• Play Patience Solitaire by making stacks of cards, stacks will cascade towards the bottom of the solitaire board and are to be comprised of red, black, red, black, red, black cards. Players of Patience Solitaire can click on their reserve cards at the top left hand of the solitaire board for more card options.
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This is a kind of competitive patience (solitaire) game for two players. It is also known as Cat and Mouse. Both players try to be the first to get rid of a pile of 'pay-off cards' by playing them to centre stacks which are begun with an ace and continue in upward sequence to a king. This is not a physical race (as in Spit or Racing Demon where play is simultaneous) - in Spite and Malice the players take turns.

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There are quite a few different versions of Spite and Malice around. First I will give what seems to be the most widely played version of the game. Then I will describe some of the more popular variations, and finally I will explain the rather different version which appears in most of the card game books.

• The Book Version

Players and equipment

Spite and Malice was originally a two player game, and it is easiest to describe this version first. Versions for larger numbers of players are described later. Two 52 card packs of cards are needed. The cards in each pack rank from low to high: A-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-J-Q, with kings wild. Suits are irrelevant in this game.

Deal, layout and terminology

The layout of the game is shown in the following diagram:

To begin the game both packs are shuffled together and 20 cards are dealt face down to each pay-off pile, and a further 5 cards are dealt to each player as their hand. The remainder of the cards are placed face down between the players to form the stock. The top card of each pay-off pile is turned face up and placed on top. Whichever player has the higher card showing will play first. If they are equal, both players shuffle their pay-off piles and turn up a new top card. At this stage the centre stacks and side stacks are all empty.

The play

The object of the game is to be the first get rid of all the cards in your pay-off pile by playing them to the centre stacks. Only the top card of your pay-off pile is available for play at any time; when you have managed to get rid of the top card, you turn the next pay-off card face up and try to get rid of that.

The first card in each centre stack must be an ace, then 2, 3, and so on in sequence up to queen, each card played being one higher than the card it covers. There cannot be more than three centre stacks at one time.

The side stacks can contain cards in any order, and when playing to a side stack you may put your card on whichever stack you choose. The only limitation is that you cannot have more than four side stacks.

The player whose first pay-off card is higher plays first, and thereafter the players take alternate turns. If you have fewer than five cards in your hand you begin your turn by drawing cards from the stock to bring your hand up to five cards. You may then make a series of moves, the possible moves being:

1. To play an ace to an empty centre stack, or to play to a centre stack the next higher card than the card showing (for example a six on a five, or a jack on a ten, irrespective of suit). The card played may come from your hand, from the top of one of your side stacks, or from the top of your pay-off pile, and is played face-up on top of the centre stack.
2. To play a card from your hand face-up on top of one of your side stacks. This ends your turn. A player cannot have more than four separate side stacks at one time; if you have no empty side stacks then you must discard onto a side stack that already contains cards, making the card you cover temporarily unavailable for play.

You may play as many cards to the centre stacks as you want, but as soon as you play a card to a side stack your turn ends, and your opponent may play.

Note that you can never play a pay-off card to a side stack, or to move a card from one side stack to another, or move a card from a centre stack to anywhere.

Kings are wild and can represent any card. You can discard a king to a side stack without committing yourself as to what it represents. When a king is placed on a centre stack it represents the next higher value than the card it covers.

If during your turn you manage to play all five cards from your hand, without playing to a side stack, you immediately draw five more cards from the stock and continue playing.

If you complete a centre stack by playing a queen (or a king representing a queen) your opponent shuffles the completed stack into the stock, creating a space for a new centre stack, and you can continue playing.

End of the game

The game ends when someone wins by playing the last card of their pay-off pile to the centre. The game can also end if the stock runs out of cards, in which case the result is a draw.

More than two players

Spite and Malice can easily be adapted for any number of players. Turn to play passes clockwise. Depending on the number of players and how many cards you deal to the payoff piles, more decks may need to be added - for example some play with one deck per player. Some play that the number of centre stacks is limited to one more than the number of players - i.e. four for three players, five for four players, etc.

Four people can play as partners; six people form three teams of two. Partners sit opposite each other. At your turn you can play from your partner's pay-off pile or side stacks to the centre stacks, but you can only discard to your own side stack. Play continues until one pair wins by playing all the cards from both of their pay-off piles.

Variations

Number of Centre Stacks

Some players allow an unlimited number of centre stacks (but never more than four side stacks for each player). In this case it is not necessary to remove completed centre stacks immediately: intead you may agree to wait until the stock is depleted.

