The tableaux 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 tableaux can be filled
with any group of cards, even a single card.
History
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 tableaux limited the strategic potential of the
game, so I added an extra deck and experimented with the tableaux 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 tableaux 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...
Strategy
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 tableaux. 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 tableaux at the end
of the game, even the Aces; the "Auto" button shoots them all up to the
Foundations in one long riffle!
Author
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.
These are variations mentioned in the development history above.
About Hex A Deck
About Karuta
About Tarokk
About Unique Decks
Contents
Key Bindings
Menu Bar Tree
Glossary
Index
____________________ 132 ____________________