Good Thirteen

Like most patiences, Good Thirteen is a card game for one person. The playing cards, a single Rommé pack of 52 cards, are shuffled and placed face down as a stock on the table. The card values of the pip cards correspond to their face value; in addition, the Ace scores one, the Jack eleven, the Queen twelve and the King thirteen. The top ten cards are picked up and placed in a row on the table, face up:[1]

• Example: In the following layout the single King and the pairs 8+5, 10+3 and Jack (11)+2 can be removed.

Pairs of cards adding up to 13 points, regardless of their suit are removed and placed to one side. In addition individual Kings, which are the only cards with a value of 13, may be laid off. The resulting gaps are filled with new cards from the stock.[1]

The game ends when the stock is exhausted. If all the cards have been laid off, the patience has been solved, if not, the player has lost.[1]

The game is similar to another German patience, Eight Cards (Acht Karten), in which eight cards are laid out and pairs and individual cards totalling 11 points are removed,[2] and also to the English patience of Baroness in which just five cards are laid out and, again, cards totalling 13 points are removed.

• "Die gute Dreizehn." In: Irmgard Wolter-Rosendorf: Patiencen in Wort und Bild (= Falken-Bücherei. Vol. 63). Falken-Verlag, Niedernhausen/Ts. 1994, ISBN 3-8068-2003-1, p. 10–11.