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How to Play Accordion Solitaire

Accordion Solitaire is a one-player patience of deceptive simplicity. Deal the full 52-card deck face-up in a single row, then compress it by stacking piles onto their left neighbour or three slots away when their top cards share suit or rank. Winning requires one final pile; the historical success rate is around 1 in 100.

Players
1
Difficulty
Hard
Length
Short
Deck
52
Read the rules

How to Play Accordion Solitaire

Accordion Solitaire is a one-player patience of deceptive simplicity. Deal the full 52-card deck face-up in a single row, then compress it by stacking piles onto their left neighbour or three slots away when their top cards share suit or rank. Winning requires one final pile; the historical success rate is around 1 in 100.

1 player ​​​Hard ​Short

How to Play

Accordion Solitaire is a one-player patience of deceptive simplicity. Deal the full 52-card deck face-up in a single row, then compress it by stacking piles onto their left neighbour or three slots away when their top cards share suit or rank. Winning requires one final pile; the historical success rate is around 1 in 100.

Accordion Solitaire is a one-player patience game of compression: the entire 52-card deck is dealt in a single row, and the player tries to stack it down to one pile by repeatedly placing a pile on top of its left-neighbour (or a pile three slots to its left) when their top cards match in suit or rank. Known since the 1880s, it is trivially easy to set up and famously hard to win; the success rate is around 1 in 100. A typical game takes five to ten minutes.

Download rules (PDF)

Quick Reference

Goal
Compress all 52 cards into a single pile by stacking matching cards 1 or 3 positions to the left.
Setup
  1. Shuffle a standard 52-card deck.
  2. Deal all 52 cards face-up in a single left-to-right row; each slot is a pile of one.
On Your Turn
  1. Find a pile whose top card matches the top of the pile 1 or 3 positions to its left in suit or rank.
  2. Move the pile on top of that match; all piles to the right shift left to close the gap.
  3. Chain moves freely; the game ends when no legal move is available.
Scoring
  • Win = all 52 cards compressed into a single pile (about 1% success rate).
  • Any other end state is a loss; fewer remaining piles is a moral win.
Tip: Prefer 3-position jumps over adjacent moves and protect rank-sweepers from being buried.

Players

1 player. Accordion is strictly solitary; there is no partnership or team variant.

Card Deck

One standard 52-card deck. All four suits (clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades) and all thirteen ranks are used. No jokers. All 52 cards are in play from the opening deal.

Objective

Compress the entire row of 52 cards into a single pile by stacking matching cards. Ending with one pile is a win; ending with two or more piles is a loss, though finishing with five or fewer piles is a common informal 'moral win'.

Setup and Deal

  1. Shuffle the full 52-card deck.
  2. Deal all 52 cards face-up in a single left-to-right row. Each row position is a pile of one card. The top card of a pile is the card currently showing on its face.
  3. Alternative one-at-a-time deal: deal the first card, then pause and play any available moves before dealing the next. Both orders use the same rules; choose one and stick with it for the game.

Gameplay

  1. Legal move: Pick any pile and consider two targets: the pile immediately to its left (one position away) and the pile three positions to its left. You may place the pile on either target if their top cards match in suit (e.g. onto ) or in rank (e.g. onto ).
  2. Compression (the accordion shift): After a move, every pile to the right of the now-empty gap shifts one position to the left so the row is contiguous again. This is the accordion-pleat motion the game is named for.
  3. Chains: A single move may create fresh matches elsewhere in the row. Chain as many legal moves as you like on one turn; there is no limit.
  4. Optional moves: When several legal moves are available you may choose which to make, or decline to move at all if you see nothing useful. (The strict 19th-century version required you to move whenever you could; most modern play treats moves as optional.)
  5. No undo: Once a pile is placed on another, the move cannot be reversed.
  6. Game ends: The game stops the moment no legal move is available, and (in the one-at-a-time variant) no more cards remain to be dealt.

Winning

You win when all 52 cards are compressed into a single pile. Any end state with two or more piles remaining is a loss. Because the game is solitary, there are no tie-breakers and no scoring beyond win/loss.

Tips and Strategy

  • Prefer a three-position jump over an adjacent move when both are legal; the longer move removes an extra pile and can expose matches underneath.
  • Watch for clusters of four cards of the same rank (for example four sevens ) near the right end of the row. These 'sweepers' can chain through several piles at once, so avoid burying them prematurely.
  • After every move pause to rescan the whole row; one shift often unlocks a match that was not there a moment ago.
  • In the one-at-a-time deal, time new deals to break a stalled row rather than as reflex actions.

Variations

  • Bidirectional Accordion: Matching piles 1 or 3 positions to the right as well as to the left. Roughly doubles the move options and the win rate.
  • Original (1883) rules: Moves are mandatory whenever available, removing the option to decline in hope of a better chain later.
  • Partial-success scoring: Count ending with 5 or fewer piles as a moral victory, 2–3 piles as a strong win, 1 pile as a rare outright win.
  • Related games: Royal Marriage (a specific King and Queen must meet) and Russian Solitaire / Nizhni Novgorod (outer matching cards eliminate inner ones) use the same accordion compression idea.

Glossary

  • Pile: A stack of one or more cards at a single row position. Only the top card counts for matching.
  • Top card: The most recently placed card on a pile; the card showing face-up.
  • Compression / accordion shift: The automatic left-shift of all piles to the right of a just-emptied slot so the row stays contiguous.
  • Sweeper: A rank cluster (three or four cards of the same rank) that, when reached, can stack through several matches in quick succession.

Tips & Strategy

Prefer a three-position jump over an adjacent move when both are legal; the longer move removes an extra pile and often exposes matches underneath. Rescan the whole row after every shift because one move frequently unlocks another.

Rank clusters (three or four cards of the same rank near the right end of the row) are sweepers that can chain through several piles in one turn. Protect them from being buried by adjacent-move temptations.

Trivia & Fun Facts

With optimal play the win rate is roughly 1 in 100 deals; most attempts end with two to eight piles remaining, which patience purists informally grade as 'moral wins' at five or fewer.

  1. 01In Accordion Solitaire, how many positions apart can a pile be moved onto?
    Answer Either 1 (the immediate left neighbour) or 3 positions to the left, matching suit or rank.

History & Culture

First documented in 1883 with strict mandatory-move rules. The modern optional-move convention appeared with Tarbart's 1905 patience guide and became standard through the 20th century.

A favourite of 19th-century patience purists and card-game historians for its extreme asymmetry between trivially simple rules and stubbornly difficult play.

Variations & House Rules

Bidirectional Accordion allows matches 1 or 3 positions to the right as well as left, roughly doubling the win rate. The 1883 original mandated every available move. Royal Marriage and Russian Solitaire are close relatives using the same compression idea.

For a gentler game use the bidirectional variant and count ending with five or fewer piles as a win. For an authentic challenge play by the 1883 mandatory-move rule.