Overview

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La Belle Lucie is a deceptively complex game with simple rules which requires considerable forethought and fortunate reshuffling to win. One "cheat" (also called a merci) is allowed per game. Layout

There are two areas of the screen: Building Stacks There are eighteen building stacks are arranged in two rows. The first seventeen stacks intially contain three cards and the last stack starts with one card. The building stacks accept cards in descending rank with the same suit. Once a card has been moved between building stacks, it can be moved only to its suit stack. Since a card cannot be moved multiple times between building stacks, care should be taken to ensure that the cards below the top of a building stack are not needed immediately because they will become inaccessible after a card has been moved on top of it. The buried cards cannot be reached until the cards above have been moved to their suit stack. Empty stacks do not accept any cards unless the option in the dialog box has been set allowing kings to be moved to empty spaces.

Suit Stacks

The four suit stacks occupy the left column of the screen and accept cards in ascending rank of the same suit. While moving cards between building stacks requires much consideration, a card can be moved to its suit stack without any forethought. Since a card can be moved to its suit stack only if all cards which can be placed on it are already in their suit stack, no moves will be precluded by removing a card from the building stacks. The movement of cards to the suit stacks will be done automatically unless the game settings are changed.

Moving Cards

To move a card between stacks, simply click on the source stack, highlighting it, and then click on the destination stack.

Redealing

When no more moves are possible in the building stacks, clicking the redeal button will take all cards currently in the building stacks and reshuffle them. The shuffled cards will then be redistributed into stacks of three cards with any remaining cards going into the final stack. Two reshuffles are normally allowed, but this can be changed using the options dialog box. The number of remaining reshuffles is indicated in the row containing the buttons.

Mercis

A normally invalid move (called a merci) is allowed after the final redeal. After the last reshuffle, a card from below the top of a stack can be drawn out a building stack and placed on any other stack (including its original stack). A card from below the top of a stack can also be moved to a suit stack if the suit stack accepts it. When a merci is possible, the area which normally indicates the deal number will indicate the number of remaining mercis. The number of mercis can be set to more than one with the options dialog box. No mercis are allowed if the number of redeals is set to unlimited.

Strategy

After starting a game or reshuffling, there are three types of stacks upon which cards can be moved without blocking any additional cards: Stacks containing only one card.

Stacks with a king on top (if moving kings to empty spaces is not allowed)

Stacks whose top cards are ordered after shuffling due to luck

After all possible cards have been placed on cards falling into the above three categories, subsequent moves will result in blocking more cards. Try to build the longest possible sequences as this will result in the smallest number of stacks being blocked. It might be necessary to build a sequence shorter than possible if the stack it is build on contains cards which will be needed soon.

Once it has been determined that the cards which the suit stacks will currently accept are blocked, click redeal (or begin a new game) because any following moves are pointless.

Options

Click on the button labeled options to bring up a dialog box with the following settings: Number of Redeals

This option determines the number of in-game reshuffles which are allowed.

Number of Mercis

This option controls how many normally invalid moves can be made during after the final reshuffle.

Allow moving kings to empty spaces

If this checkbox is set, kings can be moved to empty spaces