Napoleon at St Helena
2-deck patience or solitaire card game
Napoleon at St Helena is a 2-deck patience or solitaire card game for one player. It is quite difficult to win, and luck-of-the-draw is a significant factor. The emperor Napoleon often played patience during his final exile to the island of St Helena, and this is said to be the version he probably played. Along with its variants, it is one of the most popular two-deck patiences or solitaires. The winning chances have been estimated as 1 in 10 games, with success typically dependent on the player's ability to clear one or more columns. The game is the progenitor of a large family of similar games, mostly with variations designed to make it easier to win, or "get out"
Alternative names include Le Cadran ('The Dial') and, in the US, Forty Thieves, Big Forty and Roosevelt at San Juan.
History
"Napoleon at St. Helena" is recorded as early as 1870 by Annie Henshaw who describes it as a "most excellent game which has the added charm of having been a favorite with Napoleon at St. Helena". The game appears frequently in patience collections of the late 19th century.
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This entry incorporates text from “Napoleon at St Helena” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.