What is The Fan?
The Fan is a fan-layout patience game closely related to La Belle Lucie. Cards are dealt face-up into fans of three, foundations build Ace to King by suit, and only top cards move. The key distinction from La Belle Lucie: in The Fan, an empty fan can be filled by a King (or a group of cards headed by a King in some implementations). In La Belle Lucie, empty fans are gone permanently.
This one rule change — Kings reopen empty fans — gives The Fan meaningfully more recovery options when the layout becomes stuck, while preserving the same methodical fan-movement challenge.
Full rules
The 52-card deck is dealt into seventeen fans of three cards and one fan of one card (same as La Belle Lucie). Only the top card of each fan is available. Top cards move to a foundation (suit up from Ace) or to another fan (suit down, one rank lower).
When a fan becomes empty, a King may be placed there — reopening that fan position for future use. Redeals vary by implementation (typically one or two). Win when all cards reach the foundations.
King management: The Fan’s distinctive challenge
Because Kings can fill empty fans, the decision of when to place a King into an empty fan — and which King — becomes a significant strategic choice. A King placed in an empty fan “locks” that fan around its suit: the King itself cannot move (no card of rank 14 exists), so the fan will only accept cards of the King’s suit stacking downward below it.
Preserve Kings in other fans as long as you can use that empty space as a temporary routing point. A King placed too early may claim a fan slot that would have been more valuable as open working space for a few more moves.
Read The Fan strategy guide →