Eight Off

Introduction to Eight Off

Eight Off is a FreeCell family solitaire game.
Eight Off is played with one 52-card standard deck of playing cards. Both ranks and suits of cards are important. From low to high, card ranks run in order from the Ace, to the Two, to the Three, and so on up to the Ten, the Jack, the Queen, and finally the King.

Goal

The goal of Eight Off is to build up all 4 of the suits in the foundation, each in order from the Ace to the King.

How to Play Eight Off

When the game starts, all 52 cards of a standard deck of playing cards are dealt face-up. A pile of 6 cards are dealt into each of the 8 columns in the tableau are and the remaining 4 cards are dealt into the leftmost 4 cells in the free cell area.

A card may be moved by the player back and forth between the tableau and the free cell area. Any one card may be moved to an empty free cell.

An important rule of Eight Off Solitaire is that when a column becomes vacant, it may only be filled with a King of any suit. The King may come from either the free cell area or the bottom-most card in a pile. A non-King card may not be moved into an empty column. (Note: In Easy Eight Off Solitaire, any rank may be used to fill a column.)

When moving a King from a free cell to the tableau, it can only be placed into a vacant column. For a non-King, it can only be moved onto the lowermost card in a pile that is its next-in-rank and of the same suit. For example, the Four of Spades could only be moved from a free cell onto the Five of Spades at the bottom of a pile.

A card may also be moved either from a free cell or the bottom of a pile to the foundation, providing that it is an Ace, which begins a suit build, or the next in rank for its suit, which extends a build. It's also possible to move a card from the foundation either to a free cell or the tableau.

A suited run consists of consecutive cards anywhere in a pile that are both in-rank and of the same suit, with the lowest rank being at the bottom. For example, from the bottom up, the Two of Diamonds, the Three of Diamonds, and the Four of Diamonds constitutes a 3-card suited run. A single card is technically a 1-card suited run.

Provided that a sufficient number of free cells are vacant, a suited run of more than one card may be moved all at once from a pile onto another pile (but not into an empty column unless the run is headed by a King). This counts as only 1 move.

Eight Off Strategy

Here are a few tips on how to win at Eight Off:

• Since Aces must go first into the foundation, they should be given a high priority of uncovering, then Twos, Threes, and so on. However, it's possible to win games without exposing all of the Aces until late in the game. So, winning is not all about uncovering aces.
• Because using up free cells limits mobility (the ability to move cards around), care should be taken when moving a card into a free cell.
• As long as a free King is available, an empty column is potentially more useful than is a free cell because it can hold more than one card. However, since only one card may be moved at a time, without enough empty free cells, it can be impossible to move an entire suited run within the tableau. So, both free cells and vacant columns are important.
• As much as possible, build up suited runs in the tableau. Remember that suited runs can often be moved all at once or one move at a time. As well, remember that as long as the lowermost card of a suited run can be placed into the foundation, all of the cards in the suited run can be placed into the foundation, one card at a time.
• It can sometimes be a disadvantage to move a card atop of another in the tableau because it can hamper mobility. For example, several moves after placing a 2 onto a 3-4 run you might discover that a 3-4 run could have been moved from its pile onto the 5 of the same suit in another pile, while a 2-3-4 run can't be moved there because there are not enough empty free cells available.
• Moving cards to the foundation can only increase mobility. So, (unlike with FreeCell) moving a card to the foundation is never a bad move.

Layout

The game screen is made up of 3 different areas.

Along the left side are the foundations. It consists of 4 cells. This is where suits are built, beginning with the Ace and ending with the King.

Along the top is the free cell area made up of 8 free cells. Each cell is a temporary storage location for one card only.

Directly below the free cell area is the tableau. It consists of 8 (unmarked) columns, each of which may be either empty or contain a pile of one or more cards, depending on the current state of the game.