Some play other limits on the number of centre stacks - for example a maximum of four.

Compulsory play of aces

Some play that aces cannot be retained in your hand but must be played as soon as drawn to start new centre stacks. Also an ace appearing on your pay-off pile must immediately be played to the centre. In this version there is no limit on the number of centre stacks.

Loading the Opponent's Pay-off Pile

In this variation, reported by Henry Lee, it is permissible to move the card from the top of your pay-off pile or play a card from your hand onto the top of your opponent's pay-off pile. The card must be the same suit and one rank higher or lower than the card on which it is placed. For example if the top card of your opponent's pay-off pile is a 8 you can load a 9 or a 7 onto it. It is sometimes possible to give your opponent a series of cards in this way. Note that you are not allowed to load cards from your discard piles onto your opponent's pay-off pile - the card must come from the top of your own pay-off pile or out of your hand. (Since this version is played with unlimited centre stacks and compulsory play of aces, the question of whether aces can be loaded on kings or vice versa does not arise.)

Size of pay-off piles

Some people play with a different number of cards in the initial pay-off piles - for example 21 or 25.

Spread side stacks

Some people prefer to play with the cards in the side stacks overlapped rather than stacked squarely, so that players can see the cards buried in the stacks rather than needing to remember them.

Resolving Stalemates

Some people play that if the stock runs out the winner is the player with fewest cards remaining in their pay-off pile. Only if the pay-off piles have equal numbers of cards is the result a draw.

Playing with jokers

Some people include jokers in the deck for Spite and Malice. The jokers are wild and can represent any card. Some play that the kings remain wild as well; others play that only the jokers are wild, and that 13 cards are needed top complete each centre stack, ending with the king.

Restriction on use of wild cards

Some play that a wild card (King, or Joker if used) cannot be used to represent an ace. Others play that a wild card cannot represent an ace or a seven.

Scoring

Jeffrey Jacobs suggests that if a series of games is played, the same scoring system as in the 'book version' below can be used. (The proprietary game Skip-Bo also uses a similar system.) The winner of a hand scores 5 points for winning the hand plus 1 point for each card left in the opponent's pay-off pile. For example, if you win and catch your opponent with six cards, you score 11 points (5 for winning the hand plus 6 for cards). In a stalemate the player with fewer cards scores the difference between the numbers of cards each player has left. The winner could be the first player to reach a target score, such as 50.

Massachusetts Variation

Benjamin Arnoldy has reported a rather different version of the game, played in Massachusetts. The main differences are:

1. the payoff piles contain only 14 cards at the start;
2. one card is dealt face up to each side-stack at the start of the game;
3. immediately before making the side stack discard that ends your turn you must play a card from your hand to each of your empty side-stacks; if you have insufficient cards in your hand to complete your turn, you draw five new cards from the stock and begin a new turn.

The Book Version of Spite and Malice

When Spite and Malice is found in card game books, the versions described are normally rather different from the one described on this page. The main differences in the book version are as follows.

Players and cards

There are always two players. The two packs get mixed together during the play, but need to be separated out for each new game. To make this possible, the two packs should have different backs. Pack A is a standard 52 card pack; Pack B has the usual 52 cards plus 4 jokers, making 56 cards in all. Pack A is dealt out face down to form the two 26-card pay-off piles. Each player is dealt a five card hand from pack B, and the remainder of pack B is placed face down to form the stock.

Discarding to side stacks restricted

Any card may be played to an empty side stack. If a side-stack already contains a card or cards, the card played on top of it must be equal to or one less than the card showing (for example on a seven you can play another seven or a six). When you play to a side stack this ends your turn, but you may decide to end your turn without playing to a side stack if you wish. In fact you may be forced to end without discarding to a side stack, because you may have no card that will fit.

Use of jokers

A joker can represent any card except an ace. You can discard a joker to a side stack without committing yourself as to which of the possible ranks it represents. For example, if a side stack has a nine followed by two jokers on top, the next card placed on the side stack could be a six (counting the jokers as an eight and a seven), a seven, an eight or a nine (counting both jokers as nines). When a joker is played to a centre stack it must represent the next higher value than the card it covers. A joker cannot be used to start a centre stack, because a joker cannot represent an ace. A joker can change its value as necessary when it is played from a side stack to a centre stack.

Restrictions on aces and twos

If you have an ace or two visible on top of your pay-off pile or one of your side stacks, it must be played to a centre stack as soon as this is legal. If you have more than one such card you can choose which to play first. Jokers are not affected by this restriction - you are never forced to play a joker to the centre as a two, even if it is on top of a two on one of your side stacks.

