Napoleon at St Helena

Napoleon at St Helena is a patience, or solitaire, card game for one player that uses two packs of 52 cards, 104 cards in all. Tradition holds that the emperor Napoleon often played patience during his final exile on the island of St Helena and that this is the version he probably played. Other names include Le Cadran, meaning the dial, and, in the United States, Forty Thieves, Big Forty and Roosevelt at San Juan. Four rows of ten cards are dealt face up to make a tableau of ten columns, with room above for eight foundations, and only the top card of a column may be moved. Tableau columns are built down by suit, the foundations are built up by suit from ace to king, and the stock is turned one card at a time and gone through only once. The game is hard to win and luck of the draw matters a great deal; one estimate puts the winning chances at about one game in ten. It is the progenitor of a large family of similar games, most of them easier variants.