and that is to move cards from the tableau piles to the foundation. A card may be played to the foundation if it is one rank above or one rank below the top card of the foundation pile. For example, if top card of the foundation is a 5, a 4 or a 6 may be moved to it. Direction may be change at any time; one may play, for example, 6-5-4-3-4-5… The ace is considered consecutive to both the king and the 2.
The game continues until either all 52 cards are moved to the foundation (a win) or no more moves are possible (a loss).
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