Royal Rendezvous Solitaire

What is Royal Rendezvous Solitaire?

Royal Rendezvous is a two-deck patience game (104 cards) built around three foundation tiers instead of the usual one or two. Every suit gets an Upper Aces foundation that runs the full alphabet of ranks from Ace to King, a Lower Aces foundation that only wants every other rank starting from Ace, and a Deuce foundation that only wants every other rank starting from Two. Twelve foundations in all, fed entirely by a flat 16-card reserve and a single, non-repeating pass through a 76-card stock.

Full rules

Shuffle two standard 52-card decks together. For each suit, pull both of its Aces free — one becomes the base of that suit’s Upper Aces foundation, the other the base of its Lower Aces foundation — and pull one of its two Deuces free as the base of its Deuce foundation. That accounts for 12 base cards; the second Deuce of each suit is left in the deck to be played later. Deal 16 of the remaining cards face-up into a flat reserve (2 rows of 8, all sixteen always available). The remaining 76 cards form the stock.

The four Upper Aces foundations build a complete ascending run: A → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → 6 → 7 → 8 → 9 → 10 → J → Q → K (13 cards each). The four Lower Aces foundations build only the odd-position ranks: A → 3 → 5 → 7 → 9 → J → K (7 cards each). The four Deuce foundations build only the even-position ranks: 2 → 4 → 6 → 8 → 10 → Q (6 cards each). 13×4 + 7×4 + 6×4 = 104 — every card in both decks has exactly one home. Every foundation is locked to its own suit.

Cards move only from the reserve or the waste pile onto a foundation — there is no tableau and no building between reserve cells. When a reserve cell is emptied, it is refilled immediately from the top of the waste pile, or left empty if the waste has nothing to offer. Draw stock cards one at a time onto the waste pile; only the top waste card is playable. There is no redeal — the stock is dealt through exactly once, and the game ends the moment the stock and waste are both exhausted with no legal move remaining. Win by placing all 104 cards on the twelve foundations.

Strategy tips

Because every suit runs three separate foundations at three different paces — 13 cards, 7 cards, and 6 cards — a single suit can have its Upper Aces foundation stuck on a 5 while its Lower Aces foundation is already three cards ahead needing a 9. Track each suit’s three foundations as one unit rather than scanning card by card: knowing that clubs’ Lower Aces foundation is on J (needing a K next) tells you the clubs King currently sitting in the reserve is safe to leave there, since nothing else in the game can use it yet.

The second Deuce of each suit has no dedicated foundation of its own — it can only ever be played into that suit’s Upper Aces run, as the second card after the Ace. If a suit’s Upper Aces foundation is still sitting on its Ace while both of that suit’s Deuces are buried in the reserve or stock, that foundation cannot advance until one of them surfaces — watch for this specific bottleneck early, since it is the only rank in the game that has exactly one legal destination no matter which copy shows up.

The reserve refills only from the waste, never the stock, and there is no redeal at all. Clear every legal reserve and waste-top move before drawing, since a card left on top of the waste when you draw again is buried for the rest of the single 76-card pass — and any reserve cell sitting empty when the waste is also empty stays empty until the next draw produces a fresh waste card to catch.

Royal Rendezvous vs. Royal Cotillion and Odd and Even

All three of these two-deck games extract Ace and Deuce base cards and build alternating-parity foundation runs, but Royal Rendezvous is the only one with three tiers per suit instead of two. Odd and Even and Royal Cotillion each split a suit’s two Aces into an odd-first foundation and an even-first foundation of 13 cards apiece; Royal Rendezvous instead gives one Ace foundation the entire alphabet (13 cards) and demotes the alternating-parity idea to two shorter foundations — a 7-card Lower Aces run and a 6-card Deuce run — meaning a single suit can complete its Deuce foundation while its Upper Aces foundation is barely past the halfway mark.

Structurally, Royal Rendezvous’ flat 16-cell reserve is closest to Royal Cotillion’s Lords’ grid: both refill exclusively from the waste and both allow zero redeals. But Royal Rendezvous has no Ladies’-style tableau at all — every one of its 92 non-foundation cards is either instantly visible in the reserve or waiting in the single-pass stock, so there is no genuinely hidden information anywhere on the board once the deal is dealt.

Two-deck patience game family

• Odd and Even — eight foundations skip a rank each step, fed by a 3×3 reserve with one redeal
• Royal Cotillion — a Ladies’ tableau that never refills plus a Lords’ grid that refills from waste only
• Sultan — eight foundations count up by one rank around a fixed center King
• Windmill — center foundation plus four corner foundations, two-deck, no tableau

Reference and related guides

• Royal Rendezvous strategy guide
• Royal Cotillion strategy guide
• Odd and Even strategy guide
• All solitaire variants
• Solitaire glossary