Number of centre stacks

Some books allow an unlimited number of centre stacks to be formed. Others impose a limit of four.

Passing and stalemates

If you cannot or do not wish to play any cards at all in your turn you can pass, and your opponent plays again. Occasionally it will happen that your opponent is also unable or unwilling to move. There is then a discussion. If neither player is prepared to break the stalemate the game ends at this point. Some say that if either player has any aces and twos in their concealed hand which can be played to the centre, they must play one such card to break the stalemate.

Some say that when a stalemate is reached, instead of ending the game, all of the cards in the players' hands and on the table, except the remaining pay-off piles, are shuffled together, two new five-card hands are dealt, and play continues.

Scoring

If you want to score, then you score 5 points for playing all your pay-off cards, plus one point for each card remaining in your opponent's pay-off pile. If the game ends in a stalemate then the player with the smaller remaining pay-off pile scores the number of cards difference between the piles.

Software

With Mari J Michaelis's SpiteNET: Spite and Malice computer program you can play against the computer or against a live opponent over the Internet.

The collection HOYLE Card Games for Windows or Mac OS X includes a Spite and Malice program, along with many other popular card games.

Games4All has published a free Spite and Malice app for the Android platform.

Mike Perry has written a Cat and Mouse (Spite and Malice) program for the Mac.

At Solitaire.com you can play Spite and Malice online against the computer.

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• Change difficulty levels - You can play with turn 1 and turn 3 options. Turn 1 is when 1 card is drawn from the stockpile at a time and is an easier version. Turn 3 is when three cards are moved from the stockpile at time, and is harder because you can only play every third card.

• Track your moves and time - If you're competitive, you’ll want to track how many moves it takes to win a game, how long it takes, and how many times you pass through the deck. You then challenge yourself to beat your record times and number of moves. Practice makes perfect!

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If you like classic games, try our other sites: FreeCell Challenge, Spider Solitaire Challenge, Mahjong Challenge, Minesweeper Challenge, and Unscrambled Words.

We also created Solitaire Brain so you can learn some fun facts while you play.

Solitaire rules and how to play

Game setup: After a 52-card deck is shuffled you’ll begin to set up the tableau by distributing the cards into seven columns face down, with each new card being placed into the next column.

The tableau increases in size from left to right, with the left-most pile containing one card and the right-most containing seven. As an example, this means the first seven cards will create the seven columns of the Tableau. The eighth card distributed will go into the second column, since the first column already has its one and only card.

After the piles are complete, they should be cascaded downwards such that they form a “reverse staircase” form towards the right. Ultimately, you will have seven piles, with the first pilie containing one card, the second pile containing two cards, the third pile containing three cards etc. Only the last card in each of the Tableau columns is flipped over face up so you can see it’s suit, color and value. In our game, this is automatically done for you!

All leftover cards after the foundations are created become the “Stock,” where you can turn over the first card.

Goal: To win, you need to arrange all the cards into the four empty Foundations piles by suit color and in numerical order, starting from Ace all the way to King.

Tableau: This is the area where you have seven columns, with the first column containing one card and each sequential column containing one more additional card. The last card of every pile is turned over face up.

Stockpile: This is where you can draw the remaining cards, which can then be played in the game. If not used, the cards are put into a waste pile. Once all cards are turned over, the remaining cards that have not been moved to either the tableau or foundation can then be redrawn from the stockpile in the same order.

Playing the game:

1. Face up cards in the tableau or stockpile can be moved on top of another face up card in the tableau of an opposite color that is one rank higher, forming a sequence of cards.

2. Groups or stacks of sequenced cards in the tableau can also be moved together on top of a card of the opposite color and higher rank.

3. If a tableau column has only face-down cards remaining, the last card is flipped over and can be played.

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4. To start a foundation pile, an Ace must be played. Once a foundation pile is started, only cards of that suit can be placed in that specific pile.

5. As cards are surfaced from the stockpile or tableau, and there are no other cards on top of them, they may be moved to a foundation pile if they can be placed in the right order.

6. If a tableau column is empty, you may move a King, and only a King, to that column.

7. Win by moving all the cards to the Foundation piles in the right order.

History of Solitaire

One-player card games are called by some form of the word ‘solitaire’ in some countries (US, Spain, Italy, etc), ‘patience‘ in others (UK, France, etc) or ‘kabale’ in others (Scandinavia, eastern Europe), but both ‘solitaire’ and ‘patience’ are increasingly common worldwide.

