Monte Carlo is a pair-matching

patience or card solitaire Patience (Europe), card solitaire or solitaire (US/Canada), is a genre of card games whose common feature is that the aim is to arrange the cards in some systematic order or, in a few cases, to pair them off in order to discard them. Most are inte ...

game using a pack of 52

playing card A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...

s where the object is to remove pairs from the

tableau Tableau (French for 'little table' literally, also used to mean 'picture'; tableaux or, rarely, tableaus) may refer to: Arts * ''Tableau'', a series of four paintings by Piet Mondrian titled ''Tableau I'' through to ''Tableau IV'' * ''Tableau viv ...

. Despite its name, it has no relation to the city with the same name nor to any

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...

-related game. Alternative names for this game include Good Neighbours and Weddings.

Rules

The game is set up by laying out 25 cards so that they form a 5x5 grid. The rest of the pack is set aside as the

stock In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...

. Cards that make up a

pair Pair or PAIR or Pairing may refer to: Government and politics * Pair (parliamentary convention), matching of members unable to attend, so as not to change the voting margin * ''Pair'', a member of the Prussian House of Lords * ''Pair'', the Frenc ...

(such as two Kings or two Sixes) are removed when they are immediately next to each other horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Once some or all such pairs have been removed, the cards are consolidated, i.e. moving cards to the left as if towards the upper left corner to fill any

gaps Gaps is a member of the Montana group of Patience games, where the goal is to arrange all the cards in suit from Deuce (a Two card) to King. Other solitaire games in this family include Spaces, Addiction, Vacancies, Clown Solitaire, Paganini, ...

left behind by the discarded pairs. New cards are then laid out from the stock to form a fresh

layout Layout may refer to: * Page layout, the arrangement of visual elements on a page ** Comprehensive layout (comp), a proposed page layout presented by a designer to their client * Layout (computing), the process of calculating the position of obje ...

of 25 cards."Monte Carlo" in This process is repeated continues until it is no longer possible to remove pairs (e.g. in the finishing stages of the game one might be stuck with "4-6-4-6."). The game is

out Out may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Out'' (1957 film), a documentary short about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 * ''Out'' (1982 film), an American film directed by Eli Hollander * ''Out'' (2002 film), a Japanese film ba ...

if all cards are successfully discarded. Although luck is a large part of Monte Carlo, strategy can sometimes play a part. For example, one could leave a pair alone to be used to aid freeing a separated pair (e. g. two Queens that are left alone to unlock a Q-7-Q).

Variants

* In a variant called Monte Carlo Thirteens, instead of pairs of cards with the same rank, kings and pairs of cards with values totalling 13 are removed during game play. Monte Carlo Fourteens is a variant where pairs totalling 14 are removed. * The same layout is used for a variant called Fourteens, but instead of being adjacent, the pairs need to be in the same

row Row or ROW may refer to: Exercise *Rowing, or a form of aquatic movement using oars *Row (weight-lifting), a form of weight-lifting exercise Math *Row vector, a 1 × ''n'' matrix in linear algebra. *Row (database), a single, implicitly structured ...

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

. Aces Square simplifies this further by allowing removal of pairs of cards that match in

suit A suit, lounge suit, or business suit is a set of clothes comprising a suit jacket and trousers of identical textiles worn with a collared dress shirt, necktie, and dress shoes. A skirt suit is similar, but with a matching skirt instead of tr ...

(rather than in

rank Rank is the relative position, value, worth, complexity, power, importance, authority, level, etc. of a person or object within a ranking, such as: Level or position in a hierarchical organization * Academic rank * Diplomatic rank * Hierarchy * H ...

) and that are in the same row or column. * A less common version of Monte Carlo has the initial 20 cards dealt to form a 5x4 grid.

Rules

Variants

References

See also