Black Hole rewards careful branch management.

History and background

Black Hole was designed by the British games scholar David Parlett in 1987, and it has become a favourite among solitaire players who prefer pure logic to luck. Parlett built it as a one-deck game with a single foundation — the “black hole” at the centre of the table — into which every card is eventually drawn.

It belongs to the rank-adjacency family alongside Golf and Tri Peaks, but it strips that idea down to its essentials: no suits, no stock, and a single growing pile. A high proportion of Black Hole deals are solvable with correct play, which is exactly why a lost game usually means a wrong branch rather than a bad shuffle. That makes it an unusually pure test of planning.

How the game is set up

A standard 52-card deck is dealt as follows:

• The Black Hole. The Ace of spades is placed in the centre as the starting foundation card.
• The fans. The remaining 51 cards are dealt face-up into seventeen fans of three cards each. Only the outermost card of each fan is available to play.
• The move. An available card may be sent to the Black Hole if its rank is exactly one above or one below the current top card. Suit is ignored entirely.
• Wraparound.Ace and King are adjacent — an Ace plays on a King and a King plays on an Ace. There is no stock and no redeal.

You win by drawing all 51 remaining cards into the Black Hole.

Look-ahead is the whole game

Because each fan holds three cards and you can only take the outer one, the order you empty a fan is fixed once you start: the second card cannot move until the first is gone. So the real question on every turn is not “what can I play?” but “what does playing this expose, and can thatcard continue the sequence?”

Playing a card that uncovers a useless neighbour — one whose rank is nowhere near any reachable Black Hole value — effectively freezes that fan. Do it to several fans and the board locks even though cards remain. Strong play keeps every fan’snext card live as long as possible.

Bridge ranks and wraparound

A “bridge” is a card that lets you cross a gap. If the Black Hole top is a 7 and the cards you most want to reach are 9s, an 8 is your bridge — without it those 9s are unreachable. Identify which ranks are scarce on top of fans and treat the cards that connect to them as precious. Spending a bridge rank casually, just because it is a legal move, is the most common way a winnable deal slips away.

The Ace–King wraparound is your most powerful bridge of all. Because the count can roll over (Jack–Queen–King–Ace–2–3…), a stuck climb through the high cards can sometimes be rescued by wrapping down through the Aces, or vice versa. Always check both directions before declaring yourself stuck: the rank onebelow is as valid as the rank one above.

Strategic priorities in order

1. Scan all seventeen fan tops first. Build a rough picture of which ranks are plentiful and which are scarce before you commit to a direction.
2. Play from fans that expose useful next cards.Prefer the move whose revealed card can itself continue the chain — chains that feed themselves are how long runs happen.
3. Conserve bridge ranks. When a needed connector appears on multiple fans, you can spend one freely; when it is unique, route around it until you must use it.
4. Keep both directions open. Whenever you have a choice, favour the move that leaves both a higher and a lower continuation available, rather than committing to a one-way climb.
5. Clear the deep blockers early. A wanted card buried at the bottom of a fan needs two prior plays from that fan. Start peeling it before the surface cards that would unlock it get consumed elsewhere.

Decision walkthroughs

Two legal cards, only one keeps the run going

Protecting a unique bridge

Using the wraparound to escape

Common mistakes

• Grabbing every legal card on sight. Reflexive play burns bridge ranks and exposes dead neighbours, locking fans you will need later.
• Forgetting the downward direction. Players climb and get stuck, never noticing that the rank one below was playable the whole time.
• Ignoring the wraparound.Treating King as a ceiling and Ace as a floor throws away the game’s most flexible connector.
• Leaving deep targets too late. A key card under two others needs early attention; surface cards that would free it vanish if you wait.

Recognizing a losing position early

Black Hole can become unwinnable before the board looks stuck. The clearest warning signs:

• Every remaining fan top is two or more ranks away from the Black Hole value in both directions, with no bridge available to close the gap.
• The cards that would bridge a gap are all buried beneath the very cards they would help you reach — a circular block.
• You have several short runs left but no single connector ties them together, so they can never merge into one path to the finish.

When you see these, undo to the last branch where you had a genuine choice and take the other line. Black Hole rewards replaying the same deal: the second attempt, with the map in your head, is far more often a win.