Foundation Restraint

Level: Intermediate

Moving cards up too soon removes the material for tableau builds.

Moving cards to the foundations brings you closer to winning, but moving them up too early can strip away the material for alternating-color sequences in the tableau and actually get you stuck.

For example, if you move a black 6 to the foundation, you may be left with nothing to receive a red 7. First check whether the tableau needs that card right now.

As a rule of thumb, it's safe to keep the ranks of the two colors' foundations balanced within about 2 of each other.

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