Play Thieves of Egypt

Thieves of Egypt game info

• Family: Forty Thieves Solitaire Games
• Decks: Two decks (104 cards)
• Game time: Medium
• Chance of winning: High

How to play Thieves of Egypt

Goal

Move all the cards to the foundation piles, which are built in-suit starting from Ace to King.

Layout & deal

Thieves of Egypt Solitaire uses two decks (104 cards).

Fifty-five cards are dealt face-up to the 10 tableau piles, with a varying amount of cards for each pile in the shape of a downward facing pyramid: one card is dealt to the 1st pile, three cards to the 2nd, five to the 3rd, seven to the 4th, nine to the 5th, 10 to the 6th, eight to the 7th, six to the 8th, four to the 9th and two to the 10th pile.

The 49 remaining cards go face-down into the stock. The waste and eight foundation piles are empty at the start.

Allowable moves

The tableau is built in descending order and by alternating color. Single cards can be moved, and also card sequences that are correctly ordered can be moved together. Only Kings (or sequences starting with a King) can be moved to an empty tableau pile.

Click the stock pile to reveal an additional card, which is moved to the waste. If the stock is empty, you can click it to reset all cards from waste to stock. You can only reset the stock once.

The foundations are built in-suit in ascending order. The top card of any tableau pile or the waste pile can be moved to the foundation.

Strategy

• Turn the stock once before playing: When starting a new game, always turn the stock once to show the first card. This increases the range of possible moves you have in the beginning.
• Always play the obvious moves: Always play Aces and Twos to the foundation immediately. It is not helpful in any way to keep them in the tableau.
• Start building each suit in foundation: In the beginning, try to focus on beginning at least one foundation pile in each suit.
• Uncover low cards: When you have two possible moves, try to pick a high card covering a low card.
• Clear columns: Clear columns so you can move Kings that are covering low cards to the empty columns. However, do not clear a column unless you have a King available to put in the empty column.
• Delay playing stock cards: Because you can go through the stock twice, it might be beneficial to not play cards in the first pass.

Variants

• Upside Down: Same as Thieves of Egypt, but three cards are turned over at a time and there is no limit on the number of stock resets.
• Forty Thieves: Thieves of Egypt is a variant of Forty Thieves, with the following changes: the amount of cards dealt to the columns is different, the rules concerning the tableau (building, moving cards and filling empty columns) are the ones used in Klondike Solitaire, and the stock can be redealt once.

System requirements

Thieves of Egypt can be played in all modern browsers, on all device types (desktop, tablet, mobile), and on all operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, ...).