New variant
All 52 cards are dealt into 17 piles of three. The Ace of Spades starts the Black Hole. Play any pile’s top card onto the Black Hole if it is one rank above or below the current top — suit does not matter, and the rank wraps (Ace and King are adjacent). Send every last card into the Black Hole to win.
Click any top card to play it on the Black Hole.
Solitaire.City includes classic builders, pairing games, and larger two-deck patience variants, so you can jump between quick rounds and longer strategic layouts.
Black Hole Solitaire is a rank-adjacency removal game related to Golf Solitaire, but with one central foundation (the Black Hole) instead of a stock-fed waste pile. All 51 non-Ace cards are dealt face-up into seventeen tableau fans of three cards each. The Ace of spades sits at the center as the starting foundation. Play any exposed tableau card that is one rank above or below the current Black Hole top. Ace and King are adjacent (wraparound). Win by moving all 51 cards onto the Black Hole.
The 52-card deck is dealt as follows: Ace of spades goes to the Black Hole foundation. The remaining 51 cards fill seventeen fans of three cards each, all face-up. Only the topmost card of each fan is available to play.
An available card may be moved to the Black Hole if its rank is exactly one above or below the current Black Hole top. Suits are irrelevant. Ace and King are adjacent (Ace plays on King; King plays on Ace). There is no stock and no redeal. Win by moving all 51 cards.
Golf uses a seven-column tableau, a stock that resets the active rank with each draw, and typically only one direction of Ace–King adjacency. Black Hole uses seventeen fans, no stock at all, and full Ace–King wraparound. The absence of a stock means there is no second chance: if you play the wrong card from a fan, the card that was beneath it becomes available — which may or may not be useful.
The seventeen-fan structure also means move order within each fan matters. The card you choose to play first from a fan determines what becomes available next in that fan, which in turn constrains what future Black Hole tops you can reach.
Look-ahead is the core skill. Before playing a card, ask what becomes available from that fan next and whether that card can extend the current Black Hole sequence. Playing a card that creates a dead fan top (a card with no near-term adjacency to any likely future Black Hole state) is usually wrong.
Identify “bridge fans” — fans whose available cards can connect across a rank gap. If the Black Hole is at 7 and you need to reach a 9, a fan with an 8 on top is a bridge. Conserving bridge fans by playing from other fans first keeps your paths to difficult ranks open.