What Is Accordion Solitaire?
Accordion is a fast, casual solitaire game with an elegantly simple concept. You deal cards one at a time into a growing row and look for opportunities to collapse cards on top of each other based on matching suit or rank. The goal is to compress the entire deck into as few piles as possible. Getting down to a single pile is a perfect game — and extremely rare. Even reducing the deck to under five piles is considered an excellent result.
What You Need
- One standard deck of 52 playing cards
- One player
- Enough table space to spread cards in a horizontal row
How to Play — Step by Step
- Flip one card from the deck and place it face-up to start a row. This is pile 1.
- Flip the next card and place it face-up to the right, starting pile 2.
- After placing each new card, check whether it matches the card immediately to its LEFT (one position) or the card THREE POSITIONS to its left. A match means the suits are the same OR the ranks are the same.
- If the new card matches the card one position to the left: move the new card ON TOP of that matching card. The two merge into one pile. Close up the gap — all piles to the right slide left.
- If the new card matches the card three positions to the left: move the new card ON TOP of that card instead. Close the gap.
- If the new card matches BOTH the card one left and three left, you choose which to move it onto. Generally moving three positions left collapses more of the row.
- After any move, immediately check again — the card now sitting in the new position might match ITS neighbor one or three positions left, triggering another move. Keep checking and moving until no more matches exist.
- Then flip the next card from the deck and repeat.
What Counts as a Match
Two cards match if they share the same SUIT (both Hearts, both Spades, etc.) OR the same RANK (both 7s, both Kings, etc.). The top card of each pile is the card that matters — cards buried in a pile are ignored.
Winning
A perfect game ends with all 52 cards compressed into a single pile. Most games end with several piles remaining. Track your best result — fewest piles is your goal.
Tips for New Players
- When you have a choice between moving one position left or three positions left, moving three is almost always better — it collapses more of the row.
- Look for chain reactions before making a move — sometimes moving a card three left causes an immediate cascade of further moves.
- In digital versions, use undo to experiment — Accordion rewards learning what triggers the best chain reactions.