Four waste piles, one card at a time — every placement is a permanent decision.
Sir Tommy looks disarmingly simple: deal cards one at a time, assign each to a waste pile or play it to a foundation. The depth is in the waste piles. Bad placement buries low-rank cards beneath high-rank cards, and there is no way to dig them back out. The game is won or lost in how you arrange your storage, not how fast you build foundations.
Last updated: June 2026
Sir Tommy and the four-waste-pile tradition
Sir Tommy is one of the oldest documented solitaire games, appearing in English patience literature under various names including Tommy, Old Tommy, and American Patience. Its rules are as minimal as they can be while still constituting a strategic game: one 52-card deck, one card drawn at a time, four waste piles, four foundations starting at Ace and building up to King.
The simplicity makes Sir Tommy a good lens for understanding what “waste pile strategy” actually means. Games like Calculation and Colours layer additional constraints on top of the same core decision — where does this card belong among my available storage? Sir Tommy strips everything else away so that decision is all there is.
The Sir Tommy deal: four waste piles and a single draw
One 52-card deck. Four foundation piles start empty and build up from Ace to King in any suit (suit is irrelevant to where cards can play — each Ace starts its own foundation). Four waste piles also start empty. The stock is the entire shuffled deck.
Each turn: draw the top card of the stock. If it can play to a foundation (it is the Ace of any suit, or it is exactly one rank above the current top of any foundation), you may play it there. Otherwise — or if you prefer to save it — place it face-up on any of the four waste piles. Only the top card of each waste pile is available to play to a foundation. The game ends when the stock is exhausted. There is no redeal.
When you place a card on a waste pile, every card beneath it is inaccessible until the cards above it have been played to foundations. A 2 buried under five high-rank cards cannot reach its foundation until those five cards play — and they can only play when their foundations advance to the right rank.
Waste pile roles
The most effective approach assigns each waste pile an informal “rank zone” rather than playing cards randomly. A common assignment:
- Pile one: Low ranks (2, 3, 4, 5). These are the most dangerous to bury because foundations need them earliest and they cannot play until their Ace appears. Keep this pile shallow.
- Pile two: Mid-low ranks (6, 7, 8). These have more time before they are needed but benefit from being accessible before the mid-game.
- Pile three: High ranks (9, 10, J, Q, K). High ranks cannot play until foundations are nearly complete. Stacking them together keeps them from obscuring low-rank cards elsewhere.
- Pile four:Flexible overflow — whatever rank has nowhere else to go without creating a dangerous burial. This pile becomes the “least bad option” holder and should be kept in mind as a sacrifice pile in endgame.
This assignment is a starting framework, not a rigid rule. The right pile for any given card depends on what is already in each pile and what the foundations currently need.
The placement decision in practice
Before placing a non-foundation card on a pile, ask three questions in order:
- Will this card’s foundation be ready for it before I need to dig it out?If a 7 will bury a 3, the foundation must reach 6 before the 3 becomes accessible. Is that likely to happen while the stock still has time to deliver the intermediate ranks? If not, avoid this pile.
- Is there a pile where this card is on top of cards that play before it?Placing a 9 on top of cards ranked 6, 7, 8 is fine — those play first, then the 9 follows in order. Placing a 5 on top of a King is terrible — the King plays last.
- Can I afford this pile’s depth given the remaining stock?Late in the game, a pile with many cards becomes increasingly dangerous. If six cards remain in stock and a pile has five cards above the one you need, those five cards must play in the next six draws. That is unlikely unless they are all already at their foundation rank minus one.
You draw a 2 before any Ace has reached a foundation. No foundation can accept it yet. Your waste piles: pile one has a 7 on top, pile two has a J on top, pile three has a K on top, pile four is empty.
Place the 2 on pile four (the empty pile). Do not place it on pile two or three — burying a 2 under a J or K creates a deep dependency that will be almost impossible to unwind before the game ends. An empty pile absorbs the 2 with zero burial depth. Yes, this consumes your only empty pile, but protecting low-rank access is worth more than preserving an empty slot.
Foundation pacing
The temptation in Sir Tommy is to rush Aces to foundations the moment they appear. Usually this is correct — an Ace in a waste pile is harder to reach than one on a foundation. But the decision has a second-order effect: playing an Ace immediately means the next card drawn (which might be a 2, 3, or other low rank) now has a legal foundation destination. Holding an Ace is rarely worth it.
Foundation advancement becomes strategic when multiple foundations are at the same rank. If all four foundations are at 5, and you draw a 6, it does not matter which foundation it plays to. But if three foundations are at 5 and one is at 7, then 6s and 7s are split between foundations in a way that can stall one of them. Try to keep foundations within two ranks of each other to maintain uniform access pressure.
Recognizing a lost position
Sir Tommy can reach unwinnable states before the stock is exhausted. Key warning signs:
- The card each foundation needs next is buried beneath multiple cards that cannot play until those foundations advance further — a circular dependency among two or more piles.
- Three of four waste piles have dangerous low-rank cards buried three or more levels deep, and the remaining stock is fewer than ten cards.
- All four waste piles have their top cards at ranks higher than what any foundation currently needs, and the pile tops collectively have no legal foundation plays. The game can still be won only if lower-rank cards arrive from stock, but the stock is nearly exhausted.
When any of these conditions appear with more than 15 cards still in the stock, consider restarting. The position likely cannot be saved, and playing it out is more instructive than rewarding.
Frequently asked questions
Does suit matter in Sir Tommy?
No. Each Ace starts its own foundation, and foundations build upward regardless of suit. Any 2 can play on any Ace foundation, any 3 on any 2 foundation, and so on. The four foundations simply track the four rank progressions from Ace to King; which suit occupies which foundation is irrelevant.
What is the win rate for skilled play?
With disciplined waste pile management, skilled players win approximately 40 to 60 percent of deals. Random placement wins fewer than 10 percent. The gap is large because the waste pile decision — which is entirely in the player’s control — determines whether needed ranks remain accessible throughout the deal.
When is it safe to stack same-rank cards on one pile?
Same-rank cards on one pile are safe when that rank is already past its point of need on all foundations, meaning all foundations have advanced beyond that rank. For example, if all four foundations are at 8, stacking multiple 5s on a single pile is fine — the 5s are already played and the only possible 5 in the waste pile is one you missed, which now has no destination. But early in the game, stacking two 3s means one 3 cannot play until the other has already played.
Is Lady Betty harder than Sir Tommy?
Lady Betty gives you six waste piles instead of four, which adds space but also adds decision complexity. Sir Tommy’s four piles force tighter discipline. Lady Betty adds a suit-based foundation wrapping mechanic that Sir Tommy lacks.Read the Lady Betty strategy guide for the comparison in detail.