The oldest of these, ‘kabale,’ implying something secret or occultic, suggests that the idea of laying out cards in a pattern or ‘tableau’ had its origins in fortune-telling (cartomancy), which became popular in the mid-1700s in Europe. Possibly its original purpose was light-heartedly to divine the success of an undertaking or a vow. If the game ‘succeeds’ or ‘comes out’, the answer is favorable, otherwise not. In France card solitaire is still called ‘réussite’, meaning ‘success’.

In a German games book of 1798 ‘patiencespiel’ appears as a contest between two players, while bystanders and presumably the players themselves wager on the outcome. Single and double-deck versions are described, and seem to be much like one later recorded in English books as Grandfather's Patience. Some references suggest either Sweden or Russia as the place of origin.

Books of solitaire games first appeared in the early 1800s in Russia and Sweden, and soon after in France and the UK. Most seem to have been written by women. A Livre des patiences par Mme de F**** (possibly the Marquise de Fortia), for example, was into its third edition by 1842 and was soon translated into English. Many of the games described have titles commemorating the Emperor Napoleon, such as Napoleon at St Helena, Napoleon’s Square, etc, probably based on the entirely mistaken assumption that Napoleon amused himself by playing solitaire in exile, for which there is no evidence. In fact he most often played games called Pique and Whist.

Dickens portrays a character playing patience in Great Expectations. This was published in 1861, the year in which Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert, who was himself a keen player, died. The first American collection was Patience: A series of thirty games with cards, by Ednah Cheney (1870). Around that time, a British Noble women named Lady Adelaide Cadogan published Illustrated Games of Patience. The last decades of that century were the heyday of patience games, the largest collections being compiled by the prolific Mary Whitmore Jones.

From then on solitaire games settled down into a fairly nondescript existence. From popular literature, print media and movies it soon becomes clear that most people with any interest in card games knew only two or three of the most popular types, such as Klondike and Spider, and whichever one they played they called solitaire without being aware that any others existed. Such further collections that appeared in print were largely rehashes of classic titles, with little or no acknowledgement given to previous authors or inventors. Nothing of any value appeared until 1950 when Albert Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith published their Complete Book of Patience. These authors had clearly studied all the literature, tidied up conflicting rules, and for the first time ever decided to classify games and arrange them in some sort of logical progression. Thus, if you found that you liked a particular game you could then explore others of similar type, and ignore the ones that failed to appeal to you. Throughout most of its history solitaire has been regarded as a pastime for invalids rather than the physically active, and for women rather than men, though it must have been much played by prisoners-of-war who were fortunate enough to have some recreational time on their hands.

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All that began to change in 1990 with the advent of Microsoft’s first digital solitaire collection, originally intended to teach people how to use a computer mouse. This same phenomenon caused FreeCell and Spider to both rise in popularity among the general population, as they appeared as free games in later editions of Windows. According to a news item released in May 2020 over half-a-billion players in the past decade alone have played the game. It is now a global phenomenon.

Note that many games from the late 1800s have you start by arranging the cards in a pretty but complicated pattern taking up a lot of space. These gradually went out of fashion over the last 160 years as tables got smaller and players wanted to spend more time playing than dealing. They could be easily reproduced on a desktop monitor but would not be suitable for play on the small screen of a cellphone. In any case, strictly symmetrical, straight up-and-down layouts are more in keeping with the digital zeitgeist.

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Citations and further reading:

1. Das neue Königliche L’Hombre-Spiel, 1798.
2. A collection of the card layouts usually known as Grand-patiences, 1826.
3. Mary Whitmore Jones, Games of Patience for One or More Players, 1890 - 1910.
4. Albert Hodges Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith, The Complete Book of Patience, 1971.
5. David Parlet, Solitaire: Aces Up and 399 Other Card Games, 1978.

News and updates

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• 12/16/20 - We've rebuilt our Freecell and Spider games so they now have the same great features as our Klondike game. On those games, you can now play the game of the day and change card desgins. Check them out!
• 12/29/2020 - We added a new tile matching game, Mahjong! If you don't know how to play, there is a guide to instruct you below the game!
• 1/12/2021 - We introduced Hearts, a trick-taking card game, to our platform. While normally played with other people, you can play against the computer. Keeping track of cards and anticipating moves is critical to winning this game.
• 1/20/2021 - Now when you play on mobile, the cards will appear bigger. We hope this will further imporve gameplay and usability for mobile users.