The complete rules, the real odds, and seven tips that will win you more games of the most stubborn patience ever dealt.
Beleaguered Castle is a game of pure skill. Every one of the fifty-two cards is face up from the first moment — nothing is hidden, nothing is drawn. If you lose, you cannot blame the deal. That is what makes it so absorbing, and so fiendishly difficult to complete.
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The layout is a castle under siege. Four towers — the foundations — stand in the middle, each begun with an Ace. Around them lie the walls: eight rows of six cards, dealt face up, four rows to the left and four to the right.
Only the exposed card at the outer end of each row may be moved. That means you always have exactly eight cards to choose between — no more. Everything else is buried until you dig it out.
This is the beginner's great mistake. A 3 sitting at the end of a row is a useful landing place for a 2. Send it to the foundation too early and you have thrown away a building block you cannot get back. Play a card home only when you are confident you will not need it in the rows.
An empty row is the single most powerful thing in this game. It is a free parking space: somewhere to dump a King, unload a blocked card, or unpick a tangle. Identify the row you are most likely to clear — usually a short one, or one holding high cards you can place elsewhere — and work at it deliberately.
Before you move anything, find where the 2s and 3s are. If the 2♣ is sitting under five cards, that entire suit is stalled until you excavate it. Plan the dig early, while you still have space to work with.
Kings are dead weight — nothing may be placed upon them and they only move to an empty row or their own tower at the very end. A King at the exposed end of a row blocks it completely. Kings buried deep in a row are usually harmless; Kings on top are a problem to solve.
Before every move ask a single question: what does this bury? Most lost games are lost by a move that was legal, tempting, and covered a card that was needed three turns later.
Running one tower up to the 9 while another is still on the Ace is usually a warning sign. The lagging suit's low cards are stuck somewhere, and every card you commit elsewhere makes them harder to reach. Keep the four towers roughly in step.
Because everything is visible, Beleaguered Castle rewards exploration. Try a line, see where it leads, and undo it if it dead-ends. That is not cheating — it is how strong players learn to read a position.
Yes — more often than its reputation suggests. With perfect play about 68% of deals are winnable. But that figure describes a player who never makes an error, and this is a game with no margin for error at all. In ordinary play most people win far less often, and a deal can be lost beyond recovery within the first half-dozen moves without any obvious sign.
Because no cards are hidden, there is no luck in the draw whatsoever. Two players given the same deal face exactly the same puzzle. The gap between them is pure skill — which is precisely why losing stings and winning feels earned.
Beleaguered Castle was first recorded in 1883, in Dick's Games of Patience, or Solitaire with Cards by William Brisbane Dick — one of the foundational collections of patience games, which gathered more than a hundred of them in a single volume. The game has appeared in card game compendiums continuously ever since.
It has travelled under other names too: Laying Siege and Sham Battle. All three names describe the same picture — a fortress ringed by attacking columns, which is exactly what the layout looks like on the table.
| Variant | How it differs |
|---|---|
| Citadel | Cards may be played straight to the foundations as you deal, so you begin with a head start. |
| Streets and Alleys | The Aces are left in the pack and shuffled, giving uneven rows and a harder opening. |
| Fortress | Five rows per side, and rows may be built both up and down in suit. |
| Chessboard | A Fortress relative, also played with five rows a side. |
Our version plays the classic 1883 rules, exactly as they were written down in a family rulebook by hand — the version this whole site was built to preserve.
No. Only single cards move, one at a time — there are no multi-card sequence moves in Beleaguered Castle. It is one reason the game bites so hard.
No, and this catches people out constantly. In the rows you build down by rank alone: any 7 on any 8. Suit only matters on the towers, which must be built up strictly in suit.
The deal is lost. There is no stock to draw from and no reserve, so when the eight exposed cards have nowhere to go, the siege has failed. Undo a few moves and try a different line, or take a fresh deal.
Roughly fifteen minutes, though a stubborn deal can hold you far longer — and a clean run can be over in three.
No, though they share the all-cards-visible quality. Freecell gives you four free cells to park cards in; Beleaguered Castle gives you nothing but the rows themselves. Your only workspace is one you create, by emptying a row.