Strategy guide · Forty Thieves family

Thieves of Egypt

A two-deck pyramid with Klondike manners — one of the friendliest games in the Forty Thieves family, and one of the most satisfying to win.

The deal

Shuffle two decks together and deal ten tableau piles in a pyramid: 1 card to the first pile, then 3, 5, 7, 9, a peak of 10, then back down with 8, 6, 4, and 2. That places 55 cards on the table. The remaining 49 cards form your face-down stock, and eight empty foundations wait above. In Full Deck Solitaire the buried cards are dealt face down — only the top card of each pile starts face up, and cards flip as they're uncovered.

The rules

• Goal: build all eight foundations up in suit, Ace through King. Two decks means two foundations per suit.
• Tableau building: down in rank and alternating in color — a red 7 goes on a black 8. This is the Klondike-style twist that separates Thieves of Egypt from strict Forty Thieves.
• Moving groups: any run already in descending, alternating-color order can move together as a unit.
• Empty piles: only a King (or a run starting with a King) may fill an empty tableau pile.
• The stock: turn cards one at a time to a waste pile; the top waste card is always in play. When the stock runs out, you get one redeal.

Seven ways to win more often

1. Work the pyramid from the edges in. The 1- and 2-card piles empty fast; the sooner they're clear, the sooner you have King slots. The 10-card peak is where wins die — every early move that unburies the middle is worth two anywhere else.
2. Don't spend a King slot casually. With only ten piles for 104 cards, an empty pile is your scarcest resource. Fill it with a King whose suit you actually need to dig for, ideally one that already has a Queen of the opposite color ready to land on it.
3. Milk the tableau before touching the stock. Every card you draw buries the waste pile deeper, and your redeal is finite. Exhaust every useful tableau move first, and favor moves that flip face-down cards — every flip is information the stock can't give you.
4. Track both copies of key cards. Two decks means a blocked 5♦ isn't fatal — its twin may be reachable. Before mounting a long excavation, check whether the other copy is visible and cheaper to reach.
5. Keep foundation suits roughly level. Racing one foundation to a Jack while its sisters sit on 2s strands the mid-rank cards you'll need as tableau landing spots. Hold a card back if playing it up removes the only place its neighbors can go.
6. Plan the redeal, don't just take it. The redeal replays the waste in the same order. On your first pass, note which cards will resurface early and set up the tableau to receive them before you flip the stock over.
7. Unbury Aces and 2s at any price. Sixteen cards — eight Aces, eight 2s — gate every foundation. If a line of play frees one, it's almost always right, even if it tangles a pile elsewhere.

Why it feels different in Full Deck Solitaire

Thieves of Egypt is one of the variants that made Full Deck Solitaire's reputation — a game most solitaire apps simply don't carry. The three-level hint system will nudge you when a move is hiding in the pyramid, per-game statistics track your win rate over time, and the daily challenges regularly serve up guaranteed-solvable deals if you want to sharpen your endgame without the sting of an unwinnable shuffle.