Twenty piles is not twenty chances — it’s twenty chances to bury the wrong card.

History and family

Colorado is a two-deck patience game that pairs the familiar Ace-up / King-down bidirectional foundation structure with an unusually wide waste-pile field. The twenty waste piles distinguish it sharply from related games like Archway (four columns plus an arch reserve) and Tournament (fewer piles, stricter rules). More waste piles means more places to put unwanted cards — but also more surface area across which important cards can disappear.

The bidirectional foundation mechanic is shared with Archway, Tournament, and Crescent. Colorado’s twist is that the waste piles are completely unrestricted: you may place any card on any pile at any time. This freedom is also the game’s main trap for undisciplined play.

Rules in full

Two standard 52-card decks, 104 cards total. The setup:

• Eight foundations.Four foundations build upward by suit from Ace to King (A→2→3→…→K). Four foundations build downward by suit from King to Ace (K→Q→J→…→A). Suits must match within each foundation sequence.
• Twenty waste piles. All start empty. Each holds a stack of face-up cards; only the top card of each pile is available to move.
• Stock. All 104 cards form the stock. Deal one card at a time. Each card must go immediately to a foundation (if it fits) or to any waste pile.
• Auto-fill. When a waste pile empties, the next stock card fills it automatically without further player action.
• Win condition. All 104 cards reach the eight foundations.

Activating the foundations: Aces and Kings first

The eight foundations cannot receive any cards until their starting cards are in place. Ascending foundations need Aces; descending foundations need Kings. Until an Ace or King of a given suit is played to the foundation, every 2, 3, 4 through King of that suit (or Q, J, 10 down) is stuck waiting. The most impactful early goal is getting all eight starting foundation cards into place as quickly as possible.

This is not passive. When an Ace or King appears in a stock deal, it should go directly to its foundation. When it appears as the top of a waste pile — because it was placed there before its foundation slot was open — move it at the first opportunity. Every round the Ace or King sits in a waste pile, it is potentially being buried by later placements on the same pile.

Pile grouping: imposing structure on twenty empty spaces

Twenty piles with no restrictions invite chaos. The corrective is to designate loose clusters before dealing begins and maintain them throughout the deal:

• Low-rank cluster (piles 1–6): Cards that ascending foundations will need soon: 2s, 3s, and 4s. These need to remain accessible, so avoid piling other ranks on top of them.
• High-rank cluster (piles 7–12): Cards that descending foundations will need: Queens, Jacks, and 10s. Same logic: keep them surfaced.
• Mid-rank buffer (piles 13–20): Middle-range cards that will be needed only after the foundations advance several steps. Use these as flexible storage, but even here, avoid stacking same-suit sequences in reverse order.

The cluster assignment is a guideline, not a rule. Exceptions are inevitable. But players who group consciously make far fewer irreversible pile decisions than those who place cards at random.

Bidirectional tracking: two sequences per suit

Colorado requires tracking eight foundation sequences simultaneously — two per suit. Each suit has a card needed next on its ascending pile and a card needed next on its descending pile. Before placing any waste-pile card into a pile or onto a foundation, check both directions for that suit.

The interaction between ascending and descending sequences creates a useful check: the two sequences for one suit will eventually meet somewhere in the middle rank range. For example, a suit starting ascending from A and descending from K must eventually have both sequences meeting at 6 and 8, or 7 and 7 (depending on how many cards are played on each side). Tracking where the two sequences for each suit currently stand gives a clear picture of how many cards of each suit are still needed from waste piles.

Auto-fill timing and empty pile management

When a waste pile empties, the next stock card fills it automatically. This means you cannot choose to leave a pile empty as a staging area — the auto-fill rule denies you that option. However, you can use the auto-fill sequence strategically: if you know the next few stock cards, you can plan to empty a pile just as a needed card approaches in the stock.

In practice, stock order is not visible in advance. What you can control is which pile you empty and when. Piles that hold only one card and whose card is immediately foundationable are the easiest source of controlled empties. Playing that single card to a foundation empties the pile and triggers the auto-fill with whatever the next stock card is.

Avoid deliberately emptying a pile just to create space when no auto-fill benefit is expected. An empty pile refills with an unknown card; if that card is a mid-rank with no near-term foundation destination, you have simply created a new waste pile obligation for no immediate gain.

Recognizing a deadlock

Colorado deadlocks when every needed foundation card is buried under cards that cannot themselves reach a foundation, and no further stock remains. Signs of approaching deadlock:

• The next needed cards for two or more foundation sequences are in the middle of deep waste piles, with several unhelpful cards on top that have no legal foundation moves.
• The stock is exhausted and foundation progress has stalled on multiple suits simultaneously.
• Multiple waste pile tops are of the same rank, making them unable to be foundationed until both sequences for that rank advance — and those advances are blocked by the buried needed cards.

When deadlock signs appear with stock remaining, the most useful response is to route every stock card with any near-term foundation value to a pile that keeps it surfaced. New stock cards that have no foundation path for many moves belong in the buffer cluster, not on low-rank or high-rank piles where they bury priority cards.

How Colorado positions deadlock

• Placing foundation-eligible cards in waste piles. This is the most costly error in Colorado. Any card that can go to a foundation right now should go there. Sending it to a pile instead adds it to a stack where it may be buried before it cycles back to the top.
• Stacking cards of the same suit on one pile.A waste pile holding only Diamonds is not organized — it is a single-suit blockage. Only one Diamonds card is accessible at a time. Spread suits across piles so that progress on one suit does not depend on clearing an entire same-suit column.
• Treating all twenty piles equally. Players who place cards at random across piles quickly lose track of where key cards are buried. Rough clustering by rank range prevents the worst burying decisions.
• Forgetting the descending foundations. The natural tendency is to build Ace-up sequences and treat the King-down side as secondary. Both directions advance the game equally. A Queen of Clubs sitting accessible on a waste pile top, ready to play to the descending foundation, is the same value as a 2 of Clubs ready for the ascending.