How To Play Emperor
A two-deck solitaire with a slow reveal — dig out the hidden cards and march every suit home.
The goal
Send all 104 cards to the eight foundations. Each foundation builds up by suit from the Ace to the King — two piles per suit, since there are two decks.
The table
- Ten columns of four cards. In each, the bottom three are face down and only the top card shows. A face-down card flips up the instant it's uncovered.
- The eight foundations sit up top, beside the stock and waste.
- Columns build down by alternating colour — a black 7 goes on a red 8, and so on.
Moving cards
- Drag a card — or a full alternating-colour run — onto a column or a foundation. Legal landing spots light up as you drag.
- Tap a top card to send it straight to its foundation.
- Tap the stock to turn one card to the waste. There is no redeal — it's a single pass, so spend it carefully.
- An empty column can be filled by any card — and it's your only workspace, because Emperor has no free cells.
- Auto sweeps safe cards home, Undo takes a move back, and Hint points to a move when you're stuck.
Settings
- Single-card moves (hard) — the strict variant where runs can't move as a group. It's brutal; leave it off for the normal game.
How to think about it
- Dig, don't tidy. The face-down cards are the whole battle — favour any move that flips one over building a neat pile that hides nothing.
- An empty column is gold. With no free cells it's your only staging area; clearing one lets you shuffle runs around and reach buried cards.
- Mind the one-pass stock. Once a card passes to the waste there's no second look, so play the board out before you lean on the stock.
Tip: long alternating-colour runs are the engine of the game — they let you relocate a whole sequence in one move to expose what's underneath. Build them on purpose, then swing them onto an empty column or a higher card to open the board up.
Odds
A dig-and-manage two-decker where one rule quietly decides whether the game is playable at all.
The shape of a deal
Two decks — 104 cards. Ten columns of four, then a 64-card stock that turns one card at a time to a single waste, with no redeal. But here's the twist that sets Emperor apart from an open game like FreeCell: most of it starts hidden.
Thirty cards lie face-down in the columns and sixty-four wait in the stock. You're not solving a puzzle you can fully see — you're digging, and reacting to what turns up.
One rule makes the game
Emperor has no free cells, and every column starts full, so there's nowhere to stage cards early on. That makes the move rule decisive. We simulated three versions before settling the default:
| Move rule | Win rate | Cards home |
|---|---|---|
| Single card only | ~0% | 18 / 104 |
| Run bounded by empty columns | ~0% | 18 / 104 |
| Full run moves freely (default) | ~16% | 41 / 104 |
The first two stall dead: with no free cells and no empty columns to start, you can't peel a built pile off the card beneath it, so the hidden cards stay buried. Letting a whole alternating-colour run move as a unit is the single thing that opens the board — and it lifts the win rate from essentially zero to about one deal in six.
Where that puts it
At roughly 16% with careful play, Emperor sits in the harder half of the collection — tougher than Klondike, friendlier than Forty Thieves or La Belle Lucie. A strong game clears about 28 of the 30 face-down cards and lands ~41 of 104 on the foundations even when it doesn't quite finish, so most losses are respectable near-runs rather than early dead ends.
Single-card mode is a different animal
The optional single-card setting isn't a small step up — it removes the one move the game is built around. In simulation it essentially never wins and leaves most of the board face-down. It's there as a purist's dare, not a normal way to play.
How to beat the odds
- Chase the face-down cards. They're the whole game — a move that flips one beats a tidier board that reveals nothing.
- Manufacture an empty column. With no free cells it's your only workspace; an empty column doubles as staging and a home for a stranded King.
- Build runs to dig, not to admire. A long alternating-colour sequence exists so you can swing it aside in one move and reach what's underneath.
- Respect the single pass. The stock never recycles — wring every move out of the board before you turn another card.
Figures come from our own analysis of Emperor's rules: a strategy bot that digs for face-down cards, banks safe foundation plays, and turns the stock only when stuck, run over 3,000 deals per rule variant. These are a floor for skilled play — the bot has no deep lookahead, so a patient human who reads the board will beat them. The three-variant comparison is why the game ships with free run moves as the default.
