Gaps

Gaps
For those of you that love a real challenge, this game should be just what you are looking for. You'll need one deck of 52 cards and a space big enough to lay out four rows of thirteen face up cards.

Your aim is to get the remaining cards in each row from 2 upward to the King in suits. The 2 will be the first card and the King will be the last card in the row. There is also no mixing of suits to win this game. You can mix suits as needed to fill in gaps while you are playing the game.

When the cards have been laid out on the table, find the Aces and pull them out of the rows. This action will leave you four gaps to start the game. These Aces will be the only cards removed from the table during the course of the game.

Look closely at where you have the gaps before starting to play. This game does require a little bit of thinking and planning ahead. You can move the appropriate playing cards to the spaces where the gaps are. In this game, every card is available for play as long as it fits in one of the gaps. It does not have to be a certain distance away, it just has to be one of the cards on the table.

A gap may be filled with a higher card than the one to the left. It could also be filled with a lower card than the the one to the right. On rare occasions, it may even be the same card. For example, let's say you had a 5 of hearts on the left and a 7 of hearts on the right. Find the 6 of hearts and put it right between 5 and the 7.

Every time you move a card, you create a new gap that most likely need to be filled. All Kings are barriers in this game as there is no card that can be placed to the right of a King. However, if during the game a King is in the middle of a row, you can play a lower card than the card to the right of a King when there is a gap. You will never be able to place anything to the right of a King as there are no cards higher than a King.

An example of the above scenario: Let's say you have a King of spades on the left, a gap, then a Jack of clubs on the right. You could place the 10 of clubs in front of the Jack as you are playing on the Jack, not on the King.

Sometimes you may have to put cards initially where you don't want them in order to free up other spaces. That's alright; remember every card on the table is available for play as long as it fits in a gap.

REDEALS:
When you get to a stopping point and feel you cannot go any further, it will be time to redeal the cards. You get three redeals per game.

If you have a 2 at the front of a row and you have succeeded in filling in the 3, 4, 5, and possibly other cards behind the 2; leave those cards in place. Remove all of the other cards that do not follow a 2 in suit. These are the cards that get shuffled. They get redealt leaving one space to the right of the last card in a row. Those will be your new gaps.

Example: You have a 2, 3, and 4 of hearts left on the table. Your new gap will be one card to the right of the 4 of hearts.

VARIATION
Sometimes it seems easier to make sure the 2's are the first card in each row when laying out the game. There is no harm in trying out that strategy. Continue with the game as described above.


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