Sanibel
SanibelYukon / Forty Thieves hybrid. 2 decks. No redeal.
Move all cards to the foundations.
Foundations are built up in suit from Ace to King. Cards in the Foundations are no longer available for play in the Tableau. It is not compulsory to play any card to the Foundations.
The Tableau is built down by alternate color. Any group of cards may be moved regardless of sequence, so long as the bottom card of the group is placed on top of a card (in a different pile) that is the next higher card in rank and of the opposite color. An empty pile in the Tableau can be filled with any group of cards, even a single card.
From John Stoneham, Sanibel's inventor:
Sanibel and Captiva are islands off the coast of Ft. Meyers, Florida. One summer while vacationing there, I played through all the games described in The Complete Book of Solitaire & Patience Games by Albert H. Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith (published by Bantam, I believe). I really liked the play of Yukon but thought the Tableau limited the strategic potential of the game, so I added an extra deck and experimented with the Tableau layout, aiming for a game that was almost entirely strategic in nature but not on the 10th order of mental magnitude. The result is Sanibel. The number of face-up cards initially dealt to the Tableau determines how much "luck" will play a factor in the game. If you only deal 3 or 4 face-up cards to each pile retaining the balance in the Reserve, chances are you will loose some games. Technically, there is nothing wrong with that, and sometimes I will play it this way. On the other hand, dealing every card face up (except the last 4) takes away nothing from the game and only serves to increase the strategy involved. I prefer the 3-down-7-up layout, since the face down cards and the small Reserve give you something immediate to work for, and it can generate a little suspense when you know there is a card buried that you need and you're trying to find a way to uncover it...
This is entirely a game of skill: if you loose, you just weren't paying attention. Your first priority should be to expose all the face-down cards and get the rest of the Reserve into play. Also, do not play a card onto a Foundation simply because you can (Aces are OK; Twos are probably safe as well): you may need it for building in the Tableau. You will find that you do not need to calculate very long sequences to finish the game, but sometimes a bit of calculation is necessary to expose the buried cards. Sometimes the piles can grow longer than can be displayed in the window. This usually isn't a problem, since you can break up the pile fairly often when other plays become available. Here's something that's a lot of fun: If you have arranged the cards in proper sequence, playing as few to the Foundations as possible during the game, one press of the "Auto" button can play 90 or more cards to the Foundations. It is possible to have every card in the Tableau at the end of the game, even the Aces; the "Auto" button shoots them all up to the Foundations in one long riffle!
This game and documentation has been written by John Stoneham and is part of the official PySol distribution.
Copyright (C) 1998 by John Stoneham. These rules are free; you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.