Black Hole is a

patience (or forbearance) is the ability to endure difficult circumstances. Patience may involve perseverance in the face of delay; tolerance of provocation without responding in disrespect/anger; or forbearance when under strain, especially when faced ...

solitaire Solitaire is any tabletop game which one can play by oneself, usually with cards, but also with dominoes. The term "solitaire" is also used for single-player games of concentration and skill using a set layout tiles, pegs or stones. These game ...

card game A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card ...

. It is of the open builder type; its play is similar to

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

and Tri Peaks, but with a tableau of fans like that of

La Belle Lucie La Belle Lucie is a patience or card solitaire where the object is to build the cards into the foundations. It is considered to be representative of the "fan" family of solitaire card games, and has a pleasing layout. While the game originat ...

. Invented by

David Parlett David Parlett (born 18 May 1939 in London) is a games scholar, historian, and translator from South London, who has studied both card games and board games. He is the president of the British Skat Association. His published works include many pop ...

, this game's objective is to compile the entire deck into one foundation.

Rules

The cards are dealt to the tableau in piles of three. The leftover card, dealt first or last, is placed as a single foundation called the Black Hole. This card usually is the

Ace of Spades The Ace of Spades (also known as the Spadille and Death Card) is traditionally the highest and most valued card in the deck of playing cards in English-speaking countries. The actual value of the card varies from game to game. Design The orn ...

, but any card can do. Only the top cards of each pile in the tableau are available for play and in order for a card to be placed in the Black Hole, it must be a rank higher or lower than the top card on the Black Hole, ignoring suit. This is the only allowable move in the entire game. Aces and Kings are considered consecutive, thus allowing wrapping. The game ends if there are no more top cards that can be moved to the Black Hole. The game is won if all of the cards end up in the Black Hole.

Analysis

Shlomi Fish wrote a program which attempted to solve one million deals, of which 869,413 could be solved and the 130,587 others were fully traversed without a possible final solution, yielding a winning rate of over four fifths (87%). A generalised version of the Black Hole patience is NP-complete. Game typically offers multiple paths, and to have the best chance of succeeding players should try to look a few moves ahead, and eliminate lines of play that lead to a dead end."Black Hold" (p.79-80) in Galt, David. ''101 Great Card Games'', Publications International, 1999.

Variants

All in a Row is somewhat similar to Black Hole. It is played with 13 columns of 4-cards each, and at the start of play, the first move can be made from any column.

Rules

Analysis

Variants

References

See also